Mower County authorities are warning people not to be fooled by an email scam that is threatening to distribute the personal content of individual computers.

According to Mower County Senior Sgt. Investigator Steve Sandvik, a rural Austin resident reported receiving a scam email claiming that his email had been hacked. The email stated that a virus had been planted in the victim’s computer, giving the sender access to all content on the computer. The sender also showed the victim’s password and threatened to distribute the computer’s content, and information about the computer’s online activity, to everyone in the victim’s contact list, unless the victim agreed to pay a certain amount of money, in this case $834 in bitcoin.

Sandvik said this email scam has been going around and usually contains an old password, though in this case the password displayed in the email was the victim’s current password. He said this information is usually obtained on the Dark Web by scammers who purchase the information from data breaches.

Sandvik advised anyone who receives a similar email to delete it, change their password and check their credit. He also advised that passwords be changed regularly with new ones not containing information to the specific individual.