Crypto-Assets have to be stored somewhere and that somewhere is referenced by a complicated account number. Actually, it's not a number, that's just a familiar expression that does the job. What we call an account number is actually a long alpha-numeric identifier.

While the most famous Crypto-Asset is Crypto-Currency, there are other kinds too. However, here, we are concerned with only crypto-currencies.

The most famous is, of course, bitcoin but there are many, many more.

The fact that bitcoin has such an enormous market share, it is the currency of choice for many criminals. Many of them are fraudsters or blackmailers / extortionists.

Sometimes the threats are real but in the vast majority of cases they are a hoax: there is no virus on your system which will destroy all your data, there is no video of you enjoying a pleasurable moment somewhere you thought was private to be posted to the 'net and there is no bomb waiting to explode if you don't pay.

There are, however, cases where those threats are or may be true. Just because those cases are rare does not mean anyone can be complacent.

The criminal receives money because people believe the hoax. To make the payment, the victim obtains e.g. bitcoin and transfers the demanded value to the account named in the threatening e-mail. There are thousands upon thousands of these delivered every day. In order to prevent the flow of money to the criminals, the accounts must be blocked.

Blocking the accounts is not technically difficult but it does require both speed and accuracy. It also requires there to be a system by which information that identifies the suspicious accounts is available to as many people and companies as possible.

The only information that is needed is the account number. That number can then be used by exchanges to make sure that they do not accept transactions to that account and do not credit that account with any transfers already in the system. This latter step is surprising: it means that your notice can have effect in relation to transactions that have already been instigated, in effect stepping back in time for a few hours.

The information you provide about the criminals who defraud or blackmail people like you, people like us helps to keep money out of the hands of criminals, organised crime gangs, multi-faceted gangs of drug traffickers, people traffickers and, it is reasonable to assume, terrorists and those who support them.

The information you provide becomes public information. it is therefore vitally important that, when you post a copy of an email containing a demand that you ensure that you carefully remove any and all information that might identify you. Many e-mails put a domain name, an email address, a name, even a password in the body of the mail. You should remove those. You are the publisher of the information and are entirely responsible for it and for its truth and accuracy.

We make a tiny annual charge because even the good guys need to keep the lights on. It's just GBP1.50 (plus UK vat where applicable).