More from the article ...

... An email hits your inbox from an unknown sender that includes a picture of your house and address, followed by a threat: "Don't even try to hide from this. You have no idea what I'm capable of ... I've got footage of you doing embarrassing things in your house (nice setup, by the way)."

Sounds like a scene out of a horror film, right? Instead, it's one of the latest phishing scams. ...

OK, for starters, email scams using google street-view images have been around for a couple of years.

So, why the attention now?

There seems to be a drastic uptick in the targets of this scam of late.

Has new stolen data become available?

I've not a clue. But something has seemed to have changed.

One thing I do know, there are no video cameras in my house that are capturing video.

Black electrical tape over the lens seems to be quite the excellent prevention for cameras in, e.g., laptops from capturing any video.

So, when I do et such an email, I chuckle and just delete it.

I also have my email client configured to not load external links that may be present in email messages. So, those email messages cannot, e.g., load and run JavaScript to do damage to my PC.