Manx Net users have been sent sextortion phishing emails - but Manx Telecom insists there’s been no data breach.

The email states it is from a hacker who claims to have the user’s password and demands they pay a $900 ransom with Bitcoins to buy their silence over embarrassing material accessed on the internet.

Manx Telecom said it is aware of this email scam and issued an alert to customers about it on the network status page of its website last week.

A spokesman said: ’Like many other email spam campaigns of this type, these emails are designed to blackmail people. Cyber criminals send this type of email to thousands of people, claiming they have embarrassing material and that they have hacked an email account.

’It’s very important to stress that there was no data breach of manx.net accounts.

’Our systems would have notified us if a breach had occurred, and in that event we would have reported the breach to the Isle of Man Information Commissioner, the regulatory body for data protection.’

Manx Telecom said that while the scam emails may contain what appears to be the user’s hacked manx.net account password, scammers harvest data from many sources and exploit the fact that many people use the same password for different accounts.

In this instance, where scammers have claimed to have hacked a manx.net account, and have the user’s current manx.net password, that password will have been obtained from data harvested elsewhere on the internet and not because of a data breach on the manx.net platform.

MT is urging recipients not to click on any links, delete the email and change your password on manx.net. You can check if your email has been compromised at https://haveibeenpwned.com/