Blackmails

Blackmail is an act, often criminal, involving unjustified threats to make a gain—most commonly money or property—or cause loss to another unless a demand is met. It is coercion involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates, or threats of physical harm or criminal prosecution.

Blackmail is the name of a statutory offense in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and has been used as a convenient way of referring to other offenses, but was not a term of art in English law before 1968. It originally meant payments rendered by settlers in the counties of England bordering Scotland to chieftains and the like in the Scottish Lowlands, in exchange for protection from Scottish thieves and marauders into England.

Blackmail may also be considered a form of extortion. Although the two are generally synonymous, extortion is the taking of personal property by threat of future harm. Blackmail is the use of threat to prevent another from engaging in a lawful occupation and writing libelous letters or letters that provoke a breach of the peace, as well as use of intimidation for purposes of collecting an unpaid debt. For the piece of information to be considered blackmail, the information obtained must contain items that the victim does not want revealed. Some U.S. states distinguish the offenses by requiring that blackmail be in writing. In some jurisdictions, the offence of blackmail is often carried out during the act of robbery. This occurs when an offender makes a threat of immediate violence towards someone in order to make a gain as part of a theft.

"Criminals might befriend victims online by using a fake identity and then persuade them to perform sexual acts in front of their webcam, often by using an attractive woman to entice the victim to participate. These women may have been coerced into these actions using financial incentives or threats." As reported by the NCA (National Crime Agency), both men and women can be victims of this crime. This crime can be done through crime groups or on an individualistic basis.

The word blackmail is variously derived from the word for tribute (in modern terms, protection racket) paid by English and Scottish border dwellers to Border Reivers in return for immunity from raids and other harassment. The "mail" part of blackmail derives from Middle English male, "rent, tribute". This tribute was paid in goods or labour (reditus nigri, or "blackmail"); the opposite is blanche firmes or reditus albi, or "white rent" (denoting payment by silver). Alternatively, Mckay derives it from two Scottish Gaelic words blathaich pronounced (the th silent) bla-ich (to protect) and mal (tribute, payment). He notes that the practice was common in the Highlands of Scotland as well as the Borders. In Irish Gaelic, the term cíos dubh, meaning "black-rent" has also been employed.

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