Received a disturbing ransomware email

[usonian]

5. Form letter. Everyone gets lots of them.

The passwords they claim to have came from email breakins at Yahoo, LinkedIn, Docusign (!) at the very least.
They are old, and only a problem if you are lazy enough to recycle them on other sites.

If it weren't this same damn form letter, there actually is a chance that your info has been had by various means, including phishing ("You just bought a 14 foot sailboat. Confirm your purchase by logging in to WHATEVER.COM" ) or the Experian breakin or various other accounts (your college, etc). But very low, and never with such form letters, or the usual ones with misspellings.

The advice I give family and everyone is the simplest. ) and this is the short version.

1. Never use an obvious password like myname, or the top 100
https://techcult.com/most-common-passwords/
Or one of those appended with a 1,2,123 and so on.

2. Never use the same password twice at another site or institution.

3. Get a password manager app. Many are free, and require a touch-id or other, to open the app. The nicer ones store data encrypted. You can use impossible to remember passwords if the site you are logging into allows copy and paste. Some don't.

4. Definitely get ublock-origin add-on for Firefox. It blocks ads and countless trackers. Ads carry malware all too often. If you want to support DU become a star member anyway.

Just run a virus checker now and then.

Check your bank and credit card accounts often.

There are more steps but my motto is "do the basics first".