British lawmakers who might have been targeted in a sexting scam were on Friday urged to go to police, after a senior Conservative lawmaker admitted to disclosing the personal phone numbers of some colleagues to an unknown individual who held “compromising” material on him.
William Wragg, chairman of the British House of Commons’ Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee, told the Times that he had handed over the phone numbers to a man he met on a gay dating app, after he had sent intimate pictures of himself.
Wragg, 36, told the Times that the man had “compromising things” on him and he was “scared” and “manipulated” into giving his colleagues’ numbers to the unknown individual he had met on Grindr.
Photo:British Parliament via AP
“I gave them some numbers, not all of them,” he said. “I got chatting to a guy on an app and we exchanged pictures. We were meant to meet up for drinks, but then didn’t. Then he started asking for numbers of people. I was worried because he had stuff on me. He gave me a WhatsApp number, which doesn’t work now. I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified.”
British Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Gareth Davies urged those affected to go to the police.
“Will Wragg has rightly apologized for the action that he took, but I think it’s clear to anybody hearing about the situation that he was in, people react in different ways,” he told Sky News.
The honeytrap sexting scam has been described as “spear phishing,” a type of cyberattack that targets specific groups. It involves scammers pretending to be trusted senders in order to steal personal or sensitive information.
Wragg’s revelation came after days of speculation, stoked by an article published in Politico, that a number of current and former lawmakers had been contacted by an unknown number on WhatsApp, detailing prior meetings with politicians, in efforts to acquire personal or sensitive information.
Some of those targeted were sent naked images, with at least two reported to have responded by sending images of themselves, the report said.
“I would say to anyone watching this that if you ever feel like you’re in a compromised position, if you ever feel like you’re being blackmailed, then you should go to the police immediately because it’s an incredibly serious matter,” Davies added.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home