Not that I'm aware. Why would you bother writing the code for that?

If you're an identity thief; to cover your tracks

If you're a clever scammer, have it go away for a couple months then come back demanding another payment

My parent actually paid off a fake AV ransomware company 6 or 7 years ago before I could tell them not to, and it didn't work of course but on the plus side they didn't have their credit card information stolen or anything, they just lost . Which makes sense, because even a few thousand (and it's probably more than that) petty, easily written off by the victim frauds like that over the course of a few months for every new ransomare variant probably pays as well as much riskier identity theft, if not better.

I can understand falling for this if you aren't familiar with technology, get spooked or whatnot but why would you believe that an unknown entity that seems committed to tracking your gay bondage fetish would withhold evidence from the law if you give them ?

Maybe people pay just to get their computer back, I don't know.

Does CryptoLocker count as ransomware? Apparently they actually release their victims.

I can think of one specific, deeply closeted friend of my family who this is tailor made for.

I guess it's just the default for the virtual machine. My stupidity was unleashed.