Blackmail is an act, often a crime, involving unjustified threats to make a gain (commonly money or property) or cause loss to another unless a demand is met. Essentially, 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. It is the name of a statutory offence in the United States, England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Victoria, Australia, and Tasmania, and has been used as a convenient way of referring to other offences, 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 protectio