A few weeks ago, I was privileged to visit the 8th grade of a high school here in Cape Town and talk to the students about cybersecurity, social media, and emerging technology. It was an enriching experience but also an eye-opener for me regarding the level of cyber awareness among adolescents:
None of the 80 kids in the room have heard about the sextortion threat before. This is concerning as it is rated by the FBI as one of the fastest-growing cybercrimes.
So, for my research purposes and to share information with fellow parents, I created this site with links to good resources, content and people.
What is Sextortion?
Sextortion has been around for a while and refers to the act of blackmailing someone for sexual favours, money, or other benefits under the threat of sharing sexually explicit material they may have obtained because they have been in a trust relationship with the victim before, such as ex-partners or lovers.
What is Financial Sextortion?
While sextortion is not a new crime, what is new about financial sextortion is turning the crime into a massive, organised scam, targeted at teenagers and executing it at scale. Financial sextortion is a form of organized crime targeting teenagers worldwide that demands greater awareness and preventive measures.
Why is it such a problem?
Scale:
Sextortion crime has been around for a couple of years, but the financial component of this crime and the scale and organisation behind targeting teenagers specifically have significantly increased in the last 24 months.
For example, according to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2021 only 134 cases were reported. This number shot up to 26,718 in 2023. Taking into account that probably only 10% of these incidents are reported, makes the dark figure of it much higher.
Image credit: NCMEC https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2024/ncmec-releases-new-sextortion-data
This is a violent crime
Tragically this is no longer ‘just’ Internet or money crime, but it has led to 33 teenage suicides thus far, making this a violent crime that needs to be stopped. Tragic stories of young victims of sextortionists like 16-year-old Murray Dowey from Scotland, a 12-year-old Canadian boy, and 16-year-old Jordan DeMay from the US, who committed suicide highlight the devastating consequences of this awful crime. Some of the chats reviewed show how ruthless the criminals are, even inciting victims to take their own lives if they can't pay up.
How does it work?
These financially-motivated crimes are typically carried out by organized crime groups, such as West Africa's Yahoo Boys and in most cases they target boys aged 12 to 18, although girls are also extorted into sharing more sexually explicit material.
These crime groups have no scruples, follow well-thought-out scripts, and methods, share albums of photos or AI tools to create deep fake images and target hundreds of teenagers at a time.
In financial sextortion attacks, cybercriminals typically impersonate teenage girls, using fake accounts on Instagram or similar platforms with the sole goal to trick victims into sharing explicit images or videos of themselves. Once they receive an image, they will move straight into extorting the victim. Typically requesting the teenager to pay a few hundred dollars
Detailed Modus Operandi
The criminal’s modus operandi includes targeting high school boys. They use a vast network of fake Instagram cat-phish accounts tricking boys into believing that they are a pretty teenage girl. Using fake or stolen profile photos, they add as many teen boys as they can, hundreds every day. They buy or hack existing or dormant IG accounts, making them look more believable and tricky to detect as scams or fake accounts.
They look specifically for high-school sports or other teams and sign up as many boys as possible to make their profiles look more legitimate. They may target high-performers “good” kids, and profiles who have a lot to lose related to the embarrassment and shame that's linked to these crimes.
They start with innocent-appearing flirtations that very quickly move to love-bombing (“OMG, you are so cute, I'm obsessed”) and attempt to establish a rapport.
They may also intentionally move their communications from one online platform to another (e.g., moving from social media to SnapChat or messaging apps).
They will then try to coerce victims into sharing nude pictures, by sharing one (fake or stolen) of themselves first. Once they have the material, they start blackmailing their victim by threatening them to release the images to all their friends and contacts, unless they pay up. Typically the demands start with 300-500 dollars to be paid via non-trackable payment methods such as crypto-currency or gift-card payments. Once payments have been made, they will continue to put more pressure on and demand more.
Source: FBI
Tactics are used to coerce their targets include
Love bombing
Reciprocation (“I’ll show you, if you show me”).
Pretending to work for a modelling agency to obtain sexual images
Developing a bond by establishing a friendship/romantic relationship.
Pretending to be younger and/or a member of the opposite sex.
Threatening to create sexual images or videos of the child using digital-editing tools.
Are our teenagers at risk in South Africa?
Definately. According to Emma Sadleir of The Digital Law Company, she receives 15-20 reports for help each day.
The case of Matima Ndlovu, who extorted R28 000 from his victim nearly a year ago, highlighted a sextortion syndicate across Giyani in Limpopo, where several young people were being groomed to become sextortion predators.
Why are teenagers vulnerable? Teenagers are particularly vulnerable due to their prolific use of social media, emotional insecurities, and still-developing decision-making skills. This is due to a process called myelination which refers to the delayed development of cognitive control and heightened emotional sensitivity resulting in risky and more impulsive behaviour. According to a study by Berson, 2003b the loss of family protection was also found to be central in contributing to vulnerability to Being Groomed and Sexually Abused Online
The 2022 Disrupting Harm survey across 1,639 internet-using children aged 9–17 in South Africa showed that
58% of participants aged between 9 and 17 access the internet every day.
53% of those children saw sexual images online
40.1% of them had experienced unwanted exposure to sexual experiences and materials,
20.4% experienced unwanted online sexual advances.
Between 7% and 9% of children had been subjected to online child sexual abuse and exploitation such as having their sexual images shared without permission, being blackmailed or coerced to engage in sexual activity.
Prevention
There are a few things we can do as parents and educators to ensure our kids don't fall victim to this.
Raising awareness of the crime is critical. Use the resources listed here.
Avoid victim-blaming language and focus on building open and honest conversations about cyber-safety and the risks associated with sharing personal information and images online.
Develop a "zero-trust" mindset towards new digital interactions. This means applying a healthy dose of scepticism and mindfulness. Especially when something is triggering your emotions (i.e. love bombing, applying pressure) it could be a sign of a scam or manipulation.
They might steal or hack your friends' accounts, names and pictures
Use strong privacy settings on social media accounts.
Video call the person to confirm they are who they say they are. Be aware that they might use deep fake technology or pre-recorded videos to dupe you.
Do a reverse Google image search of their profile picture to check if it was stolen or used somewhere else.
Above all, don't ever share explicit content online with strangers or even people you know online.
Great Awareness Resources
Here is a brilliant 7-minute interactive video clip that explains this produced by the NCMEC Netsmartz team: https://noescaperoom.org/
Here is a 13-minute clip I created to provide awareness for teenagers. This could be shared by teachers or parents.
A downloadable guide created by Nadja El Fertasi on how to teach teens to resist their impulses, breathe through their emotions, and reflect before they click online in the context of sextortion.
This is a great 40-minute deep dive interview with cyber crime expert Paul Raffile by Nikki Reisberg from the Scrolling to Death podcast to learn all about sextortion and how to protect our children. Paul answers important questions about sextortion including: Who is being targeted? Where are the scammers located? What platforms are at risk for sextortion? What should parents tell their children to protect them? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er5i6LOtfNc
The NetSmartz program addresses the issue of sextortion in age-appropriate ways. Examples of resources include videos, discussion guides and a poster for educators, school resources officers, counsellors and others who work with children to display. Learn more at MissingKids.org/NetSmartz/Sextortion.
The UK Safer Internet Centre provides a comprehensive downloadable list of great awareness and educational resources about financial sextortion for use with children, young people, parents and carers, and professionals https://saferinternet.org.uk/sextortion-resources
FBI Stop Sextortion campaign for schools, including posters, information, resources, and conversation guides are available at fbi.gov/StopSextortion.
I created a "Train the Trainer" video for counsellors, parents, teachers and educators. This is 10 minutes long and covers the background and how to react to financial sextortion scams.
Sextortion happened to me or my child, what can I do now?
Take a few deep breaths first. The criminals count on you feeling too confused, scared, or embarrassed to tell someone. They want you to panic and not think straight (called 'amygdala hijack') and be overcome by fear and shame emotions, which is when we are most vulnerable to manipulation. It is super important now to use mindfulness techniques, such as deep breathing to calm down and react more rationally. Remember that even if this started on an app or site that you are too young to be on, or if it felt okay about making some of the content. Even if you accepted money or a game credit or something else, you are not the one at fault. You are a victim of a sophisticated crime.
Speak to a trusting adult to help you with this. You are not alone and there are ways to deal with this situation.
Don't pay. That is the most important thing. Like any other blackmailer, they will just put even more pressure on you once you pay once and amp up the harassment even more so. You might also land up on a 'sucker-list', meaning you will be targeted by them and many other scammers in the future. Their threats are usually empty anyway, they just want to put pressure on you to pay.
Take screenshots of their messages as evidence.
Block the perpetrator. Block them from all your accounts
Change your usernames or consider going offline for a few weeks so that they can't harass you elsewhere.
Take It Down is a free service that can help you remove or stop the online sharing of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images or videos taken of you. You can remain anonymous while using the service and you won’t have to send your images or videos to anyone. It works by assigning a unique digital fingerprint, called a hash value, to nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images or videos of people under the age of 18. Online platforms can use hash values to detect these images or videos on their services and remove this content.
Get started here: https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/
If there is an explicit image of you from when you were 18 or older, you can get help at stopncii.org.
Help from NCMEC. The NCMEC has a team of analysts dedicated to speeding up the process of getting the images down and helping remove some of that burden. In 2021, NCMEC sent 75,000+ notices to companies. On average, images were taken down within 27 hours. To report the sexually-exploitive images/videos of you to NCMEC visit the CyberTipline. Even though they are a US-based organisation, you can report your images there as a South African too.
If your image does get leaked to some of your contacts, and you are too ashamed to admit it was you who sent it, then deny it. Say it was a deepfake.
I will be adding to this list as I go along. Below are some great influencers to follow in this space, Emma is not a stranger to anyone in South Africa and Paul is in the US.
People to follow:
Paul Raffile is a digital Investigator, security strategist and | Digital Risk | OSINT expert who is extremely knowledgeable about financial sextortion and vocal about the issue of platform providers taking more responsibility. He is a great person to follow on LinkedIn
Nadja is an emotional intelligence leadership coach and trainer and has created some great material to help build emotional resilience.
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