Here’s What Parents Need to Know About Keeping Teens Safe From Sextortion Scams
By Movieguide® Contributor
Experts are warning parents and children about online “sextortion” schemes have led to dozens of suicides.
“Sextortion involves an offender coercing a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or video,” a report from the FBI reads. “Offenders threaten to release that compromising material unless they receive payment, which is often requested in gift cards, mobile payment services, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency.”
These sextortion schemes primarily target teenage boys: a scammer poses as a teenage girl, reaches out and persuades their target to send nude photos. Immediately after receiving the pictures, the scammer begins threatening the teen with blackmail and often encourages them to kill themselves.
High school senior James Woods was one such target. He committed suicide after blackmailers told him his parents would stop loving him if the explicit photos were made public and that he would not be able to attend college.
“They eliminated his desire for a future,” his mother, Tamia Woods, told USA Today. “I don’t think that James knew he was a victim.”
READ MORE: SEXTORTIONISTS TARGET TEEN BOYS ON POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
Complicating matters, many sextortion cases don’t even involve real explicit images of their target. Roughly one of 10 reports technology nonprofit Thorn reviewed involved artificially generated content
“Sometimes you can spot if something is an AI image, but very quickly that will disappear,” Alex Murray, the national police lead for AI in the UK, told The Guardian. “People using this sort of software at the moment are still quite niche, but it will become very easy to use.”
“The ease of entry, realism and availability are the three vectors which will probably increase…We, as policing, have to move fast in this space to keep on top of it,” he continued. “I think it’s a reasonable assumption that between now and 2029 we will see significant increases in all these crime types, and we want to prevent that.”
Cybersecurity experts recommend that parents have serious conversations with their children about sextortion and internet safety.
“We can’t bank on the hope that we will see something changing in them as a signal that they need help,” Melissa Stroebel, vice president of research and insights at the technology nonprofit Thorn, said. “Make sure that they’ve got [a plan for how to deal with potential scammers] in their back pocket so they don’t have to come up with a plan in the heat of the moment.”
It is also crucial to impress upon your teen that, if they fall victim to a sextortion scam, it is not their fault and the blackmailer is to blame.
“You may feel humiliated, but life will go on,” said Jennifer Butta, mother to Jordan DeMay, a 17-year-old boy who took his life after receiving threats from a scammer. “It is so much better to seek out that help, because it’s a situation that you’re not prepared to handle on your own.”
READ MORE: SEXTORTION SCAMS ‘EXPLODING’ ONLINE: WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW
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