Sextortion and the need for robust safeguarding solutions

Defining sextortion 

London’s Metropolitan Police define ‘Sextortion' as “the short name for 'financially motivated sexual extortion’. It is a type of online blackmail where criminals threaten to share sexual pictures, videos, or information” about the victim either to take money from them or to force them into doing something else they don’t want to.

A typical scenario 

A common situation would involve a boy meeting a girl online, exchanging messages and then being persuaded to share intimate images, or even a live video. But the image or video he shared is not with a prospective girlfriend but with a criminal gang. Said gangs have either used girls who have been trafficked to perpetrate a crime or more or less sophisticated impersonations, which might range from simple catfishing (defined by Australia’s eSafetyCommissioner as ‘when someone sets up a fake online identity and uses it to trick and control others’) to advanced AI-generated deepfake videos and images.

Once the victim has been compromised, the threats swiftly follow. They either demand more content, often even more explicit than has inadvertently already been provided, or money in the form of Bitcoin or other untraceable methods, such as the purchase of gift cards. All this is achieved through blackmailing them with threats to expose the material to friends and family.

Often, the first parents may know about this is when the child’s school welfare officer contacts them—perhaps because the victim has turned to Childline in the UK, or another helpline for support, and protocols have kicked in to inform their school.

A rise in cases

Charities and Internet watchdogs are reporting an alarming rise in sextortion, with the victims often being children, and boys more often targeted than girls. The number of global sextortion cases reported to the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) more than doubled in 2023, rising to 26,718 compared to 10,731 the year before.  

All age groups and genders are being targeted, but a large proportion of cases have involved male victims aged between 14-18. 91% of victims in UK sextortion cases dealt with by the Internet Watch Foundation in 2023 were male, and in the first six months of that year reports of confirmed child sexual abuse involving ‘sextortion’ surged by 257% compared with the whole of 2022.

Preventative measures: What can we do?

How can we help our children avoid these highly traumatising experiences, which can leave them psychologically scarred for life?  

Clearly, the simple first step is to build awareness and resilience through education, alerting users to this risk, raising their vigilance, and giving them the confidence to seek help if they are tricked.  

But we know that is not enough. 

Many children who have become victims have been warned of the dangers at some point, yet still unfortunately fall victim to these scams. Platforms on which these interactions take place have a clear duty of care to vulnerable users to help prevent these crimes. 

Implementation of effective age assurance

A starting point or the lightest touch approach is to (at least) check the ages of users before they can access a site and chat with others. This is especially true of unconnected strangers, as many of these criminals are adults pretending to be children. 

These age checks can be carried out in the form of age verification or age estimation solutions, of which Verifymy offers a wide range of. From an age verification perspective, we can determine an individual's age by checking government-issued IDs, name and address records via credit reference bureaus, credit cards, and mobile phone numbers. Regarding age estimation, we offer facial age estimation and more recently, our latest innovative method: age estimation using email address. 

Both age verification and age estimation methods offer privacy-preserving solutions that are careful not to retain any personally identifying information, but provide platforms with highly accurate ways to determine the age of their users online. 

Depending on the risk associated with the platform and the potential consequences of underage access, platforms may determine they need to go further and ensure that users are who they claim to be, retaining identity data as well. That may be merited for sites where the minimum age is below 18, such as dedicated dating sites, for example, where older children are allowed to use them.

Verifymy are here to help

Whether it is just an age check or a full ID confirmation, the process alone may well be an effective deterrent. However, given the alarming figures, it is hard to argue that platforms' inaction is acceptable. 

If you are an online platform, Verifymy can help with the effective implementation of these technologies. Together, we can work to eradicate online harms and safeguard children and society online. 

Is someone threatening to post nudes or sexual images of you, your child or a friend online?

Get help here: 

UK - https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/sextortion/ 

https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/report-remove/ 

USA - https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/sextortion

Australia - https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-topics/image-based-abuse/deal-with-sextortion