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Tag: Sextortion

  • Local university warning students of sextortion incidents reported on campus

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    A local university is warning its students about reports of sextortion incidents occurring on campus.

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    The University of Dayton shared in a campus-wide email on Wednesday that the UD Department of Public Safety is investigating two reports of stalking via sextortion that occurred on Tuesday, Sept. 9, in Stuart Hall, a first-year dormitory on campus.

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    Sextortion is a form of sexual exploitation that is typically carried out through social media apps and online games, according to the university.

    University officials said that the reported incidents followed the “typical pattern of sextortion,” where students receive a request on social media or a game platform to add someone they do not personally know.

    “Those who engage in sextortion adopt a fake persona that would be attractive to the potential victim to increase the likelihood of being added as a friend,” the email to students said. “Once added, the sextortionist will chat with the potential victim and eventually ask to exchange explicit images.”

    If the victim sends the images, the sextortionist then threatens to send the images to others, typically the victim’s followers/friends, administrators at their university, their employer, or family members, unless the victim sends the sextortionist money.

    Stalking via sextortion refers to situations where the offender’s threats or demands escalate to ongoing harassment, monitoring, or intimidation online, creating a persistent sense of fear or pressure for the victim.

    “It is not uncommon for the sextortionist to use publicly available information to threaten the victim,” the email said.

    The university is asking anyone with information about the reported incidents or those who have experienced similar incidents to contact the UD Department of Public Safety at 937-229-2121.

    You can find more information about sextortion here.

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  • Sextortion scams run by Nigerian criminals are targeting American men, Meta says

    Sextortion scams run by Nigerian criminals are targeting American men, Meta says

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    FBI warns parents as sextortion cases involving minors surge


    FBI warns parents as sextortion cases involving minors surge

    02:44

    So-called sextortion scams are on the rise, with criminals from Nigeria frequently targeting adult men in the U.S., according to social media giant Meta. 

    Meta on Wednesday said it has removed about 63,000 accounts from Nigeria that had been attempting to target people with financial sextortion scams. In such scams, criminals pretend to be someone else, typically an attractive woman, in an attempt to trick potential victims into sending nude photos of themselves. Upon receiving nude pics, the scammer then threatens to release the photos unless the sender pays up. 

    Meta’s crackdown on sextortion has included the removal of 200 Facebook pages and 5,700 Facebook groups, all from Nigeria, that were providing tips for conducting such scams, such as scripts for talking with victims. The groups also included links to collections of photos that scammers could use when making fake accounts to catfish victims, Meta said. 

    Meta is also testing new technology that could steer victims away from falling for sextortion scams, such as a new auto-blur feature in Instagram DMs that will blur images if nudity is detected, the company said. 

    “First of all, this goes without saying that financial sextortion is a horrific crime and can have devastating consequences,” said Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, in a call with reporters. “It’s why we are particularly focused on it right now.”

    The most common platforms for sextortion scams are Instagram, owned by Meta, and Snapchat, according to a recent study from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Thorn, a nonprofit that uses technology to battle the spread of child sexual abuse material. According to the study, most sextortion scams originate from either Nigeria or Cote d’Ivoire. 

    Indiscriminate scammers

    Meta said it found that scammers are “indiscriminate,” sending requests to many individuals in order to get a few responses, Davis said. While most of the attempts were sent to adult men in the U.S., Meta did see some scammers trying to reach teens, she added. 

    Some of the Facebook accounts, pages and groups removed by Meta were run by the Yahoo Boys, a loose federation of scammers that operate in Nigeria, Davis said. 

    The FBI has sought to highlight the issue of financial sextortion scams targeting teenagers, with the agency noting that at least 20 children who were victims of these scams had died by suicide. Many victims feel fear, embarrassment and concerns about long-term consequences, according to the Thorn and NCMEC report. 

    Social media users should be cautious if an account with a “very stylized, especially good-looking” photo reaches out to them or asks to exchange messages, Davis said. “If you have never been messaged by this person before, that should give you pause,” she added.

    “If somebody sends you an image first, that is often to try to bait you to send an image second, or try to gain trust and build trust,” Davis noted. “This is one of those areas where if you have any suspicion, I would urge caution.”

    Social media users should also look at their privacy settings for messaging, she recommended. For instance, people can control their Facebook Messenger settings to filter the people from whom they can receive messages, such as blocking people other than their Facebook friends. 

    Aimee Picchi

    Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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  • Snapchat is rolling out new safety tools aimed at protecting teens from sextortion

    Snapchat is rolling out new safety tools aimed at protecting teens from sextortion

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    Snapchat is working to make it harder for teenagers to be contacted on the app by people they don’t know, its latest effort to stop the sexual and financial exploitation scam known as sextortion.The company on Tuesday announced a set of new safety features, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don’t share mutual friends with or have in their contacts. Now, teens will also receive a warning message if they receive a chat from a user who has been blocked or reported by others or who is from a region where the teen’s other contacts aren’t located, “signs that the person may be a scammer,” Snapchat said in a blog post Tuesday.Related video above: FBI warns of growing sextortion threat targeting young peopleAnd Snapchat will now prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from an account that they don’t share mutual friends with that is also located in regions often associated with scammers.In addition to expanding Snapchat’s broader suite of youth safety measures, the new features are aimed specifically at preventing financial sextortion, a worrying and growing type of scam across social media where bad actors gain the trust of young users, convince them to send sexual or explicit photos and then demand payment in exchange for keeping the pictures a secret.”These features were designed to better protect teens from potential online harms and to enhance the real-friend connections that make Snapchat so unique,” Snap’s Global Head of Platform Safety Jacqueline Beauchere said in an exclusive statement to CNN ahead of the announcement.Video below: FBI agent shares tips for parents to prevent sextortionLaw enforcement officials have in recent years warned of an uptick in online sextortion scams, in which bad actors, typically located overseas, target children and teens, often with profiles that appear to belong to friendly fellow teenagers. In some cases, sextortion has resulted in suicides.Meta in April also announced new features aimed at combating sextortion, including informing users when they’ve interacted with someone who engaged in financial sextortion. And the chief executives of Meta and Snap, along with other social media leaders, were called to testify earlier this year in a Senate subcommittee hearing about their efforts to protect young people from online exploitation.Also among Snapchat’s announcements on Tuesday are improvements to the app’s blocking tools, which will prevent users from simply creating new accounts to get around a block. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also automatically be blocked.Snapchat is also introducing more frequent reminders to all users, including teens, about their location settings on the app’s “Snap Map” feature, which is toggled off by default but which users can update to share their location live with friends. The company said it will make it possible for users to update their location settings, remove their location from the map and customize which friends they share their location with – all in one spot on the app.The updates build on Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users, and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content.Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site.

    Snapchat is working to make it harder for teenagers to be contacted on the app by people they don’t know, its latest effort to stop the sexual and financial exploitation scam known as sextortion.

    The company on Tuesday announced a set of new safety features, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don’t share mutual friends with or have in their contacts. Now, teens will also receive a warning message if they receive a chat from a user who has been blocked or reported by others or who is from a region where the teen’s other contacts aren’t located, “signs that the person may be a scammer,” Snapchat said in a blog post Tuesday.

    Related video above: FBI warns of growing sextortion threat targeting young people

    And Snapchat will now prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from an account that they don’t share mutual friends with that is also located in regions often associated with scammers.

    In addition to expanding Snapchat’s broader suite of youth safety measures, the new features are aimed specifically at preventing financial sextortion, a worrying and growing type of scam across social media where bad actors gain the trust of young users, convince them to send sexual or explicit photos and then demand payment in exchange for keeping the pictures a secret.

    “These features were designed to better protect teens from potential online harms and to enhance the real-friend connections that make Snapchat so unique,” Snap’s Global Head of Platform Safety Jacqueline Beauchere said in an exclusive statement to CNN ahead of the announcement.

    Video below: FBI agent shares tips for parents to prevent sextortion

    Law enforcement officials have in recent years warned of an uptick in online sextortion scams, in which bad actors, typically located overseas, target children and teens, often with profiles that appear to belong to friendly fellow teenagers. In some cases, sextortion has resulted in suicides.

    Meta in April also announced new features aimed at combating sextortion, including informing users when they’ve interacted with someone who engaged in financial sextortion. And the chief executives of Meta and Snap, along with other social media leaders, were called to testify earlier this year in a Senate subcommittee hearing about their efforts to protect young people from online exploitation.

    Also among Snapchat’s announcements on Tuesday are improvements to the app’s blocking tools, which will prevent users from simply creating new accounts to get around a block. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also automatically be blocked.

    Snapchat is also introducing more frequent reminders to all users, including teens, about their location settings on the app’s “Snap Map” feature, which is toggled off by default but which users can update to share their location live with friends. The company said it will make it possible for users to update their location settings, remove their location from the map and customize which friends they share their location with – all in one spot on the app.

    The updates build on Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users, and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content.

    Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site.

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  • Family of teen who died by suicide warns of dangers of financial sextortion

    Family of teen who died by suicide warns of dangers of financial sextortion

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    Washington — James Woods, a 17-year-old college-bound track star, had just gotten his driver’s license and posed for his senior yearbook photo when an online predator targeted him on Instagram. 

    James received 200 messages in less than 20 hours, according to his mother, Tamia Woods.   

    “It ranged anywhere from ‘I own you,’ to ‘you need to take your own life,’” Woods told CBS News. 

    The FBI calls what happened to James financial sextortion.

    “Any child can be a victim of this crime,” said Abbigail Beccaccio, unit chief for the FBI Child Exploitation Unit. 

    It consists of minors being coerced into sharing compromised images of themselves by criminals who are often working together overseas. The coercion can take place on gaming and video-streaming platforms, or instant messaging apps.

    “This is a predator that is solely interested in financial gain,” Beccaccio said.

    Children, some as young as 9 years old, are told to send money, or the photos will be posted online.    

    From October 2021 through March 2023, the FBI tracked roughly 12,600 sextortion victims — all of them minors. Since 2021, at least 20 children who were victims of sextortion have died by suicide, according to the FBI, including James Woods.

    “The most horrible phone call I’ve received, that my only child, my blessing…is no longer here,” Tamia Woods said.

    The FBI is trying to warn parents and encourage victims to break their silence. In December 2022, the FBI issued an alert about what it described as a “staggering” sextortion scam that had targeted more than 3,000 boys.

    That scam typically involved someone posing as a woman using a fake account and enticing the victim into sending explicit material, which the scammer then threatened to release unless the victim sent money or gift card codes.

    Beccaccio emphasizes that tips from the public are essential to helping the FBI take action.

    “That’s the intelligence, that’s the information that we have that makes law enforcement have the ability to act,” Beccaccio said.        

    The Woods family is working to shatter the stigma by sharing their story.

    “You know, he was my only child,” Tamia Woods said. “And so I have to live through my memories, and that’s all I have now, are memories.”

    The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children advises parents and children to seek assistance before deciding whether to pay the extortioners.

    “Block the suspect but DO NOT DELETE your profile or messages because that can be helpful in stopping the blackmailer,” the center advises.

    If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.

    For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.

    Nicole Sganga

    CBS News reporter covering homeland security and justice.

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