Australia’s online safety regulator received more than 3,300 reports of sexual extortion last year, with young men the most targeted group.
Sexual extortion or ‘sextortion’ is a form of online blackmail and sexual abuse.
New data from eSafety shows 86% of sextortion reports were from male victims, and nearly half of all reports were from men aged 18 to 24.
Experts warn the crime is growing rapidly in scale and sophistication, partly due to generative AI.
The watchdog said it’s now “turning the tables” by using AI for a new campaign.
Context
Sextortion is a form of online blackmail.
Scammers target victims on social media and dating apps before tricking or coercing them into sending sexual images.
Offenders then threaten to share this content unless their demands are met. Demands can be for money or more graphic content.
Scammers also search victims’ social media accounts to identify family and friends who “they can threaten to contact with the victim’s intimate images,” eSafety said.
Victims
The watchdog said international students were among the first to be targeted during the online-learning days of the pandemic.
These students, who may be from wealthy backgrounds, are particularly vulnerable to scammers.
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“They may not understand [local] dating conventions. They’re away from home,” Inman Grant said.
Since then, eSafety has tracked a “huge spike” in financial sextortion. The AI boom has led to more sophisticated scams, and a wider pool of victims.
AI tactics
eSafety has adopted the same techniques being used by scammers for its new education campaign: ‘If sextortionists were honest.’
It’s hoping to raise awareness through a series of AI-generated images and videos mimicking common sextortion scams.
Inman Grant said the idea was to make the ads “realistic enough” to encourage young people to question themselves, and “hone those critical reasoning skills”.
“We want them questioning everything.“
Warning signs
First contact with a sextortionist usually occurs on Tinder, Instagram, and Grindr, reports to eSafety show. Blackmailers then move the chat to messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.
Scammers use tactics like ‘phone number spoofing’ to make overseas calls or messages look like they’re coming from an Australian number.
Once a victim has shared an explicit image with a scammer, they’re subjected to threatening messages and demands for money, “including countdown tactics, to manufacture fear and urgency,” eSafety warned.
1800 RESPECT: 1800 737 732
