cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37122335
- Sexual extortion, or ‘sextortion’ scams against children and young people on the rise, with ‘hideous and callous cruelty’ used to blackmail victims.
- Boys still at particular risk as numbers surge – making up 97% of confirmed sextortion cases seen by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).
- UK’s Report Remove service, run jointly by Childline and the IWF, sees significant rise in children self-reporting nude or sexual imagery which may have got out of control online.
This feels more like politics news than technology news. Sure it’s done over social media/messaging apps, but so are plenty of things that I wouldn’t really call technology news.
I’m somewhat surprised that boys are at a much greater risk of online sexual exploitation than girls, though.
It is a cyber-enabled crime, and as such can take other forms besides digital.
Also this situation presented by the article seems to be odd. The only biggest change there was was the child protection laws and yet it’s growing faster than ever - I wonder if they provide some statistics because I might be just speculating.
The reason for this increase just doesn’t seem clear.