Child sexual extortion cases in the UK soar
www.iwf.org.uk
Charities warn threat of sexual extortion (or sextortion) against children ‘not diminishing’ as new data show sextortion cases soar 72% in a year.

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.
  • 3dcadminAEnglish
    2·
    23 hours ago

    They do not need to be sexual abusive material, they find easily scraped images and then use AI to make the sexually abusive or pornographic to then blackmail the child/children and their parents. For instance, a case 2 weeks back, young mother shared images of her kids, not sexual but a few in swimsuits when they were young. These were then doctored and sent to this girl who is now older to blackmail her and then on to her mother in an attempt to blackmail her as well. The pictures were shared with a lack of understanding of privacy at the time so anyone could see them. Police struggling to find out who is blackmailing the person, and struggling to find a reason to actually investigate as they say it is a likeness of the person not the actual person and it was shared to the world years ago meaning permission was given (ie the picture was allowed to be shared at the time). Now of course I am not revealing any info as it is a current police investigation and that would be illegal but it appears to be going nowhere yet is disturbing to the kid and the mother