OPINION: Sextortion: A trending malicious digital crime

Akeem Alao

A new tactic blackmailers employ to blackmail or sexually molest innocent famales is sextortion.

Wikipedia defines sextortion as a non-physical form of coercion to extort sexual favours from the victim.

It adds that “Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.

This malicious crime involves extorting victims. They are threatened to share their sexually explicit images or videos — nudity

𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙎𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙊𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚

The sextorter operates by threatening to share images, videos, or information about the victim’s sexual lifestyle except the victim pays up or engages in more sexual acts.

They will threaten to share the sexual content with the victim’s family, colleagues, friends, and other acquaintances. Not only that, but they also threaten to upload content to a large (pornographic) online platform.

Most times, sextorters successfully create fear in the victim.

The truth is that, sometimes, the perpetrators do not have any sensitive videos or images of their victims, but use fear as a motivator.

𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙎𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝘽𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙨

Nathaniel Daniel reports that extorters could engage their prospective victims in sexually explicit chats to get them to send images of themselves.

It might be perpetrated by taking control of the victim’s webcam, Daniel said.

“This often happens without their knowledge.”

A sextorter might do this by tricking the victim into downloading a file that contains malware.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that a Santa Ana man was sentenced today to 72 months.

𝙊𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚

The report states that he hacked into dozens of computers to obtain personal data and in some cases demanded sexually explicit videos from female victims in exchange for not distributing other images.

He obtained explicit content from many of his hundreds of victims, the FBI said.

Sextorters also threaten and force the victim to perform sexual acts in front of their webcam. This strategy is usually used to obtain further material after initial blackmail.

Sextortion is becoming a celebrated digital crime across the globe. It is a crime that affects many people—males, females, minors, and adults. Victims of this crime are often silent about it because victims are too embarrassed.

In July 2018, the FBI received 13,000 more sextortion complaints than it had in the previous month.

In the UK, more than 1,300 cases were reported in 2017, three times the number in 2015. Plus, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg given that so many cases go unreported.

Sextortion can be avoided.

Doing a thorough background check before accepting a friendship on social media is one of the ways to escape being a victim.

Sextorters create fake identities. One has to dig deeper to find out more about the identity of the person one is talking to.

Not only this, it is advisable to use different passwords for different accounts to minimize the chances of hacking.