In the US, Instagram Sextortionist are on the hunt and now a new case shows that an Instagram Sextortionist tricked 30 boys to share their intimate photos and then blackmailed them to pay some money or else they will leak those photos. Because of this fear, one of the boys even took his life.
This is starting to increase nowadays and these people force young minds to share their nude pictures with them so they can ask for money and blackmail them with those pictures. A case was reported in California that a young teenage boy gave about $1,500 to these blackmailers and then took his life.
FBI also reported that this group of extortionists has been going on since May of 2021 and their identity is still not known. The family of the 18 years boy also fell victim to it and this group is good at persuading payments from the victims. They are also good at hacking Instagram accounts and in some cases, they asked the boys to hand over their passwords too so they can stop sharing their photos continuously. Victims also told the FBI that they have tried hard to get their accounts back but all in vain.
The reports show that there may be more than two hundred victims of this blackmailing and the FBI is still trying to locate this group. FBI also reported that there has been a huge increase in sextortion after the pandemic. The reason is that during covid-19, people started working and spending more of their time online. So far, 50 cases have been reported in 2022 in the Atlanta Office. Even Canada's tip line for child exploitation told Forbes that they have received about 500 complaints about child sextortion in the last month.
The prominent target of these Sextortionist are teenage boys between the ages of 14 to 17. From 2013-2017, most of the cases of sextortion included female children but now it has become the opposite and teenage boys are the victims now. Now, after all these cases, tech giants should focus on giving children detailed security and parental control over who is using social media apps. Meta and Snapchat are already taking many measures to give protection to their teen users. But the predictions are that this sextortion is only going to increase from now on.
Read next: New Warning Issued Against Google Chrome’s ‘Internet Download Manager’ Which Has Received 200,000+ Downloads
This is starting to increase nowadays and these people force young minds to share their nude pictures with them so they can ask for money and blackmail them with those pictures. A case was reported in California that a young teenage boy gave about $1,500 to these blackmailers and then took his life.
FBI also reported that this group of extortionists has been going on since May of 2021 and their identity is still not known. The family of the 18 years boy also fell victim to it and this group is good at persuading payments from the victims. They are also good at hacking Instagram accounts and in some cases, they asked the boys to hand over their passwords too so they can stop sharing their photos continuously. Victims also told the FBI that they have tried hard to get their accounts back but all in vain.
The reports show that there may be more than two hundred victims of this blackmailing and the FBI is still trying to locate this group. FBI also reported that there has been a huge increase in sextortion after the pandemic. The reason is that during covid-19, people started working and spending more of their time online. So far, 50 cases have been reported in 2022 in the Atlanta Office. Even Canada's tip line for child exploitation told Forbes that they have received about 500 complaints about child sextortion in the last month.
The prominent target of these Sextortionist are teenage boys between the ages of 14 to 17. From 2013-2017, most of the cases of sextortion included female children but now it has become the opposite and teenage boys are the victims now. Now, after all these cases, tech giants should focus on giving children detailed security and parental control over who is using social media apps. Meta and Snapchat are already taking many measures to give protection to their teen users. But the predictions are that this sextortion is only going to increase from now on.
Read next: New Warning Issued Against Google Chrome’s ‘Internet Download Manager’ Which Has Received 200,000+ Downloads
