Sextortion… How to Navigate It and Deter Further Attempts

Sextortion victims often feel there is no way out of their predicament. Many have had their bank accounts drained, and some have even suffered such distress that they’ve taken their own lives.

If you or someone you love has been targeted for sextortion, don’t despair. Even if you’ve made some initial mistakes, you can navigate your way out of this.

Read on for The Daily Muck’s deep dive into the emerging sextortion scams, which includes what you need to know to stop sextortionists and prevent them from targeting you in the future.

Sextortion– What it Is

Sextortion is a new word, a combination of the words “sex” and “extortion.”

There are many different variations of sextortion, but the FBI’s definition is simple yet comprehensive.

“Sextortion is a serious crime that occurs when someone threatens to distribute your private and sensitive material if you don’t provide them images of a sexual nature, sexual favors, or money.”

Basically, sextortion refers to an attempt by a criminal to blackmail you based on sexual or illicit material. It can be videos surreptitiously taken during a steamy chat, hacked personal photos, photoshopped or AI images, and more.

Sextortion is a relatively new, rapidly increasing crime. In 2023, reports of sextortion in the United States increased by roughly 150%, according to data gathered by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Scammers employ a variety of techniques to scare their targets into paying money. Once the victims pay up, sextortionists return for more, often multiple times.

The History of Sextortion

Bad actors have been blackmailing people with their sexual images for as long as cameras have existed– probably even before that, using letters.

The oldest known use of the term “sextortion” was used in a Los Angeles Times headline in 1950.

While sexually-based extortion is nothing new, what is novel is the reach these scams can take with the rise of the Internet and social media.

Sextortion Techniques

Revenge Porn

Revenge porn, also known as non-consensual pornography, can refer to the sharing of any intimate image without your consent, according to an article by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Revenge porn can be used with or without extortion. Sometimes, a former partner will use revenge porn to get back an ex.

Criminals may also use revenge porn to sexually coerce their victims.

Webcam Blackmail

Scammers often solicit their marks for webcam cybersex. Even when victims don’t think these sessions can be recorded, sextortionists use a variety of techniques to capture images and videos of sessions.

Webcam blackmail occurs when scammers threaten to publicly release these images, which often include images of victims masturbating unless their victim agrees to pay money.

Webcam blackmail is often used in financially motivated sextortion attempts.

Phishing Emails

If you go back far enough in your junk or spam mail folders, you’ll probably find at least one email attempting to sextort you. (Note: we aren’t recommending that you open these emails, which have often been flagged by email administrators for harmful content.)

These messages might contain some version of the following:

Hi,

I hacked your computer and now have full control of all your devices. I was able to do this via spyware that infected your computer after you visited a porn site.

Given you keep visiting these “questionable” videos and images, I can conclude you have a sick perversion. I’ve been monitoring your activity for several months on these sites.

I also have access to your microphone and webcam, even without your permission or knowledge. I can see all your confidential information, including your chats and emails. I have recorded videos, photos, and chat transcripts.

However, if you transfer $1,000 to my Bitcoin account, I will delete all the damning information and be gone from your life forever.

You have 24 hours to decide. I will know when you open this email.

If you don’t pay, I will make your disgusting private videos public. I will send them to your friends lists on all your social media accounts (yes, I have access to those too). I will send them to your family.

If you share this message with anyone, I will proceed to make your private videos public.

Have a Nice Day!

Remember: the clock is ticking.

Here, the would-be extorters are casting a wide net to see who might be vulnerable to their approach. They haven’t hacked your computer, nor do they have sensitive information on you.

If you get something like this, you can safely conclude that you received this email as part of a batch of thousands all sent from the same sextorter. The chances that the sender of this email possesses sensitive information about you are practically zero.

Like any phishing email, the best way to deal with it is to ignore it. Delete it, and go on with your life. Don’t click on suspicious emails in junk mail folders. And if it hasn’t already been flagged as junk or spam, make sure you do so to help your site administrator block this account from targeting others.

Social Engineering

Scammers can use Internet searches to gather a wealth of information on their targets. This can result in another form of phishing, sometimes known as spear-phishing. Instead of casting a wide net with generic emails, fraudsters may use publicly available information to make their approach to you more targeted.

They could use a favorite hobby or sports team to find common ground and use that to initiate a conversation with you in an anonymous chat room. They also might reference your workplace or neighborhood to attempt to initiate a relationship with you.

Be aware of these techniques when a stranger approaches you on the Internet. Avoid giving people further personal information until you verify their identity and can be sure they aren’t using it to scam you.

Photoshop, AI, and Deep Fakes

In some cases, sextortionists don’t need authentic sexually explicit material to extort you– sometimes, they make it up. This is why literally anyone can be an intended victim of a sextortion attempt.

They can use Photoshop to manipulate an existing image of you to make it sexually explicit. Scammers may also use new artificial intelligence (AI) to generate so-called deep fakes, which refer to fabricated images that look real.

Sextortion Effects

Whether successful or not, sextortion and attempted sextortion can cause significant ill effects on sextortion victims.

Financial Losses

How many millions of dollars have people lost to sextortionists?

It’s difficult to say for sure since many sextortion crimes are not reported. Last year, Internet scams as a whole resulted in an estimated $12.5 billion in losses, a rise of 22% over the previous year, according to a report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Of those scams, sextortions represent a sizeable chunk, up to 10% of the total, according to the report.

Sexual Exploitation

Sometimes sextortionists aren’t after money. Instead, they attempt to coerce victims into providing sexual imagery or even sexual activity.

Coercion like this is a form of sexual assault.

Each year an average of 433,648 people are sexually assaulted in the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Sextortion was a precursor to many of these assaults.

Mental Health Effects

As with other crimes, sextortion victims often suffer shame, depression and other mental health effects. This has caused several notable suicides, especially among young people who may not have the resources or life experience to navigate their way out of the scam, as reported in this Daily Muck feature article.

Sextortion– Who Does It

Sextortionists often fabricate digital personas to carry out their dirty work. A sextortion target might not realize the 20-year-old woman he thinks he’s talking to is actually a 45-year-old man.

Sextortion is a borderless crime. Sextortion fraudsters often pretend to be in the U.S., but frequently, they commit their scams from overseas, such as this case where scammers from Côte d’Ivoire targeted young men in the United States, as previously reported in The Daily Muck.

Because of spoofing and other digital hiding techniques, Sextortionists can mask their locations, appearing to be from anywhere.

Sextortion doesn’t land people in prison, sometimes it is committed by criminals while they are in prison, as previously reported in The Daily Muck.

Sextortion– Who are the Targets

Who do fraudsters target for sextortion?

Virtually anyone can be targeted for sextortion, even people who don’t visit dating sites or engage in explicit activity online.

Criminals may hack apps, devices, and social media accounts of people to get access to their sensitive material. And, as mentioned before, in the cases they can’t find it, they can Photoshop
or generate AI images to use in attempted sextortion. That’s why sextortion is a crime that can potentially affect anyone.

That said, certain demographics may be more vulnerable to sextortion attempts than others. And fraudsters may use different techniques on different populations.

Males

Financial sextortions typically target males between 14 and 17, according to the FBI. Financial extortion fraudsters threaten to release sexually explicit material unless their victims pay them not to.

When targeting teenage boys, scammers often create or steal personas to make it seem that they are teenage girls.

Females

While most sextortion targets are male, a significant portion are female. While males are typically targeted for financial sextortion, women and girls represent 90% of revenge porn cases, according to Cyber Rights Organization, which works to protect people from online exploitation.

Much of the time, revenge porn is, as its name suggests, a way former partners have of hurting people with whom they no longer have a relationship.

In the context of sextortion, the threat of releasing revenge porn can be a means of trying to force someone to stay in a relationship or sexual coercion.

Underage Targets

Underage targets of sextortion are of special concern since child porn rings often use sextortion to get explicit images of children, some of which have been as young as seven.

In March, a Hawaii man pled guilty to a long-term scam in which he sextorted a 14-year-old, according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Missouri.

Gerardo Javier Montes pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography on March 28, 2024 after contacting a girl on Reddit and tricking her into providing nude images of herself. He threatened to release those images unless she sent him more. He even attempted to coerce her into providing sexual images of herself with a dog.

In the fifteen-month period ending in March 2023, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received reports of sextortions targeting more than 12,600 underage victims in the United States, according to an FBI report.

Of those victims, at least 20 committed suicide due to the sextortion, according to the report.

LGBTQ+

Some sextortionists specifically target members of LGBTQ+ communities, who may be vulnerable to blackmail attempts because of fear surrounding the exposure of their sexuality or sensitive photos.

In May, Omoruyi O. Uwadiae pleaded guilty to 22 crimes relating to dozens of gay men prosecutors say he sextorted for money and sexual favors. He found some of his victims on Grindr, a gay dating app.

Uwadiae posted images of his victims on social media sites and sent them to their families, many of whom had not disclosed their sexual orientation to their families.

Military Members

Sextortionists have also specifically targeted military members. By 2019, sextortionists had victimized a known 560 army soldiers, who had paid blackmail exceeding $560,000, according to an article on the army’s official website.

Fraudsters might target military members because of their access to sensitive information, according to a 2019 warning posted by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

The military also has a high percentage of young males who are away from home and have a steady income. Since the military holds its members to high personal conduct standards, scammers might believe them especially vulnerable to blackmail and extortion, said the DoD in its warning.

The DoD advises servicemembers to avoid disclosing their military and unit affiliation when interacting with unknown people on the Internet, as well as to follow standard safe Internet use protocols.

Sextortion Scams: What Sites Do They Use?

In a word, any and all of them. From gaming platforms to social media apps to dating sites, sextortionists can target you from anywhere.

Instagram

People committing sextortion have used Instagram to approach people and suss out their friends lists. They have also recorded cybersex sessions taking place via Instagram’s video calling feature.

Fortunately, Instagram has a host of ways for users to protect themselves, including by making profiles private, hiding friends lists, and more.

In April 2024, Instagram rolled out new features in the face of rising sextortion complaints. These include taking steps to stop potential sextortion attempts from ever reaching intended victims and introducing a nudity protection feature.

This new feature blurs incoming nude images, allowing users to delete them before seeing them. When people try to send nude images, a popup menu asks users to reconsider, reminding them that people can take screenshots of their sensitive images without their consent.

Facebook

As with Instagram, Facebook users have been targeted through messaging features and their friends lists.

Meta, the corporation that owns both Facebook and Instagram, worked with other tech companies to create Lantern, a service that facilitates sharing cyber threats among different companies that violate child safety policies.

Dating Sites

Scammers often create profiles on dating websites for the purpose of finding people to sexually extort.

After initial contact via the dating site, the scammer often requests to move the conversation to a video call or messaging site for further contact, which might involve cybersex or the exchange of intimate images, messages, or videos.

Sextortion– What Not to Do

For a sextortion to work, scammers rely on victims making mistakes.

Here’s what not to do when being targeted by a sextortionist.

Engage

The number one thing not to do when you’ve recognized a sextortion is to engage with them. Sextortion networks run their scams on batches of intended victims at a time.

The mere act of answering a message might encourage them to believe you could be susceptible to their approach.

Even if you’ve already engaged with someone attempting to sextort you, it is never too late to walk away. Simply don’t engage further by responding to any of their messages.

Pay Money

Extortionists demand payment in the form of cryptocurrency, gift cards, wire transfers, and mobile payment services.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP) analyzed posts on r/Sextortion, a Reddit thread where users discuss sextortion attempts. The most popular payment methods used by financial sextorters were (in order) PayPal, gift cards, cryptocurrency, and Cash App, according to the CCCP report.

Paying money to people who extort you is a bad idea. It only tells them that you are willing to pay, and extortionists rarely walk away after successfully conning you once.

Don’t pay blackmailers. Paying them only encourages them to continue pursuing their criminal enterprise, and that includes coming after you.

It’s never too late to stop paying them. If you’ve already paid them once, don’t pay them again.

Erase Messages

While authorities recommend you block would-be extorters right away, don’t delete the messages you’ve already received.

These can help investigators stop further acts of sextortion and bring the scammers to justice.

Be Calm

Scammers want to amplify your anxiety. There is usually a time crunch element– the scammer tries to convince you that you must act within a certain amount of time, or they will carry out their threats. When rushed, you are more likely to be anxious and, therefore, more likely to fall for their scams.

And as we already know, paying an extortionist only leads to more extortion. Once a scammer knows you are willing to pay once, they will expend every energy and effort to make you pay again. And again. And again.

Remain calm, ignore deadlines, and don’t pay.

Protect Your Personal Information

When talking online, be aware that scammers can use even innocuous pieces of information to target you.

The less you reveal about your personal life when talking to a stranger and the fewer details you make publicly available on your social media accounts, the harder it will be for a scammer to find information that could be used to socially engineer you.

Keep your social media accounts tight. Consider making your profiles and friends lists private. It’s never too late to protect your personal information from falling into the hands of scammers.

Block

The most effective way to make a sextortionist forget about you is by blocking them right away. Cross them out of your life forever. Most social meda and gaming apps have a means of doing this by pressing one easy button.

As discussed, once you indicate you aren’t going to pay them, they will usually not carry out their threats since that would be a waste of time and resources. Instead, they move on to their next intended victims.

The quicker you block the extortionist, the quicker they will lose interest in you.

Report

Report attempted extortions. This can deter them from targeting you and others. There are a variety of ways to report sextortion attempts, some of which are anonymous.

You can report sextortion to your local FBI field office by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is another place where you can report attempted sextortion. IC3 is also run by the FBI, which is the lead agency in the United States for cybercrime investigations. Report to IC3 here.

If the sextortion you are reporting involves someone underage, you can also report the crime to NCMEC’s cybertips.

“Take It Down”

If you are under the age of 18 or someone has distributed sensitive photos from when you were underage, NCMEC will scrub these from the Internet for you via Take It Down, a free service.

Using digital fingerprints, Take It Down can remove and prevent further distribution of these images.

Stop NCII

NCII stands for non-consensual intimate image, which can refer to nudes, semi-nudes, or images of sexual activity posted or exchanged online without your consent.

While Take It Down helps people scrub underage images from the Internet, StopNCII.org is a free tool for adults.

StopNCII.org is a charitable organization that works with partners around the world to scrub these images. They boast a success rate of more than 90%, according to their website.

Recover from Sextortion Information Card

Report Sextortion Attempts

• IC3: ic3.gov/Home/ComplaintChoice
  FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI, tips.fbi.gov
  NCMEC: missingkids.org/gethelpnow/cybertipline
  Federal Trade Commission (FTC): https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/assistant
  Cyber Civil Rights Initiative’s crisis hotline: 1-844-878-CCRI (2274).

Scrubbing Sensitive Images from the Internet

• Under 18: takeitdown.ncmec.org
  Over 18: StopNCII.org

Sextortion– Examples

Sextortion can present itself in a number of different ways.

The following stories are fictionalized, but we created them based on details as reported by real-life victims of sextortion.

They are intended to help you recognize and ultimately thwart attempted sextortion attempts.

In each of the example stories, the targets successfully navigated the sextortion attempt.

By following our guidelines, you can, too, even if you’ve made some initial mistakes.

Samson, Male, 16

Samson, a 16-year-old male, receives a friend request on Facebook. Samson doesn’t recognize her name, but the profile belongs to an attractive girl of the same age.

The girl finds him attractive, too. Or so she says. She requests that they move their conversation to WhatsApp, so Samson gives her his number. They text back and forth, getting to know each other in a matter of only a few hours. She sends him a nude photo of herself. She encourages Samson to do the same.

Next thing he knows, the girl turns out to be a guy who begins to extort Samson for money, threatening to send his intimate photos to everyone on his Facebook list, including his mom unless Samson pays up.

Samson panics. He pays the extorter $200 via Cash App. The man initially agrees to leave him alone and delete the explicit images, but a week later, the man contacts Samson again, threatening to leak the photos unless Samson pays him $500. Samson doesn’t have the money.

Samson realizes he made a mistake by paying the man in the first place and is determined not to make the same mistake twice. Though embarrassed, Samson tells his parents what happened. They don’t react nearly as badly as he expected they would, and they guide him through his next steps.

Samson blocks the offending profile on Facebook and WhatsApp, and he never hears from the man again. But just in case, he reports all the profiles associated with the sextortion to the site admins of Facebook and WhatsApp, and he files a complaint through IC3.

He has also opens a case with Take It Down to help prevent the distribution of his images on the Internet.

Luke, Male, 19

Luke exercises good Internet security… mostly. He keeps his social media profiles private, and his friends lists invisible.

He’s pretty savvy when it comes to Internet security, and he has an awareness of how sextortion scams work. In short, he believes he is impervious to falling for one of these scams.

One night he meets a woman on a chat site who expresses interest in him. She convinces him to meet on Discord for a video session. Thinking he is adequately protecting himself, he sets up a new Discord account using an anonymous email. He does not use his real name or details when setting up the account.

On Discord, he and the woman engage in video cybersex. When it is over, she demands payment of $1,000 via PayPal. Otherwise, she will distribute images she had of Luke’s genitals and his face.

But what could she do with the information? She doesn’t even know Luke’s name. Nor does she have access to his social media friends lists.

Nevertheless, she threatens to publicize Luke’s intimate images across the Internet unless he pays up. Luke blocks and reports her, refusing to engage further. Still, he worries that she will carry through with her threat there were videos of him out there somewhere on the Internet.

He makes an anonymous post about this in r/Sextortion, a Reddit forum where victims of sextortion meet to discuss their experiences. The unanimous consensus among them is that the scammer likely won’t carry through with her threat since there was no money in doing so. It would have been a waste of her time.

Luke breathes a sigh of relief.

Latifa, Female, 20

Latifa doesn’t spend much time on social media. She has accounts that she uses to keep in touch with her friends and family, but she doesn’t respond to approaches by Internet strangers.

Out of the blue, an ex-boyfriend sends a text message to her phone, inquiring if she is interested in dating him again. Latifa politely turns him down, not once, not twice, but three times.

After she rebuffs him for the third time, the ex sends her a message saying that he has kept records of their intimate time together. She didn’t know what he meant but then he started sending her photos and videos, some nudes, some showing them engaging in sexual activity. Some of these she’d known about, but others were obviously taken while she was unaware.

The ex-boyfriend promises to delete all those photos and images permanently: all Latifa has to do is sleep with him again, just one more time.

Latifa is scared. Her family is religious and conservative, and if they find out about this, it will definitely strain her relationship with them. She asks a good friend and trusted confidante what she should do.

The friend convinces her to go to the local police, assuring her they will deal with the incident discreetly. She does, and they do. Her ex-boyfriend is jailed for charges relating to blackmail and attempted sexual coercion.

Latifa goes on with her life.

Lessons Learned

The above examples are meant to demonstrate that you can deal with sexual extortion attempts, even if you’ve made some initial mistakes like paying your extorted.

It’s never too late to deny a sexual extorter the ability to disrupt your life and your sanity.

Read about The Daily Muck’s other sextortion stories here.