What Is Sextortion?
Sex-tortion or sexual harassment is that process of blackmailing / extorting in which the victims are forced against their will to perform a sexual act by someone who then threatens them by warning to expose their sexual history on public domains without consent for the financial gains. People who are at the ages of 13-18 (teenagers) have the highest chances of getting into this trap, Otherwise, every single individual may get into it. Sextortion can be done in many ways, like, webcam hacking, phishing, device hacking and etc! Sextortion sends the adolescents into the high level of agony which gets augmented day by day and hence compels them to commit suicide awfully. Sex tortion is taking the innocent lives from us every day and everywhere, all people around the world can get into this trap, people need to be aware about this. If social media has helped us a lot, it has helped the scammers as well. Social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter etc are the most capable and productive tools for the scammers.
This is how the scam takes places!
Sextortion takes place when an individual receives a message from strange girl in sight but a gang of scammers in real. Both gets into the deep conversation which leads to the friendship among them and tardily the friendship turns into relationships, that girl named account of scammers traps the boy patiently and asks him if he can introduce his close friends and relatives to her, boy being innocent introduces her with everyone. Suddenly she seduces the boy with some nude pictures, After looking at the nude stuff, eventually they start to video call ( nude video calls).where scammers present a gorgeous lady who seems real in sight of victims. The girl named account then takes the screen recordings of their nude video chats along with the boy’s face. And this is where the sextortion commences.
Now after a while, they call and demand him to transfer some cash to their account otherwise the nude history of him will be sent to his relatives and friends. His respect among his relatives will be deteriorated, threatening the young lad in every possible way. To save himself, he sends them the cash as much as they asked for! After that the scammers may keep quiet for some days and then they may call that boy again and demand for the more money. This process never ends until the life of that young and innocent boy ends up. The second most common way of sextortion that the scammers use is, they send some phishing links to their victims, this works if the victim clicks on the link only! After clicking the link there opens a tab which asks people to give them the access into their Mobile phone, if the victim does so then scammers will get access into his phone that’s how the scammers can get the personal information about the owner of that device (Mobile phone) including his pictures which then gets edited in the nude way and the further process is the same. To save himself an individual thinks of no other options but ‘suicide’, even after spoiling scammers pockets with money! The worst thing about sextortion is that the power of extorters is usually enhanced by the silence and the shyness of the victim. Many young lads died after falling prey to sextortion on social media platforms! It’s an emerging threat which is running in our society, it must be stopped otherwise it will stop our nation from developing. The number of extortion cases using nude pictures till the end of July 2021, was 134. By August 17, the number of those cases had reached 171, according to the cybercrime cell officials. The total number of cybercrime cases has gone up in the past few years with 7,795 in 2019, 14,950 in 2020 and over 11,000 so far in 2021. With that, the number of cases in all three major categories and 65 sub-categories has gone up.
“There is not even a single female victim in any of these recorded cases. They are all men. And the amounts extorted from them are in the bracket of ?2,000-5,000 or a few more,” said senior police inspector Dagdu Hake of Cyber police station of Pune city police. Police have also launched the toll free numbers in order to ease the detection process of the fraudsters.
How to avoid?
People must secure their social media accounts, and shouldn’t click on the unwanted links in their mailbox sent by some strangers. And if you are the victim of sextortion then don’t pay what they demand, go to police, file a case and yes don’t delete anything, explain the whole story to the police officer. If ever you receive the video calls from the suspected person then don’t pick it up just block. Don’t allow the untrustworthy app to access your phones file managers etc.
Don’t share your OTP’s and passwords with anyone, and choose strong passwords to secure your privacy. If you believe that you are a victim of sextortion or know someone else who is, call your local police officer. It should be elusive for the fraudsters to scam the innocent people. Don’t forget to take the following steps;Cover the cameras of your devices, including computers and webcams, with the help of tapes, stickers, or with your thumb. Set all of your social media accounts to private. Never log on to online dating sites. Most of the sextortion cases popped up among those who logged in to online dating sites. Never ever send compromising images of yourself to anyone. And most of all, do not take to desperation and think of ending your life.
Watch every step you take!