Meta joins forces with Instagram creators to combat teen sextortion scams

Meta’s Instagram is launching a new anti-sextortion campaign aimed at teens with the help of popular content creators – all to raise awareness and teach kids how to avoid falling victim to online scams.

The new Instagram campaign, launched on Thursday, will help teenagers to better recognize sextortion scams while helping parents understand the best way to support their kids to avoid them, Meta said.

What makes this campaign different from previous sextortion awareness efforts for teens is that Meta has enlisted some of Instagram’s most popular content creators to help drive its message.

“These creators will add their voices to the campaign by sharing educational content with their followers on Instagram,” Meta said.

Meta did not provide a list of chosen influencers, but said the sextortion campaign content sharing had begun on October 17th.

@Instagram is launching a new campaign to help teens spot sextortion scams and help parents support their teens in avoiding these scams.https://t.co/EnZDOYqKr6

undefined Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) October 17, 2024

New safety features

Along with an online visual campaign, Meta has also introduced numerous safety features to help kids stay safe from sextortion predators, who create elaborate schemes to shame and frighten their young victims for financial gain.

“Sextortion is when someone threatens to expose a sexual image or video to get you to do something, like send money,” Meta said.

The new protective measures, which will be available on all Meta apps, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Threads, allows users the ability to:

• Know if they are chatting with someone in a different country.
• Hide follower and following lists from potential sextortion scammers.
• Block someone from taking screenshots of DMs and images.
• Prevent in-app recording or opening visual content on the web.
  
• Turn on 'View once' button to prevent someone from replaying a video or reviewing an image.
• Receive warnings about receiving or sending nude images (nudity prevention feature)

Along with pop-up warnings, Meta's new nudity prevention feature will also automatically blur any images through DMs that the platform detects containing nudity. Meta says the feature was already beta-tested in April and will be rolled out globally to users in the next months.

Meta further notes that the features coincide with this month's release of Instagram's new ‘teen accounts’ for all users under 18. These accounts limit who can contact teens and the content they see, and they are also set to private by default, among other privacy measures.

Research shows extortion scammers will often use their target's Instagram 'following' and 'follower' lists to try and blackmail them.

Two major US child advocacy organizations are backing Meta’s campaign – the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which helps to find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization, helping families worldwide, as well as the non-profit organization Thorn.

Thorn is a technology company based in California that creates digital products and online programs to help defend children from sexual exploitation, working closely with law enforcement and other child protection organizations.

John Shehan, Senior Vice President at NCMEC, says anti-sextortion campaigns like Meta’s “bring much-needed education to help families recognize these threats early.”

“The dramatic rise in sextortion scams is taking a heavy toll on children and teens, with reports of online enticement increasing by over 300% from 2021 to 2023,” Shehan said.

Meta said it is also partnering with Crisis Text Line, a volunteer crisis hotline only available in the US, to provide users with “free, 24/7, confidential mental health support whenever they need it.”

Pay attention to red flags

“Sextortion is on the rise and poses an increasing risk to youth," said Kelbi Schnabel, Senior Manager at Thorn.

“It’s a devastating threat – and joint initiatives like this that aim to inform kids about the risks and empower them to take action are crucial,” Schnabel explained.

Roughly one in seventeen teenagers say they have experienced some form of online sextortion, according to a 2023 Thorn report.

Often embarrassment or fear can prevent teens from asking for help, Meta said, adding that it is important to remind teens that “sextortion is never their fault.”

Meta advises 'red flags' to look out for when communicating with someone you do not know on any social media platform, such as if the person is:

• Coming on too strong.
• Asking to trade photos.
• Wanting to move to another app.

Meta further states that if a teenager (or adult) suspects being targeted by a sextortion scammer, they should immediately stop responding, tell someone they trust, report the account, and, more importantly, not send money.

In July, the Zuckerberg-owned company announced the removal of roughly 65,000 sextortion scam accounts from Instagram and Facebook, mostly targeting male users, including some minors, in the US. The accounts had been run by a network of cybercriminals out of Nigeria known as ‘Yahoo Boys.’

Sadly, even with the massive takedown, Meta said the cybercriminals had been discovered trying to create new fake accounts soon after on Facebook, which, once identified, were also blocked by the platform.

Just last week, Meta said it removed another “1,620 assets – 800 Facebook Groups and 820 accounts – affiliated with Yahoo Boys.”

Additionally, in May, police in Michigan extradited several Nigerian men, charging them in connection with the death of a 17-year-old boy who committed suicide after being catfished into sending explicit images of himself to what he thought was a female love interest.

“By equipping young people with knowledge and directing them to resources like NCMEC’s CyberTipline, and Take it Down, we can better protect them from falling victim to online exploitation,” Shehan said.

To find out more information on how to prevent and report online sextortion scams, visit Meta's "Stop Sextortion" info page.