I have been warning you about sextortion scams for nine years. Some sextortion scams begin with an email in which you are told that your computer and web cam have been hacked and that the scammers have video of you watching porn online.  In the email, the scammer threatens to send the videos to people on his contact list unless you pay a ransom in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency.  In addition, adult predators, often posing as young girls, contact teenage boys on a variety of online platforms such as games or social media and then convince the teenage boys to engage in explicit sexual activity while unbeknownst to the teenaged boy, the predator is recording it.  The scammer then reveals to the teenager that the scammer has the recording and threatens to post it online unless a substantial payment is made. According to the FBI there has been a significant increase in the instances of his scam.  Many of these scams are organized and based outside the United States, primarily in West African countries such as Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.

Making the problem worse is the upsurge in sextortion assistance companies which charge thousands of dollars for their help in stopping and removing the photos and videos from appearing online.  According to the FBI these companies provide no better assistance than you can get for free and, in some instances, actually are the same criminals perpetrating the sextotion scams themselves.  Some offer to send cease and desits orders which sound good, but are totally unenforceable. Ads for sextortion assistance companies appear throughout social media and even in posts on victim support forums.

TIPS

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a free service entitled Take It Down, which has been approved by the FBI, that can remove images from cooperating social media platforms, but not from text messaging platforms.  Victims of sextortion who are over 18 can use a similar free platform StopHCII.org which uses similar technology to that used by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to remove videos and photos from social media platforms.

The FBI advises parents to tell their children to be very careful as to what they share online.  Social media accounts which are open to everyone provide predators and scammers with a lot of information that the scammers can use to lure people into scams.  Discuss the appropriate privacy settings with your children for all of their accounts.

The FBI also tells parents to remind their children that they can never be sure as to who they are communicating with online and they should be particularly skeptical if they meet someone on a game or app who then asks to communicate with them on a different platform.

In regard to your web cam being hacked, while often this is merely a threat and the scammer has not hacked your web cam, web cams can be hacked.  One thing you can do to protect your webcam from being hacked is to make sure that you change the default password on your webcam when you first install it.  Another simple thing I do and you can, as well, is to merely put a post-it note over your webcam when it is not in use.

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