Sextortion is a heinous crime where scammers exploit young adults and teens, threatening to expose intimate images unless their demands are met.
In response to this alarming trend, Instagram has announced new initiatives aimed at combating sextortion, drawing on insights from organizations like NCMEC, Thorn, and Childnet. The campaign also seeks to empower parents, equipping them to better support their teens in navigating these scams.
Meta has introduced a suite of safety features designed to enhance protection against sextortion and complicate the operations of these criminals.
One key update prevents accounts that exhibit suspicious behavior from sending follow requests to teens. Depending on the severity of these signals—such as the age of the account—requests may be completely blocked or diverted to a teen’s spam folder.
Sextortion scammers often exploit their targets’ follower and following lists to orchestrate blackmail. To counter this, accounts flagged for potential scam behavior will be restricted from viewing these lists, limiting their ability to exploit this feature. Additionally, such accounts will not have access to lists of users who have liked someone’s posts or any tagged accounts.
To bolster image privacy, Instagram will soon implement measures that prevent users from taking screenshots or recording ephemeral images or videos shared through the ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ features in direct messages (DMs). This means that when someone shares sensitive content, they can rest assured it cannot be captured without their consent.
Furthermore, users will no longer be able to view ephemeral images or videos on Instagram’s web platform, ensuring that screenshot protections are upheld.
Instagram is continually refining its techniques to identify and eradicate scammers. By analyzing patterns in sextortion attempts, the platform enhances its technology to detect these profiles more swiftly.
Insights gleaned from these patterns will also be shared with the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, enabling other companies to fortify their defenses against similar threats.
In a notable expansion of its features, Instagram has begun rolling out its nudity protection feature globally in DMs. This feature, activated by default for users under 18, blurs any detected nudity in messages and informs users of the risks associated with sending sensitive content.
In collaboration with Larry Magid at ConnectSafely, Instagram has also developed a video aimed at educating parents, available on the Meta Family Center’s Stop Sextortion page.s
This new campaign builds on Instagram’s recent introduction of Teen Accounts, designed to provide enhanced protections for millions of users.
Teens under 16 cannot alter their account settings without parental consent, and those under 18 will default to stricter messaging settings that limit interactions to only those they follow or know personally. In the EU, this transition will begin later this year, with a global rollout slated for January.
Last week, Instagram took decisive action, removing approximately 1,600 Facebook Groups and accounts associated with the so-called “Yahoo Boys,” a group attempting to organize and recruit new scammers. This follows the previous removal of around 7,200 similar assets in July. Under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, accounts engaged in this criminal activity are promptly eliminated.
As Instagram continues to enhance its protective measures, the focus remains on empowering teens and their families to recognize and thwart these scams. The platform is committed to preventing potential scammers from reaching their targets while collaborating with industry partners to combat these threats across all platforms.