Overlooked cybercrime of ‘sextortion’ poses growing threat to women and children, study finds

A lesser-known cybercrime known as "sextortion" poses a growing threat to both adults and children, researchers have warned.

Criminal justice researchers at Michigan State University said women and children make up the majority of the victims of the offence, which involves threatening to use "intimate images or videos ... to then extort compliance from a victim".

Their study, which was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, said in many sextortion cases the perpetrators did not even have the photos or footage they were using to control and exploit their victims.

Roberta Liggett O’Malley, the study’s co-author, said: “What makes it different from any other crime is the threat to release. A perpetrator could say, ‘I have these images of you and will publish them unless you...’ to get more images or even in exchange for money.

“The victims are overwhelmingly minors and females, but if the objective is to get money, they are almost always targeting men. These two groups of people experience a similar crime in very different ways."

The study's poll of 1,631 sextortion victims found almost half were children.

Sextortion was now being uses by perpetrators of domestic abuse, researchers found. In these instances, victims send personal material to their partners who then threaten them with that same content.

Karen Holt, an assistant professor of criminal justice who also wrote the study, said: “Much of the fear comes from the belief that hackers can do anything involving technology, from the ability to see someone’s web browser history to hacking into a webcam or Nest device.

"That’s why sextortion is so effective – it creates a huge amount of uncertainty and fear that victims end up complying versus saying, ‘I think you’re bluffing, and if I ignore you, then I’m fine.’”

Dr Holt added: “As digital citizens, we have to start advocating for more accountability on behalf of platforms to take these images down, or to report harassment. A lot of offline crimes have an online component, and oftentimes law enforcement and our behaviour don’t catch up. We need to think about our own personal safety, both offline and online.”

Researchers, who examined 152 sextortion offenders, found there to be four different types: perpetrators preying on children; domestic abusers targeting partners or ex-partners; offenders who use hacking to target their victims; and “transnational” criminals who exploit people they do not know and are solely motivated by money.

While the majority of states in the US have laws against revenge porn, researchers said there is a dearth of legislation tackling other cyber sexual crimes and called for federal laws to tackle “the legal loopholes of sextortion”.

Ms O'Malley said: “We can’t only be focused on revenge porn. We need to stop and think about all the ways in which images are used against people and to think about the way we construct these laws to ensure there are pathways for prosecution and arrest.”

In England and Wales, so-called revenge porn, defined as “sharing private sexual materials with intent to cause distress”, has been illegal since 2015. Revenge porn became illegal in Scotland in July 2017.