“We’re happy if they phone us early, so we can say: ‘Ignore it, don’t look at your messages, don’t react to it--report the person as soon as you can and don’t do anything!’”
This comment comes from Aline Hartz, psychologist and head of the Kanner-Jugendtelefon (KJT), a hotline dedicated to supporting young people in crisis. She is talking about sextortion, a crime whereby an offender convinces their mark to send an intimate photo and then threatens to post it somewhere unless a price, usually money, is paid.
Sadly, sextortion is gaining in popularity: the Bee Secure helpline, operated by the KJT, had 68 calls about it in 2023, up sharply from 35 in 2022, two in 2021 and zero in 2020. Inhope, a consortium of hotlines from around the world, found that reports of online enticement of children for sexual acts rose by 113% between 2020 and 2022.
“It’s done in a very professional way,” says Hartz, talking about anonymous perpetrators who manipulate victims by flirting with them. For boys, she says--citing data from the Insafe network, a group of Safer Internet Centres across Europe--the offender is often somebody anonymous, whereas for girls it is more likely to be an ex-boyfriend or somebody they know.
Two platforms exist to help victims of this scheme (and anybody else who wants their photos back): stopncii.org and takeitdown.ncmec.org. Both require you to upload the photo in question; they will then search for it on the internet--including Tiktok, Facebook and Instagram--and remove it. If somebody tries to upload it, it will be blocked immediately.
“This is working really well,” comments Hartz. Her advice: don’t send intimate photos, but if you must then at least hide your face.
The KJT is also a “trusted flagger,” or an organisation empowered to report problematic content that major platforms are then obliged to take down. Under the Digital Services Act, which went into effect in February 2024, platforms must comply under penalty of fines.
This article first appeared in the 2024-2025 Paperjam Expat Guide.
