Just as the name says, sextortion is a type of extortion where the perpetrator uses material of a sexual nature as ransom bait. In July 2018, the FBI recorded 13,000 more sextortion complaints than it had in June. As a cybercrime, sextortion isn’t limited to any part of the world or any specific target group.
Why is sextortion is dangerous? How does one avoid it?
The Sensitive Nature of Sextortion
Sextortion always involves material of a sexual nature, mainly pornographic content. However, the ways criminals use this material to extort something from victims vary from one case to another. They mostly want cash, though they can also use sensitive info to force victims to engage in sexual activity.
Perpetrators contact their victims with a claim that they have hacked into their devices and obtained compromising material. If victims don’t do as told within 48 hours of receiving the message, the compromising material will be sent to every person on their contact list.
One in four victims seeks professional medical or mental help in the aftermath. And therein lies the biggest problem with sextortion.
Unlike many similar crimes, sextortion includes information that is not only very personal but also compromising to the victim’s social integrity. Many victims never report the crime because they are too embarrassed. Most alarmingly, there has also been an increase in sextortion-related suicides.
4 Different Methods of Sextortion
There are four main methods of sextortion – social media, hacked accounts, hacked webcams, and email phishing schemes. Criminals who target their victims through social media and dating sites usually impersonate somebody else. This way they coax their victims into sending them sexually explicit images and videos.
Perpetrators can also hack into their victims’ accounts or webcams to access compromising content and hold it to ransom. Smart home systems with multiple interconnected devices offer several entry points that cybercriminals can exploit. All WiFi-enabled cameras are vulnerable.
But the most common method of sextortion is usually a scam. Email phishing schemes use social engineering as an intimidation technique to extort ransom money from victims. Most of the time criminals don’t actually have any compromising information on their victims. These are empty threats.
How to Stay Protected from Sextortion
In April 2016, IT security company ESET released a warning about sextortion emails. And this is more or less the only thing security teams and authorities can do. As long as people use social media and cloud services to exchange or store sexually explicit material, sextortion won’t be uprooted.
Which means, we must learn how to defend ourselves.
· Be Extremely Careful If You’re Dating Online
Don’t join an online dating community before you’ve learned more about the threats and ways to avoid them. There’s a lot you can do to stay safe while talking to or meeting with strangers, but most of it falls down to your sound judgment.
· Never Send or Store Sexually Explicit Content
It goes without saying that you should never send compromising photos and videos to strangers you meet online. But you should also avoid sending them to the people you know. Anyone can hack into your social media account, texting app, or cloud storage, and steal the material from there.
· Protect Your Accounts with Strong Passwords
In case you can’t do without online flirting, at least make sure all your devices and accounts are password-protected. Don’t use just any password; instead, rely on password generators and managers to create and store strong passwords. Also, change them every two months.
· Learn to Recognize Email Phishing Schemes
Email phishing schemes are usually easy to recognize. If you’re getting a lot of emails from people you don’t know, filter them out by subject. Fraudulent emails typically tap into your sense of urgency in the subject line. But even if you do open them, don’t click on any links or download any attachments.
· Turn Off Your Camera When You Don’t Need It
Even Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg tapes over his webcam, and so should you. Keep all your cameras turned off when you’re not using them or simply cover the lens with a sticky note or a piece of duct tape. That way, nobody will be able to monitor your activities.
· Use a VPN on Your Smart Devices
You should use a VPN to encrypt all your connections and browse the internet safely, whether you have a complete smart home system or only a laptop and a smartphone (you can download the app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nordvpn.android). This way nobody can track your activities online, see what web pages you are visiting, or find your real location.
Sextortion is not a very sophisticated cybercrime – it either relies on basic hacking methods or fraudulent emails. Both can be easily avoided. Using a combination of common sense and various cybersecurity techniques, every person can protect themselves from it.
