Social media giants are among a host of companies profiting from a grim new criminal trend of financial extortion in which children are tricked into sending nude images and blackmailed for money, experts have warned.
While extortion online for sexual purposes is not a new phenomenon, monitoring groups say that in early 2022 they noticed a surge in fake online profiles mostly targeting teenage boys – with organised criminals then rapidly demanding monetary payment or threatening to share the images, which can either be real or fake.
