Detailed written manuals and video guides to financially motivated sexual extortion – commonly known as sextortion – are available freely online, with criminals offering specialist and tailored tuition for further payment, the Guardian has learned.
The guides can be found on platforms including YouTube and Telegram.
In cases of sextortion, teenagers are tricked online into sending intimate pictures of themselves to fraudsters who then demand money and threaten to share the material with others.
Adam Priestley, a senior manager for the National Crime Agency (NCA), said: “Written manuals and video guides, often titled ‘sextortion guides’, are available on platforms such as YouTube.
“Those we’ve seen on YouTube provide a step-by-step tutorial in how to commit these blackmail offences from start to finish, including creating fake online accounts, obtaining a texting number, tips on how to target victims and how to realise the profit of the crime.
“There is advice to criminals to target secondary schools, and instructions on how to threaten victims and the language to use. There are examples of the tutorials available for sale online, offered as a ‘full blackmailing guide’ at a cost of around 10,000 Nigeria Naira (approx £5).”
Separately, the Guardian has seen a written guide, running to more than 80 pages, which was discovered by a cybersecurity firm and had been made available on a channel on the Telegram messaging app in February. The guide was shared with the NCA, and Telegram removed it once alerted by the Guardian.
Styled as a handbook and guide for perpetrators, it is a brutally comprehensive document written by an anonymous individual who claims to have been committing this crime for seven years and to have exploited 5,000 “successful targets” over that period.
The guide promises “valuable insights and tools”, including advice on creating fake profiles, differentiating between short-term and long-term targets, accessing strangers’ social media accounts, and creating an initial connection then manipulating and coercing victims into sending explicit content.
The writer claims the top three countries in which to commit successful online extortion are the UK, US and Canada. They advise the reader to focus on teenagers and young adults, and suggest that they can expect to receive sexually explicit content “from at least 5-10 targets out of 200”.
The guide explains how the practice has pivoted to different platforms after some social media groups became more aware of the threat – for example, it warns that “exposing your target on Instagram is virtually impossible now” after recent updates on the site.
This guide also offers readers access to the specific extortion scripts used by the writer for $50, and three months of one-to-one guidance for $250. Security experts have uncovered evidence of at least 276 financial transactions with the writer, indicative of individuals buying these services.
The guide indicates how professionalised this crime has become, and emphasises the potential for making a profitable business out of it.
A report published by US-based cybersecurity researchers (Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in January this year linked a significant increase in sextortion cases in the past 18 months to West African criminals “distributing instructional videos and scripts on TikTok, YouTube, and Scribd, enabling and encouraging other criminals to engage in financial sextortion.
A spokesperson for YouTube said: “We take this issue extremely seriously, and have strict policies in place to protect our users from scams and other harmful behaviours. Content that provides instructions for activities such as phishing and cryptophishing is not allowed on YouTube and will be removed.”
TikTok said the platform proactively detected and removed content of this nature, including through investigations by its moderation teams. With regard to the so-called “Yahoo Boys” – Nigerian-based cybercriminals – TikTok said it had utilised local moderation experts to inform its enforcement strategy.
A spokesperson for Telegram said: “Sextortion is explicitly forbidden on Telegram’s platform. Moderators proactively monitor public parts of the platform and accept user reports in order to remove content that breaches Telegram’s terms of service.”
• The headline and text of this article were amended on 22 August 2024 to remove references to TikTok as being among platforms where so-called sextortion guides can currently be found. Also some detail about a report by the NCRI has been added.
