Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-sextortion-teen-suicides/

by fromthegut • 2 years ago

154 179 2 years ago

fromthegut• 2 years ago

Black Mirror. S3 E3

k8svet3• 2 years ago

Bit different imo. If some scammer sends me my bro's penile pic, I'm gonna delete it and warn him. If the scammer sends me proof he was consuming illegal, immoral CSAM, I'm having a vastly different reaction.

The shame is the key to this scam. The intersection of (especially teenaged) insecurity, and America cultures nonsensical relationship to sex and shame, is tragic.

EnigmaFlare2• 2 years ago

Teenage boys won't necessarily know the distinction between what's shameful and what's illegal, or the bigger political beliefs around CSAM. Don't you think you're perpetuating the fear of sexuality by effectively threating to cause serious harm to teenagers for looking at the wrong kinds of pictures? Why is there such a binary classification of "no shame" and "calling the cops"? Different countries' laws put that distinction in different places. Remember this could be a minor himself who hasn't actually done any harm to anyone.

vintermann• 2 years ago

Yes, this is maybe something that is true that we can tell victims of this scam/attack: If I get an anonymous mail with a picture of any sort, I'm not going to look at it. No matter what they say it is. This goes for other platforms too.

There are fortunately few ways for random strangers to cram images I don't want to see into my eyes. Most of the ones that do exist (e.g. making a social media profile and trying to "add" me) are automatically scanned for porn by the social network site.

lifestyleguru• 2 years ago

UK and US: "All porn (copyrights) belongs to us"

also UK and US: "We don't even wank to it"

spacebanana73• 2 years ago

The shame of cheating / adultery is a massive leverage point these scammers prey on.

rsynnott• 2 years ago

That's arguably kind of a weak twist ending to that episode; it would actually basically still work if the material had been inoffensive. Throughout the episode, the viewer is meant to _assume_ it's just shame.

0dayz• 2 years ago

Pay wall but making some quick assumption this is people who are impersonating girls/guys which lures young guys with sending nudes and then proclaims that their nudes will be sent everywhere maybe even used to be sent to women/young girls so that when the authorities crackfown it'll be the young guy facing the crime, but this can all be averted by the victim paying.

I.e. extortion.

Beyond it being a truly despicable crime, it's interesting how this extortion hadn't changed much since the early 2000s the only difference is that it's done on a larger scale and probably more done for money than for other nefarious reasons.

aaron695• 2 years ago

Same story in Australia, 16 year old boy killed himself, different two men in Lagos

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-68720247

I'm not real confident this is solvable with law enforcement in a world where the police press release is - "located in a slum in Nigeria with a population of 25 million people"

colechristensen3• 2 years ago

Sure it is. If a country can’t find and enforce a law or extradite someone for doing such a thing, order the carrier of the extortion messages to block the entire country or charge the message carrier itself, especially if minors are involved.

Like if Facebook is being a safe haven for Nigerian extortionists, either they block Nigeria or Australia blocks Facebook.

thrownaway561• 2 years ago

if they do that they will just use VPNs. you can't stop this no matter what, you just have to educate people and hope they don't fall victim.

thfuran5• 2 years ago

What you're describing is the end of the internet.

jjmarr• 2 years ago

Even assuming this is technically feasible (a premise others don't believe), it is ethically wrong to cut off an entire country from the Internet because a small portion of the population are committing crimes.

Imagine a large American city getting cut off from Facebook because there are many people selling shoplifted items on FB Marketplace and your underfunded govt doesn't have the financial ability to crack down on them. The average person would lose all contact with friends and family because some people are using a service to commit crimes.

neonate• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240416235606/https://www.bloom...

https://archive.ph/I9jm2

dockerd• 2 years ago

Meta didn't accept emergency request from police and needed county magistrate order to help assist in investigation.

"Meta has a portal for police to file requests to preserve records of accounts connected to criminal investigations. Like other social media companies, it has to hold the records—including emails, IP addresses, message transcripts and general usage history—for 90 days. It only hands over user data if it’s ordered to do so by a court.

There’s one way to expedite the request: file it as an emergency, meaning a child could be harmed or there’s risk of death. Larson believed this case qualified. He told Meta that a 17-year-old was already dead, and there was a high probability other kids were in danger, too.

*Meta declined his request within an hour, he says. “The request you submitted does not rise to the level of an emergency,” the company responded.*"

Animats2• 2 years ago

Meta was correct. "Exigent circumstances" to the 4th amendment warrant requirement did not apply, because there was no known potential victim at risk. So the cops needed to have a judge sign a warrant. Didn't take long.

hsbauauvhabzb3• 2 years ago

Legally correct maybe, but morally?

abrookewood• 2 years ago

God this is awful. If you have kids, go talk to them. I've already spoken to mine. Aside from the usual (don't send nudes; be careful on the Internet), I also told them that if something like this does happen, it isn't worth your life: everyone masturbates, it isn't anything shameful and I'll still love you anyway.

hannofcart• 2 years ago

While my heart goes out to all the victims' families, what are platforms like Facebook supposed to do here?

Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping.

The sad fact is that desperate people exist. And these desperate people are willing to do despicable things to make a buck.

bikemore4• 2 years ago

If Facebook were at all a force for good in this world, maybe I'd agree with you. But given the litany of other social ills they are directly or indirectly responsible for, I'm fairly confident you could nuke them tomorrow and the world would be a better place.

So "Facebook should abort itself" is one option.

nextlevelwizard3• 2 years ago

And then people would move to yet another social media site and nothing changes

ben_w5• 2 years ago

Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping.

I rather assumed they already did monitor chat, in order to target adverts, A/B test, handle abuse reports, filter spam, etc.

Even if FB says it has "end to end encryption", I can't fully believe them due to the political pressure under the banner "terrorism/kids get hurt" is immense regardless of us here regarding that as thought terminating cliché from the intelligence agencies.

olliej2• 2 years ago

Facebook does monitor - and sell - all user data.

You don’t get to say “we will read your messages to sell ads, we will straight up sell your message history to other companies, but no we can’t do anything to protect users from trivially detectable scams.

delfinom3• 2 years ago

That's really stretching the definition of sell.

They used to actually sell your days to select groups.

Now they sell advertiser ads based on your data but the advertiser does not get to see said data.

TeMPOraL2• 2 years ago

Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping.

FWIW, if the goal is to detect potential scam/abuse scenarios and offer help, then nowadays, they could train a ML classifier and have it run locally. If the conversation gets classified as highly suspect, the app could pop up some "this looks suspect, if you need help press HERE to share the conversation with us" warning. Privacy concerns would go away entirely, if nothing is actually reported to the mothership until the user specifically reports a conversation.

There's only so much they can do for users behind their backs, and a lot of that is undesirable unless you trust the company to be benevolent; local classifiers popping up recommendations could, however, help users help themselves.

spacebanana73• 2 years ago

Ironically Onlyfans have really good systems for this. All communication is monitored and any mention of blackmail (including indirect references) will get the sending account banned.

mikrotikker3• 2 years ago

What? How does that work on only fans of all places? Surely you'd just DMCA the "extorter" (read: copyright breacher)

IG_Semmelweiss3• 2 years ago

You can easily inform the end user, so the conversation is transparent and the victim is giving implicit, informed consent.

"NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. The User's hometown and usual IP is XXX , USA. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts"

But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

neal_jones• 2 years ago

Agreed on this being a basic first step, although any scammer of any value would just get a VPN.

Another user noted that OnlyFans is analyzing text and bans anyone saying anything approaching blackmail.

Odd (but maybe not odd at all) to think that OnlyFans might be the leader on this.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

In this day and age, if you fall for something like that, just refuse to pay and say you'll tell people it's an AI fake. I think the days of this sort of scam being very effective are over, or will be soon.

HaZeust3• 2 years ago

Why do we keep thinking that people will wise up to AI-generated content just because it'll eventually be mass-produced and anyone can do it?

Anyone can write absolutely anything with little check and balance on substance, and MILLIONS still believe tabloids and headlines. We've been able to reliably edit photos/video/film for 80 years with an exponential increase in its efficiency within the last 30 - and we still have millions that would take a photo or video's substance at face-value.

solumunus• 2 years ago

You say that but I’ve yet to see an AI deep fake have any real impact so far. At least in the west, the political ones I’ve seen really haven’t got much traction and were quickly dismissed by the mainstream. Sure, there will always be idiots on the fringe who will believe anything that aligns with their current beliefs, there’s little we can do about that, but so far I’m surprised there hasn’t been an AI deepfake that didn’t fizzle within days. I guess we’re early in the game, so time will tell.

jimbob45• 2 years ago

Robocalls aren’t effective anymore. Emails don’t do much except once in a great while. Mail hasn’t worked since the 80s. I have to imagine IM clients will lose their effectiveness for scamming the same as all the others.

dt3ft• 2 years ago

This should be the top comment as it may in fact save someones life.

pluto_modadic• 2 years ago

this doesn't help victims who are stressed like crazy with threats. "oh you'll be fine"

TheFreim• 2 years ago

Encouraging people to become liars is not a solution.

imtringued2• 2 years ago

The thing is, it never makes sense to fulfill the demands of a blackmailer. The reason is that no matter what you do, the blackmailer either wants something from you, or keeps collecting more blackmail material until he can get something from you. They don't actually care about leaking your stuff and even if they do, they want to maintain leverage so they don't do it all at once.

marcus_holmes3• 2 years ago

I was a teenager a long time ago, but I remember the anxiety and shame about my body that was involved in puberty.

It's a really, really brave teenager that's going to be able to front up with naked photos sent to his parents and friends and say "they're fake". And, of course, if they're not fake and one person finds out, everyone will know soon enough. This kind of stuff is what teenage drama is made of.

From the article: the photo included his pyjamas, which matched hers. How is an AI going to know the exact pattern of pyjamas he wore? It might, but even asking that question is a problem if you're the victim.

I don't think ignoring the problem and telling the victim to toughen up is helping.

rightbyte2• 2 years ago

How is an AI going to know the exact pattern of pyjamas he wore?

Claim the AI saw a picture of your pyjamas? But ye, people are bad at lying. It would be enough to claim they don't know how the AI made the picture.

vasco2• 2 years ago

The rule should be, do not reply to strangers that message you privately on any platform. If you're messaging a scammer back and forward you already lost.

Even if they had your actual real nudes, you not replying might even make a real scammer go "shit they don't check their messages", and move to the next target.

tmaly• 2 years ago

wear a five finger glove if you are going to take pictures.

andersa2• 2 years ago

I don't understand what would motivate someone to ever send an explicit photo of themselves to a stranger. The whole premise of this scam makes no sense. Like, is this not the most basic of the basics of online safety?

wpietri5• 2 years ago

The short answer is horniness. They are hoping to get some. And indeed, as I understand it, they've received what they think are explicit photos of someone else, so they believe they are in a reciprocal context.

If people were all that good at being rational about safety in the face of possible sexytimes, it's true this wouldn't happen. And we wouldn't have STDs or unintended pregnancies, either. But as the man says, life finds a way.

user_7832• 2 years ago

To add to the fact, these are teenagers. They already aren't well known for rational thought or low levels of horniness.

QuiDortDine• 2 years ago

It's not just teenagers, my friend's brother fell prey to this. His life is one ongoing mental health crisis. These people are truly the scum of the earth, their scam only works on vulnerable people by design. Disgusting.

krisoft• 2 years ago

It's not just teenagers,

No. Apparently it also happens with british Member of Parliament. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/04/senior-tory...

anal_reactor2• 2 years ago

The basic rule of online safety is not to meet people from the internet IRL and even if, never to get into their cars. And yet, the business of calling strangers over the internet specifically to get into their cars somehow grew into a 200 billion dollar industry. Strange world, isn't it.

david-gpu• 2 years ago

Because there is a corporate third party that can identify both the driver and the customer. Moreso the driver than the customer, but then again the driver can have cameras in the vehicle and doesn't carry cash like a taxi does, so they are not in any significant danger either.

imtringued2• 2 years ago

You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes and you send yours. It turns out it was a guy looking to extort you.

youngtaff• 2 years ago

This happened to my son… they had a couple hundred in Apple gift cards out of him before we found out and stopped it

andersa2• 2 years ago

You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes

My first assumption would be the "girl" is a bot and the image generated by AI until proven otherwise, i.e. by meeting up at a public location and seeing it's a real person from my country. Am I too paranoid? It sure feels like the dead internet theory is just about to get real and we should act accordingly.

acuozzo• 2 years ago

a girl responds with her nudes and you send yours

But... WHY?! You're not The Rock. Unless you're ripped and/or packing, the chances of your "nudes" sent in reply scaring the recipient away are pretty high.

throehcifj3• 2 years ago

Why is it called "scam" and "fraud"? It is typical revenge porn, sexual abuse and distribution of child pornography.

There is a strong network to support rape victims, and it should be used for such cases.

wpietri5• 2 years ago

It is called a scam because that's what the perps are going for. Their goal is to extract money. From the article: "The price was $300. He transferred the money via Apple Cash and pleaded to be left alone. But it wasn’t enough. Now Dani wanted $800."

Maybe you know different teenagers than me, but I'm not expecting that the boys described here would be big on joining a rape support group.

throehcifj3• 2 years ago

Intentions of attackers are irrelevant, important is what they do! Victims are not killing themselves over $300, but over revenge porn!

I would absolutely join rape support group, but there are none for men. Maybe the is the real problem. At least they should get break from school, or help with relocation!

And correct labeling would help with school bullies. Reposting some "scam" pictures has zero punishment, spreading revenge porn on other side...

Reposting dick pics of exes, or groups like "Are we dating the same guy?" are sadly way too common!

graemep5• 2 years ago

I would describe that as blackmail. The legal term is different but its a serious crime and should be a police matter. The problem is victims may be scared or ashamed of reporting it to the police. In some places they may be guilty of a crime too.

There should be support. I suspect there are sources of support but a victim of this may not think of looking of this.

Terr_• 2 years ago

It is typical revenge porn

No, it isn't typical, you are confusing "revenge" with "extortion."

The scammers aren't doing it because they are jilted lovers, obsessed stalkers, or even just bullies: They set out from the very beginning to create a relationship to extort cash.

red_admiral• 2 years ago

"Typical" revenge porn, as far as I am aware, overwhelmingly has women victims. That is also why many victim networks are by and for women. It's also, as far as I know, rare for the "typical" case to be linked to extortion.

gttalbot• 2 years ago

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

jmopp2• 2 years ago

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, the false positives (and the fallout from it) might outweigh the negatives: imagine a volunteer doctor who disappears in West Africa due to being kidnapped/robbed etc and someone local tries to contact the family back home, but all the messages end up getting blocked.

orthoxerox2• 2 years ago

Something simple like a face match or even an email unlock if you connect to the account from an unusual location should work. A lot of websites do that already. So a volunteer doctor from the US opens their phone in Lagos, gets challenged, answers, Meta now knows that Nigerian IPs or whatever VPN they use are fine.

dclowd9901• 2 years ago

This seems like such a contrived example.

By all accounts the Dr would probably be in better shape if the kidnappers weren’t able to contact their family.

petepete2• 2 years ago

My parents' home phone used to receive several scam calls a week from India. There was no way to stop them short of giving up the landline, which is what I did.

I can't believe phone companies (in the UK) don't provide better protection, even a registry of whitelisted numbers, that could be set for the old/vulnerable.

__rito__• 2 years ago

Well, I am in and from India, and I receive several scam calls a month from India.

Indians, by number of victims, are the biggest victims of Indian scammers. Several people I know personally have been burned.

Our phone numbers are in several lists, and they get leaked.

I think one solution to this is strict data privacy laws. If there is a list with phone numbers/addresses, it should be subject to highest level of care and security. Or there should be laws banning collection of phone numbers unless absolutely needed.

No amount of spreading awareness seems to work. The local law enforcement of the exact two states in India where the domestic scammers are from are also "involved".

ta12433• 2 years ago

They do

https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/cordless-phones/article/how-...

master-lincoln3• 2 years ago

Why shouldn't people in Nigeria be able to communicate with people from random North American towns?

Because there are some criminals in a geographical area you want to exclude the whole area? Why don't you demand a US-only internet instead?

IG_Semmelweiss3• 2 years ago

Correct. Yet you can easily inform the end user, to get informed consent.

"NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts"

But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

graemep5• 2 years ago

So people in North America who have friends of family in Nigeria would not be able to send them FB messages.

DoreenMichele6• 2 years ago

Some thoughts I've had for years:

A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately.

B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about certain things. His girlfriend was attending church. The church should be telling kids "This is not worth killing yourself over."

C. We somehow need to come up with reasonable accommodation for the reality that teens have phones and budding sexualities and these two things are colliding horrifically in a legal and cultural system strongly rooted in assuming "child porn" is made solely by abusive adults and not willingly by underage teens who don't think it's a big deal at the time the photo is snapped.

Taking a nude selfie should be safer than baring your body in person. No risk of STDs or pregnancy are involved. And yet we've turned it into this hugely dangerous thing for anyone who hasn't spent years thinking about sexual morality who isn't prepared to say to law enforcement and the world "Nudes of me? Big fucking deal."

No idea how to further any of those things, but this is hardly the first article I've read about teen selfies being involved in extreme levels of harsh consequences that I just think morally should not happen and I think have roots in cultural and legal stuff going bad places in part because we aren't keeping up with the times.

chr1• 2 years ago

AI generating realistic nude images from normal images will further these things. Because then there will be nudes for everyone, it will be impossible to prove what is real and what is fake, and therefore pointlessness of chasing of 'illegal" numbers will become obvious to more people.

DoreenMichele6• 2 years ago

My knee-jerk reaction is that probably some people know what you look like naked. So one means to check: If it's recent, compare it to your actual body.

On the other hand, bodies change over time, so it gets easier to say "That 10 year old pic? No, not real."

(Unless it's extremely attractive. Then enthuse about how gorgeous you once were, I guess, and see if people buy that.)

marcus_holmes3• 2 years ago

This is going to make this kind of racket more common, and also provide some kind of defence if it goes wrong: "they're fakes" will be more believable.

But it takes some serious mental resilience to contemplate that as a teenager when someone is threatening to send your nudes to the people you love. Not many kids are going to have that kind of intestinal fortitude.

The tendency of porn to give men severe anxiety about their genitals is playing into this; kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge.

We need to get really cool about a whole bunch of stuff really quickly if we're going to make this (and other problems) go away. I don't think AI is going to be part of that.

anal_reactor2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

didntcheck• 2 years ago

I've also noticed this. On more than one occasion I've been left completely bemused by someone insisting that a teenager couldn't possibly have been seeking out sexual content themselves, and must have been groomed into it by an adult. Sorry, have they met a teenager?

BlueTemplar• 2 years ago

I don't understand this, aren't pedophiles specifically interested by (non-sexually mature) children, rather than (sexually mature-ish) teenagers ?

There seems to be a lot of (new?) confusion between pedophiles and adults being interested in sexually mature teenagers, which, sure, can cause it's own issues, but is neither a sickness nor a one-way street, and that's what the different majorities of consent and authority and being able to interact with adult industries are for.

And the cutoff for turning fully major and being able to still interact with your slightly younger peers has to be dealt with anyway, ideally in a progressive way.

jajko• 2 years ago

You write church, but it should be parents. Remember those days when parents were held responsible for their kids, how they behave, and whom they become in adult life?

They (us) don't have full control in later teens, but everything leading up to it, mostly yes. But for every parent I see raising kids the hard way (tons of time spent together consistently every day, being a positive role model, motivating and supporting them in all the right directions while explaining in detail the rest), I see the other way (obsessed by their pathetic office careers, kids with phones/screens from very early age that then go mental if they have to spend weekend without them, parents addicted to their phones/other screens too, overweight, depressed, without any real healthy passion(s) in their lives).

The results, I mean the kids, always show how parenting went (barring say some inborne mental issues and traumatic accidents, that I have no right to comment on).

I'd say this leans much more heavily on father too, like it or not. Mother is a safe haven and initial care and nurture, but father is a) hardcore role model for the boys, and b) a template what to look for in partners later for girls. Yeah, missing dad syndrome is brutal, every single effin' time, best mothers do minimize this and thats about it. I don't like it, its deeply unfair, not sure to whom to complain to.

brnt2• 2 years ago

Remember those days when parents were held responsible for their kids,

That idea is pure revisionism coming from individualist ideology.

In 'those' days, everybody raised everyone. 'It takes a village' and all that. Check any actual scientific research on the matter.

DoreenMichele6• 2 years ago

I was a full-time mom for a lot of years and I'm not religious, but in religious families, religion strongly shapes concepts of morality.

Currently, the Catholic church has a track record of de facto aiding and abetting child molesting priests. I think there's room for improvement.

robocat• 2 years ago

when parents were held responsible for their kids

Yet your comment reminds me of be the modern opposite take on parental responsibility: blame most everything on childhood trauma, and blame trauma on the parents.

We used to blame autism on mothers.

Seriously, we make as much sense as our ancestors blaming miasma for sickness. Remember the hellscape fad of recovering repressed memories? There are people that blame trauma on their past lives!

We all literally have no idea about any of this: our best bet is to be non-judgemental, do our best to create good communities, and to accept our own ignorance.

The results, I mean the kids, always show how parenting went

Why is this such a common way to think?

Personally some of the worst things I have done I have learnt from my peers. My middle-class innocent parents are not to blame.

Mother is a safe haven and initial care and nurture

I think stereotypes are dangerous. I'm middle-aged and while we can make generalisations about mothers and fathers, I've learnt that those generalisations can't be applied to individual mothers and fathers.

And conversing about this is just plain hard. I definitely don't want to attack you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35576696

Anyways: To my best knowledge I've really veered off the path - please don't delve into my comment too far. Black and white thinking can be a problem and I'm just as guilty of that as anybody: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

pflenker• 2 years ago

If other people forward it, they should be charged

It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn.

DoreenMichele6• 2 years ago

I'm actually ok with that. I see no reason why the teacher can't simply advise the parent this is happening without forwarding nudes of their teen to the parent.

I don't actually want to see my sons naked, thanks. They hit puberty, suddenly discovered the concept of privacy and I have no idea what their private parts look like.

orthoxerox2• 2 years ago

C. We somehow need to come up with reasonable accommodation for the reality that teens have phones and budding sexualities and these two things are colliding horrifically in a legal and cultural system strongly rooted in assuming "child porn" is made solely by abusive adults and not willingly by underage teens who don't think it's a big deal at the time the photo is snapped.

It's not just the CSAM aspect, it's the whole idea that sex ed is grooming. It's like the difference between saying "you shouldn't have sex until you are a responsible adult" vs "I honestly don't recommend that you have sex at this age, but if you do, here's how to do it safely and responsibly".

Teaching kids "don't send naked pictures of yourself to other people" is one thing, but if they look around and see their peers sext with each other with no real repercussions, this warning will fall on deaf ears. They will file it next to "don't drink until you're 21".

On the other hand, if you start tailoring this message into something like, "sexting is a bad idea, don't do it, especially if you don't know the other person or don't trust them 100%; if you do sext, here's how to minimize the impact of cyberbullying or blackmail: ...", then people will loudly complain that schools are teaching their children how to sext.

DoreenMichele6• 2 years ago

I was thinking more about our legal system and general culture needing to keep up with the times.

I homeschooled my kids, so school-based sex education doesn't really make my radar.

master-lincoln3• 2 years ago

For me the craziness already starts with equating nudity and pornography...

graemep5• 2 years ago

His girlfriend was attending church. The church should be telling kids "This is not worth killing yourself over."

I think the problem is knowing what to do preemptively (which affects everyone who might help, not just the church). I am sure that if they asked a priest/paster/whatever they would be told that.

What can you do if they do not ask for. Preach a sermon on this specific problem? There are many variants and you need to get the message across. Maybe a general sermon on the risk of blackmail in general, and talking about where victims can get help, explaining the blackmailer is doing something wrong.

I think parents have a critical role to play. Talk about things like staying safe online, not trusting people, the fact that people assume false identities.

I know my teenage daughter does not disclose her real identity online. I have spoken to her about the dangers of doing so. I will give this as an example, not because I am worried that exactly the same thing would happen, but as an example of the general sort of things that happen. It might be something you say rather than a selfie, for example.

Taking a nude selfie should be safer than baring your body in person. No risk of STDs or pregnancy are involved. And yet we've turned it into this hugely dangerous thing for anyone who hasn't spent years thinking about sexual morality who isn't prepared to say to law enforcement and the world "Nudes of me? Big fucking deal."

I agree. The law and culture is badly out of date.

MarkSweep• 2 years ago

I’m not a teenage boy, but I got targeted by one these. While it was misdirected (they were trying to blackmail me with someone else’s photos), the whole thing was quite disturbing.

Also iMessage really does not seem to be well designed to handle abuse. Your only option is to block, which is a couple of taps away from a conversation. The block does not instantly take effect cross device, so you still get messages on your Apple Watch until you reboot it. Your only option for reporting anything is when deleting a conversation, and all you can do is say it’s spam.

junon2• 2 years ago

A friend of mine was also targeted though they didn't have a real photo of him. They claimed to have hacked his webcam and had some blurry thing printed out, but he doesn't have a webcam.

He called in a panic and I told him to ignore it. Nothing ever came of it (because in this case, how could it - and we're both adults, I convinced him even if it were true why would it matter - again, highly case specific but he agreed it wouldnt).

I doubt the same would be true in all cases, just wanted to share.

hsbauauvhabzb3• 2 years ago

A common scam is this combined with ‘proof’ in the form of passwords, the passwords often come from hacked databases such as LinkedIn from 2012, or others reported on have I been pwned (pun not intended)

junon2• 2 years ago

In my opinion, those two (or three) deserve way longer than 15 years. This wasn't some act of desperation. This was just pure, unfiltered evil that IMO cannot be "corrected".

boffinAudio2• 2 years ago

This could all be solved if the OS vendors would add a 'share my childs screen' function to their operating systems. These incidents happen in isolation - make it possible for an adult to actually .. you know .. have oversight over their childrens online activities and it would be less dangerous.

master-lincoln3• 2 years ago

It would also be solved if care takers wouldn't let a child do stuff unsupervised on the internet.

Or if a care taker educated a child about dangers on the internet.

Do you really think care takers would watch their kids screens remotely all the time and then such horrific events wouldn't happen? I think it wouldn't help at all if that feature existed

boffinAudio2• 2 years ago

As a parent of two teenage boys, I would definitely prefer to be able to occasionally tune into whats going on with my kids screens. Definitely.

And, I would definitely have caught things sooner if I'd had that ability. (Disclaimer: yes, we have been victims of these kinds of scams.)

troq13• 2 years ago

This type of software is often abused by people to spy on their partners...

analyte123• 2 years ago

The victim's parents would technically have been guilty of a felony if this happened today, by failing to lock up the firearm and the minor causing injury to another, including their own self [1]. Michigan's safe storage law was not in effect in 2022, but the truth stands that guns really need to be locked up when there are teens around. For some reason the narrative has been on 6-year-olds accidentally picking up a gun, but that type of accidental child firearm death is absolutely dwarfed by teen firearm suicides.

[1] https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhh...

Uptrenda• 2 years ago

I see this as a two fold problem:

(1) Most young people are insecure as anything and have unhealthy self-esteem.

(2) Culturally the west is very (and I mean very) ashamed of nudity.

Problem (1) isn't something that can be done half-assed. The kid will need a healthy family, friends, support system. They will need to be free of traumatic influences... While (2) I see as being more practical.

If you look at European countries they are much more naturalist regarding nudity. Like Dutch have their Freikörperkultur (FKK) free body movement where there's many places where you can go and do activities nude. Mixed gender saunas where people are naked are common. Then there's Japan where parents commonly bathe with their children. It teaches them not to be ashamed of their body.

We don't really have anything like that in the west. It's really quite dangerous because its just like: do we expect literal teenagers to practice good opsec when adults can't even get that shit right?

Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

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