Wow, it's crazy how much this scam has evolved in a short time. A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a sort of prototype of it going around. People would get an entirely mass-spammed email or...
Wow, it's crazy how much this scam has evolved in a short time. A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a sort of prototype of it going around. People would get an entirely mass-spammed email or WhatsApp message in letter form (like your classic Nigerian Prince email) saying something to the effect of "I hacked your computer and have video of you naked," demanding cryptocurrency or gift cards or something or it would be sent to contacts and posted online. They didn't have anything, but banked on people panicking and responding. For extra realness, they'd usually include a leaked password they bought in the same bundle with the email addresses, as "proof."
I recall a couple instances of people receiving those when I was in college and freaking out, and (as the computer science major in the room, i.e. the magnet for urgent questions related to glowing boxes) I ended up breaking down how it worked and why it was a trick. I'd also seen them pop up in my spam folder around the same time.
Directly catfishing and blackmailing people is a horrifying step up from that method, and I worry this is going to blow up a lot more.
I can't help but look sideways at two things in the suicide cases though: the presence of firearms (Kellermann et al, as usual) and the toxic Puritanism that would lead someone to jump to that extreme over talking to parents. It's a sick joke that this society has demonized nudity to the point that people would rather...kill themselves than face a picture being sent to their family and friends? Seriously, the fact that something that stupid can be used to gain that much power over someone is depressing and an indictment of this culture.
I deal with multiple cases of this a year, and that's just the ones where the students decide to call staff or the police. And there's just nothing the police can do besides refer the case to the...
I deal with multiple cases of this a year, and that's just the ones where the students decide to call staff or the police. And there's just nothing the police can do besides refer the case to the FBI and it goes into the giant pile of foreign scams.
We're trying to improve awareness of it but it's absolutely devastating for the people who get scammed, and then they're so embarrassed they don't want to admit to it, especially to adult authority figures.
That's good that there's effort to bring awareness to it. It was fortunate that with the ones I came in contact with, we were all older adult students and the recipients weren't afraid to loop in...
That's good that there's effort to bring awareness to it. It was fortunate that with the ones I came in contact with, we were all older adult students and the recipients weren't afraid to loop in friends before it made it to me. They probably would have been more likely to involve the campus police as well.
I really don't envy the space teenagers inhabit these days. They missed out on the older internet, where everyone assumed you should be cautious, and don't have the same nose for scams that environment cultivated...and it's become fully normalized to post your entire life online and treat random strangers online with less caution than people on the street. Couple that with an always-on tether to your local bullies...
Yeah it's much harder with the 17-19 year olds. Especially because it's even more effective on people with less developed social skills so it's just compounding. They're more easily pressured by...
Yeah it's much harder with the 17-19 year olds. Especially because it's even more effective on people with less developed social skills so it's just compounding. They're more easily pressured by someone yelling at them on the phone too.
That's only so much people can do from a prevention point and it feels like almost all scams are enabled by a major gap in enforcement from some technology providers. it's just way too late to...
That's only so much people can do from a prevention point and it feels like almost all scams are enabled by a major gap in enforcement from some technology providers. it's just way too late to fix.
No company will ever turn away new business so any scam operation can masquerade as a legitimate company. A lot of these groups are practically franchises at this point and with a small investment on a few hundred anydesk/twillo licences and some scripts to hook victims, you can have a full scam call center under the guise of a technical support hotline. Hell, with AI voice models I'm sure it's already well on the way to full automation.
Beyond that, any proper controls would likely be invasive and negatively affect the experience. And it feels like anything short of full surveillance of every user leaves room for bad actors to loophole their way into freely using these tools.
And then theres the hell of catching people in developing nations, especially ring leaders who are likely wealthy and connected. And on the rare instance that somthing does happen, a dozen more can pop up the next day. And there's still tens of thousands of the small frys operating out of their bedroom with a VPN and few dozen disposable phones and Gmail accounts.
It just one of those truly hopeless situations that needs a concerted international effort to even begin to solve.
Oh yeah, I'm well aware you can't stop it, it's why it's more important that we normalize (especially for these students, but in general) that talking about the situation is ok. It's not shameful,...
Oh yeah, I'm well aware you can't stop it, it's why it's more important that we normalize (especially for these students, but in general) that talking about the situation is ok. It's not shameful, everyone gets tricked sometimes.
Sans paywall. I have been seeing these PSAs around town, but didn't realise and hadn't considered the extent or nature of the problem. Cynically—and of course meaning no disrespect to those...
I have been seeing these PSAs around town, but didn't realise and hadn't considered the extent or nature of the problem. Cynically—and of course meaning no disrespect to those targeted—at a societal scale, this feels like a market-level response to certain forces driving the behaviour and sentiments of boys (which have been discussed to death in ~life.men); which response may cause some rebalancing and perhaps ultimately some good. (Hrm, is that cynical? I can't tell.) On the other hand, perhaps the whole AI image generation thing will nip the problem in the bud.
I was expecting this to be about sexual predators but Christ, doing it for money is somehow worse. Like at the very least with pedos there would be some level of twisted "care" there and an...
I was expecting this to be about sexual predators but Christ, doing it for money is somehow worse. Like at the very least with pedos there would be some level of twisted "care" there and an incentive to keep them safely on the hook by maintaining the catfishing charade. But to immediately turn to blackmailing children and taunting them to kill themselves, just for money? When there's no shortage of comparatively less awful email scams to pull? Not to mention actually following through with the blackmail threats, judging by all the friends that received the photos even after death.
It's genuinely hard to decide if actual IRL child molestors are worse -- they obviously do serious, life-long damage, even when their victim is nominally willing, but it seems like less serious damage less sadistic than suddenly and viciously destroying a kid's life so cruelly that they commit suicide.
On a related note, I wonder if this problem will get better or worse with the advent of AI deepfakes. Boys are already using it to fake nudes of their classmates for titillation, which is bad enough, but what about monster scammers faking nudes to blackmail an unwilling target in the same way? They wouldn't even need to bait them into the catfish trap first. But does getting blackmailed with fake images have the same impact as if you felt you were complicit? On the flip side, maybe the increasing prevalence of fake nudes makes it easier to disavow even real ones.
I think your reaction may stem from how paedophiles and ephebophiles are driven by a nature they did not choose, and which there is little/no treatment and no community support. But these scammers...
I think your reaction may stem from how paedophiles and ephebophiles are driven by a nature they did not choose, and which there is little/no treatment and no community support.
But these scammers could do literally anything else for money: even selling MLM schemes would be a big moral step-up.
Playing "which trauma is worse" is not great. Victims of child sexual abuse also die by suicide or make the attempt. It doesn't seem necessary to go "oh boy that's bad but maybe this is worse"...
Playing "which trauma is worse" is not great. Victims of child sexual abuse also die by suicide or make the attempt. It doesn't seem necessary to go "oh boy that's bad but maybe this is worse" when it's all pretty awful and the people reading your words may have experienced either or both traumatic incidents.
I guess I was more thinking about the comparative awfulness of the criminal than the validity of the trauma caused, will edit to clarify. @EgoEimi helped articulate why the scammers in the article...
I guess I was more thinking about the comparative awfulness of the criminal than the validity of the trauma caused, will edit to clarify. @EgoEimi helped articulate why the scammers in the article feel even more monstrously cruel in that respect -- thanks.
My concern isn't just that, child sex abuse isn't only done by people oriented to pedophilia, statistically it's heterosexual men, and even oriented "pedophiles" will kill their victims. Or...
My concern isn't just that, child sex abuse isn't only done by people oriented to pedophilia, statistically it's heterosexual men, and even oriented "pedophiles" will kill their victims. Or torture them for years. It's an area where the popular image is not accurate, much like other major sexual crimes like trafficking. (And yes oriented pedophiles don't have to make the choice to abuse children either.)
This is scam is quite bad, I just don't like tossing around "pedos" and the implication that they necessarily have any more "care" for a victim.
Here's an archive link. This article is about a new trend extorting boys, but sextortion isn't specific to boys. Girls were previously more common victims. From the article: Here's a previous...
This article is about a new trend extorting boys, but sextortion isn't specific to boys. Girls were previously more common victims. From the article:
Hundreds of tips began flooding in from across the country, bucking the trend of typical exploitation cases. Usually, older male predators spend months grooming young girls into sending nude photos for their own sexual gratification. But in these new reports, teen boys were being catfished by individuals pretending to be teen girls—and they were sending the nude photos first. The extortion was rapid-fire, sometimes occurring within hours. And it wasn’t sexually motivated; the predators wanted money.
What could be done? It seems pretty clear that social media companies are in over their heads. I tentatively favor making it more difficult to create accounts on very large social media networks....
What could be done? It seems pretty clear that social media companies are in over their heads. I tentatively favor making it more difficult to create accounts on very large social media networks. Letting anyone sign up easily needs to be seen like running an open mail relay.
It probably would result in people moving to new, smaller, alternative social media networks, at least until new ones arise that do a better job.
I wonder if it’s possible to improve the young boys’ maturity through education. There’s the level mentioned in this thread of having the maturity to not try to show off your penis because someone...
I wonder if it’s possible to improve the young boys’ maturity through education. There’s the level mentioned in this thread of having the maturity to not try to show off your penis because someone with a pretty profile pic sent you a few messages. But there’s also the level where you own up to your actions. The cheating angle makes it harder, but I doubt that’s common to all of these cases.
Like, if someone did this to me I’d pretty quickly learn to deal with people seeing my dick.
The basic principle I'd teach is not to not send dick pics, but that it's ok to come to an(other) adult with their problem - preferably parent being that safe adult, but if not then another like...
The basic principle I'd teach is not to not send dick pics, but that it's ok to come to an(other) adult with their problem - preferably parent being that safe adult, but if not then another like "safe" adult (and as you get older trusted friend). It's the shame more than anything. They don't feel like they can speak, they'll get more easily pressured, etc and it's protective against all sorts of scams, harassment attempts, etc.
Young boys especially are just totally given up on by the education system. We're seeing that transition into drastically lower numbers of men going into secondary education (Something like 60%...
Young boys especially are just totally given up on by the education system. We're seeing that transition into drastically lower numbers of men going into secondary education (Something like 60% women vs 40% men and the gap is widening every year). I don't have any insight on the situation outside of what I see in my work, but it just seems like schools are built around systems that work much better for girls than boys.
I didn't say it was intentionally structured against boys, but you can't argue with the facts that boys are consistently testing behind girls of the same age and there is a significant and...
I didn't say it was intentionally structured against boys, but you can't argue with the facts that boys are consistently testing behind girls of the same age and there is a significant and widening gender gap in college enrollment. I don't have the perspective to say why these things are happening, but its undeniable that they are, and its pretty likely to be a structural issue.
I agree with you that it is sexist. That's not the point. The point is that gender is completely incidental to the underlying problems. They happen to express themselves in a sexist fashion. It...
I agree with you that it is sexist. That's not the point. The point is that gender is completely incidental to the underlying problems. They happen to express themselves in a sexist fashion. It seems a lot more constructive to focus on solving the underlying problems, which will make education more equitable and better for everybody.
Edit: to put this another way. How much effort should we really be expending on getting boys to do better on broken metrics in a system which is fundamentally abusive to and disrespectful of everybody involved in it?
Wow, it's crazy how much this scam has evolved in a short time. A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a sort of prototype of it going around. People would get an entirely mass-spammed email or WhatsApp message in letter form (like your classic Nigerian Prince email) saying something to the effect of "I hacked your computer and have video of you naked," demanding cryptocurrency or gift cards or something or it would be sent to contacts and posted online. They didn't have anything, but banked on people panicking and responding. For extra realness, they'd usually include a leaked password they bought in the same bundle with the email addresses, as "proof."
I recall a couple instances of people receiving those when I was in college and freaking out, and (as the computer science major in the room, i.e. the magnet for urgent questions related to glowing boxes) I ended up breaking down how it worked and why it was a trick. I'd also seen them pop up in my spam folder around the same time.
Directly catfishing and blackmailing people is a horrifying step up from that method, and I worry this is going to blow up a lot more.
I can't help but look sideways at two things in the suicide cases though: the presence of firearms (Kellermann et al, as usual) and the toxic Puritanism that would lead someone to jump to that extreme over talking to parents. It's a sick joke that this society has demonized nudity to the point that people would rather...kill themselves than face a picture being sent to their family and friends? Seriously, the fact that something that stupid can be used to gain that much power over someone is depressing and an indictment of this culture.
I deal with multiple cases of this a year, and that's just the ones where the students decide to call staff or the police. And there's just nothing the police can do besides refer the case to the FBI and it goes into the giant pile of foreign scams.
We're trying to improve awareness of it but it's absolutely devastating for the people who get scammed, and then they're so embarrassed they don't want to admit to it, especially to adult authority figures.
That's good that there's effort to bring awareness to it. It was fortunate that with the ones I came in contact with, we were all older adult students and the recipients weren't afraid to loop in friends before it made it to me. They probably would have been more likely to involve the campus police as well.
I really don't envy the space teenagers inhabit these days. They missed out on the older internet, where everyone assumed you should be cautious, and don't have the same nose for scams that environment cultivated...and it's become fully normalized to post your entire life online and treat random strangers online with less caution than people on the street. Couple that with an always-on tether to your local bullies...
Yeah it's much harder with the 17-19 year olds. Especially because it's even more effective on people with less developed social skills so it's just compounding. They're more easily pressured by someone yelling at them on the phone too.
That's only so much people can do from a prevention point and it feels like almost all scams are enabled by a major gap in enforcement from some technology providers. it's just way too late to fix.
No company will ever turn away new business so any scam operation can masquerade as a legitimate company. A lot of these groups are practically franchises at this point and with a small investment on a few hundred anydesk/twillo licences and some scripts to hook victims, you can have a full scam call center under the guise of a technical support hotline. Hell, with AI voice models I'm sure it's already well on the way to full automation.
Beyond that, any proper controls would likely be invasive and negatively affect the experience. And it feels like anything short of full surveillance of every user leaves room for bad actors to loophole their way into freely using these tools.
And then theres the hell of catching people in developing nations, especially ring leaders who are likely wealthy and connected. And on the rare instance that somthing does happen, a dozen more can pop up the next day. And there's still tens of thousands of the small frys operating out of their bedroom with a VPN and few dozen disposable phones and Gmail accounts.
It just one of those truly hopeless situations that needs a concerted international effort to even begin to solve.
Oh yeah, I'm well aware you can't stop it, it's why it's more important that we normalize (especially for these students, but in general) that talking about the situation is ok. It's not shameful, everyone gets tricked sometimes.
Sans paywall.
I have been seeing these PSAs around town, but didn't realise and hadn't considered the extent or nature of the problem. Cynically—and of course meaning no disrespect to those targeted—at a societal scale, this feels like a market-level response to certain forces driving the behaviour and sentiments of boys (which have been discussed to death in ~life.men); which response may cause some rebalancing and perhaps ultimately some good. (Hrm, is that cynical? I can't tell.) On the other hand, perhaps the whole AI image generation thing will nip the problem in the bud.
Those are amazing PSAs. Kudos to whoever designed them!
I was expecting this to be about sexual predators but Christ, doing it for money is somehow worse. Like at the very least with pedos there would be some level of twisted "care" there and an incentive to keep them safely on the hook by maintaining the catfishing charade. But to immediately turn to blackmailing children and taunting them to kill themselves, just for money? When there's no shortage of comparatively less awful email scams to pull? Not to mention actually following through with the blackmail threats, judging by all the friends that received the photos even after death.
It's genuinely hard to decide if actual IRL child molestors are worse -- they obviously do serious, life-long damage, even when their victim is nominally willing, but it seems
like less serious damageless sadistic than suddenly and viciously destroying a kid's life so cruelly that they commit suicide.On a related note, I wonder if this problem will get better or worse with the advent of AI deepfakes. Boys are already using it to fake nudes of their classmates for titillation, which is bad enough, but what about monster scammers faking nudes to blackmail an unwilling target in the same way? They wouldn't even need to bait them into the catfish trap first. But does getting blackmailed with fake images have the same impact as if you felt you were complicit? On the flip side, maybe the increasing prevalence of fake nudes makes it easier to disavow even real ones.
I think your reaction may stem from how paedophiles and ephebophiles are driven by a nature they did not choose, and which there is little/no treatment and no community support.
But these scammers could do literally anything else for money: even selling MLM schemes would be a big moral step-up.
Depends. Some phone scammers are being forced into it as well (they are on the victim end of human trafficking)
Playing "which trauma is worse" is not great. Victims of child sexual abuse also die by suicide or make the attempt. It doesn't seem necessary to go "oh boy that's bad but maybe this is worse" when it's all pretty awful and the people reading your words may have experienced either or both traumatic incidents.
I guess I was more thinking about the comparative awfulness of the criminal than the validity of the trauma caused, will edit to clarify. @EgoEimi helped articulate why the scammers in the article feel even more monstrously cruel in that respect -- thanks.
My concern isn't just that, child sex abuse isn't only done by people oriented to pedophilia, statistically it's heterosexual men, and even oriented "pedophiles" will kill their victims. Or torture them for years. It's an area where the popular image is not accurate, much like other major sexual crimes like trafficking. (And yes oriented pedophiles don't have to make the choice to abuse children either.)
This is scam is quite bad, I just don't like tossing around "pedos" and the implication that they necessarily have any more "care" for a victim.
Here's an archive link.
This article is about a new trend extorting boys, but sextortion isn't specific to boys. Girls were previously more common victims. From the article:
Here's a previous post.
Also, as often happens with gangs, the perpetrators can be underage too.
What could be done? It seems pretty clear that social media companies are in over their heads. I tentatively favor making it more difficult to create accounts on very large social media networks. Letting anyone sign up easily needs to be seen like running an open mail relay.
It probably would result in people moving to new, smaller, alternative social media networks, at least until new ones arise that do a better job.
I wonder if it’s possible to improve the young boys’ maturity through education. There’s the level mentioned in this thread of having the maturity to not try to show off your penis because someone with a pretty profile pic sent you a few messages. But there’s also the level where you own up to your actions. The cheating angle makes it harder, but I doubt that’s common to all of these cases.
Like, if someone did this to me I’d pretty quickly learn to deal with people seeing my dick.
Well...sure. Children are being massively failed by the education system, and if this is your wakeup call, I don't know what to tell you.
Not exactly my wakeup call. It’s just good to address problems from first principles.
The basic principle I'd teach is not to not send dick pics, but that it's ok to come to an(other) adult with their problem - preferably parent being that safe adult, but if not then another like "safe" adult (and as you get older trusted friend). It's the shame more than anything. They don't feel like they can speak, they'll get more easily pressured, etc and it's protective against all sorts of scams, harassment attempts, etc.
Young boys especially are just totally given up on by the education system. We're seeing that transition into drastically lower numbers of men going into secondary education (Something like 60% women vs 40% men and the gap is widening every year). I don't have any insight on the situation outside of what I see in my work, but it just seems like schools are built around systems that work much better for girls than boys.
sure, education is sexist, but the girls aren't being treated well. the structural problems have nothing to do with gender
I didn't say it was intentionally structured against boys, but you can't argue with the facts that boys are consistently testing behind girls of the same age and there is a significant and widening gender gap in college enrollment. I don't have the perspective to say why these things are happening, but its undeniable that they are, and its pretty likely to be a structural issue.
I agree with you that it is sexist. That's not the point. The point is that gender is completely incidental to the underlying problems. They happen to express themselves in a sexist fashion. It seems a lot more constructive to focus on solving the underlying problems, which will make education more equitable and better for everybody.
Edit: to put this another way. How much effort should we really be expending on getting boys to do better on broken metrics in a system which is fundamentally abusive to and disrespectful of everybody involved in it?
I don't think we're disagreeing with each other