Sextortion

Talking openly with the young person you look after about sextortion and other online harms helps to build trust and makes them more likely to come to you for help if something happens to them online. Here are some tips:

 Chat regularly. 

Make conversations about your online activity part of daily conversations. Share funny videos or news items and encourage them to. If they’re into gaming, you could ask them to show you how to and let you try it out. This will help them to become comfortable sharing their online world with you.

Explore relationships within an online context.

Exploring your sexual feelings and relationships is a natural part of growing up. That can now often include experiences online. There’s lots of great information available for you to read like #AskTheAwkward - help to talk with your children about online relationships (ceopeducation.co.uk) and Online Behaviour & Safety | Parent Club

Remind them that they have people in their lives that love them & they can turn to.

No judgement, nothing is too embarrassing. Only love and support. Always.

Suggest other trusted adults or sources of help they could go to if ever they felt they couldn’t talk to you. This might be another family member, teacher, youth worker or Childline | Childline

Reassure them that they won’t get into trouble.

Whilst it’s illegal to send, share and receive nude images of someone under 18, if they’ve been coerced, threatened, pressured or tricked into doing it – like in a sextortion case – they will not face any charges or blame. They are a victim and Police Scotland will treat them in that way.

You don’t need to be a cyber expert. 

Show your young person that even if you don’t know the answers, together, you’ll help find them. Learn about sextortion with them – ask them for their experiences, opinions and thoughts. You could start by sharing our social media posts with them.

Help them to review their privacy settings and consider changing your own - if criminals can’t see who their friends and family are, they’re less likely to be able to make threats to share images or information. UK Safer Internet Centre has a guide for parents and carers Improve your Privacy Online - Advice for parents and professionals - UK Safer Internet Centre

Learn how to prevent social media accounts from being hacked here

Learn how to spot phishing emails and how to protect yourself here.

The person blackmailing your young person will use very sophisticated ways to manipulate them into engaging with them.

It’s important to share the signs for them to look out for. 

These include:

• They’re moving too fast. They try to develop a relationship with them very quickly. They might be flirty, tell them they like them, or ask for sexual / indecent images and videos. Some may even send a sexual / indecent image to them first to build their trust.
• They pressure them to do things they’re not comfortable with. They may repeatedly ask them to do sexual things they don’t feel comfortable with.
• They might tell them they’ve hacked their account or that they have access to their contacts. Some blackmailers might tell them they’ve got nude/semi-nude images or videos from their device. They might threaten to share this information unless money is given to them.

Encourage young people to stop talking to someone that makes them feel uncomfortable, block them and seek advice from a trusted adult immediately.

Reassure them that they’ve done the right thing by telling you. 

It’s understandable to be shocked and upset about what’s happened but it’s important to not show these reactions to your young person. Consider how hard it must have been for them to have come to you and that they may be full of shame and fear - thank them for trusting you. 

Don’t blame them.

The person blackmailing your young person will often be part of an organised crime gang and will have used very sophisticated ways to have manipulated them into engaging with them.

Do not pay or do what they are demanding

Some victims who have paid or complied hear no more about it, others pay and are pressured for more money. In some cases, even when money is paid the criminals share the videos or images anyway. 

Do not talk any further to the criminals 

Don’t try to reason with them or talk to them. Encourage your young person to put their phone down and not read their highly manipulative, threatening messages. Block the criminal as soon as possible on all social media platforms.

Account Settings

Support your young person to lockdown their privacy settings across all social media platforms – turn them to private so only the people they choose can see what they post.

Change the passwords to all accounts and emails.

Help them to turn their location settings on Snapchat and all other platforms off so nobody can see where they are.

Encourage them to go through their friends/followers – they should try to remove everyone they don’t know face to face (where you live or through family connections) and trust.

Don’t delete any messages or their profile – read more about the next steps below.

Help them to consider what positive action they could take.

Whilst it’s understandable to want to take over – and some young people may want you to - it’s important that they feel in control of their next steps and that they’re not forced to do anything they don’t feel ready to do.

The following are options available for the young person:

Evidence gathering

Even if they’ve not agreed to report it to the Police at this point, gathering evidence allows this to be an option available to them if/when they are ready. 

Don’t delete anything that could be used as evidence – this includes the social media account (just ensure they’ve fully locked down their privacy settings as outlined above)

If you feel safe to do so, take screen shots of any communication and the offender’s profile information and keep it as evidence in case they decide to cover their tracks.

Report the incident 

Report it to Police Scotland by calling 101 or report it to CEOP 

This will be treated confidentially and sensitively by Police. 

Reporting this crime to the Police gives them the opportunity to investigate and report to the Procurator Fiscal. The criminal blackmailing your young person, may have also targeted other people and it allows Police to link the crimes together to build a strong case and try to prevent others from being harmed in the same way.

You/your child should also report it to each of the social media platform where they had contact with the criminal. 

Use the Report Remove Tool 

If your child is under 18 you can help them to use Report Remove | Childline and confidentially report sexual images and videos of themselves in order to have them removed from the internet. Or they can do it without your help by following the guide. They won’t need to talk to anyone about it, simply complete and upload each part of the online form.

If your child is now over 18, they can go to Stop NCII (Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse) and report it using a free tool which helps to detect and remove intimate images from being shared online.