Instagram, WhatsApp and iMessage Flagged as Main Hubs for Teenager Sextortion

Instagram, WhatsApp, and iMessage have become the primary hubs for a rising wave of online sextortion, and a new transparency report reveals that major social media and messaging platforms are failing to stop it. Published by Australia’s online safety watchdog, eSafety, the report details over 2,000 sexual extortion complaints received in a single six-month period. The findings expose a frustrating reality: criminals are easily exploiting weak detection systems and inconsistent safeguards to blackmail users. Meanwhile, tech companies choose to stay in a reactive mode. The scale of the problem is massive, as The Guardian reports. Instagram and WhatsApp lead the pack by a wide margin, appearing together in more than 1,300 of the complaints. The demographic data also challenges common assumptions. Young men aged 18 to 24 filed the most reports, accounting for roughly 800 cases. However, younger teenagers are increasingly in the crosshairs. When looking specifically at victims under the age of 18, Apple’s iMessage and Snapchat were the services most frequently linked to these extortion threats. Criminals run these operations using highly coordinated, terrifying strategies on these popular apps. The eSafety watchdog highlighted some of the chilling messages sent to victims. The list includes explicit threats like “I
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