(VOR News) – Meta has announced that Instagram will launch a new campaign on Thursday aimed at assisting parents and teenagers in preventing sextortion and countering financially motivated criminals who exploit young individuals.
The initiative will also assist in combating fraudsters who exploit young individuals.
“Sextortion is a heinous crime in which financially motivated scammers prey on young adults and teenagers globally, threatening to disclose their intimate images unless their demands are met,” Meta declared in a statement released on Thursday.
“Today, we are unveiling new initiatives in our battle against these offenders, including an educational campaign aimed at informing adolescents and parents about identifying sextortion scams and the appropriate actions to regain control if targeted by such schemes.”
Meta tested nudity protection, now it’s global.
Moreover, screenshots of specific photographs are prohibited in direct messages, and the lists of followers and followers are obscured from possible sextortion perpetrators.
Sextortion is the act of extorting funds from minors by threatening to publicly disclose their private images. Con artists deceive victims into transmitting images via email.
The substantial rise in sextortion schemes has inflicted considerable distress on children and adolescents; from 2021 to 2023, complaints related to internet enticement surged by over 300 percent. John Shehan, Senior Vice President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, stated, “Campaigns like this provide essential education to assist families in early recognition of these threats.”
Meta includes a link to the Take It Down Tool, developed by NCMEC, which aids in preventing the online distribution of private pictures. The film is intended to assist teens impacted by sextortion schemes.
The film will be watched on Instagram by millions of adolescents and young adults in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
Meta announced the removal of 820 profiles associated with Yahoo Boys and 800 Facebook groups from the network in the past week. Meta reports that the gang said they were endeavoring to organize, recruit, and train fresh sextortion scammers.
Due to their classification as a possibly hazardous group, Yahoo Boys are prohibited from engaging in Meta’s policies. To combat sextortion, Meta has collaborated with prominent young producers to enhance awareness of the associated risks.
The authors are scheduled to participate in a campaign against sextortion.
In alignment with the anti-sextortion program, Meta’s applications have been enhanced with new safety features aimed at safeguarding underage users against sextortion.
These encompass adolescent accounts that feature inherent protections and limitations on the maximum number of contacts. Adolescents under the age of 16 cannot modify these safeguards without parental consent. Meta said Thursday that private chat users cannot capture or record fleeting photos or videos.
“This indicates that when an individual transmits a photo or video via Instagram DM or Messenger utilizing our ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ feature, they need not be concerned about it being screenshotted or recorded within the application without their permission.”
A trait that can inhibit exposure on Meta, which underwent testing in April, will soon be universally accessible. The feature obscures images classified as nudes in direct messaging on Instagram and is enabled by default for users under 18 years of age.
A 24/7 Crisis Text Line will provide discreet mental health support for sextortion-related issues.
Meta is testing new safety notifications for Messenger and Direct Messages that inform adolescents if they are interacting with someone situated in a different country.
Meta announced, “We are consistently enhancing our methods for identifying scammers, eliminating their accounts, and preventing their return.”
In July, Meta terminated 63,000 Instagram accounts of Nigerian users to combat sextortion. Moreover, Yahoo Boys, a loosely affiliated collective of hackers primarily based in Nigeria, were alleged to be managing Facebook pages, groups, and accounts on the social networking platform
SOURCE: UPI
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