SEXTORTION HELPLINE
Strike Back Against Sextortionists with Help from the Pros

Sextortion is the crime of leveraging the victim’s intimate content to coerce them into meeting specified demands. This can include requests for further content, sexual favors, or monetary payments.

The sextortionist typically reaches out behind a fabricated online profile that appears to belong to an individual around the target’s age. They study their target’s online activity to get a feel for their interests and tailor their manipulation tactics. After establishing a rapport, the sextortionist will propose the idea of exchanging nudes.

The second the target sends one, the conversation takes a sudden shift. Long gone is the friendly new acquaintance. In their place is a menacing cybercriminal threatening to expose their content and ruin their reputation if they don’t comply.

Sextortion can happen to anyone, regardless of age, race, gender, or social status. It’s important for all internet users to take preventative measures to avoid falling victim. Here are some practices that can help keep you safe.

• Use Heightened Privacy Settings.Set your online accounts to private and limit who can interact with you on them. You should be selective with who you let follow you and avoid accepting requests from people you don’t know.
• Avoid Oversharing. You should take extreme caution if you decide to engage in sexting, even if it’s with someone you believe you can trust. With the progression of generative AI, you should also avoid sharing content that could be used for deepfake sextortion.
• Listen to Your Intuition. Sometimes, something just seems off. It might be inconsistent language, spiritic behavior, or some small nuance that you can’t quite pinpoint. Regardless, it’s best to trust your gut.

If you fall into a sextortion scheme, you shouldn’t blame yourself. Sextortion can happen to anyone, and it’s never the victim’s fault. There is help available, and recovery is achievable. Here’s what you should do.

• Don’t Pay the Sextortionist. There’s no guarantee that compliance will make a sextortionist go away. In fact, it often does just the opposite. You should end the conversation but avoid blocking the perpetrator until after a proper investigation has been conducted.
• Gather Evidence. Take screenshots of the sextortionist’s profiles, threatening messages, shared content, and timestamps. This will allow you to reconstruct the timeline of the crime to support reports and legal action.
• Notify the Proper Authorities. With the evidence you’ve gathered, report the sextortionist to hold them accountable. You should inform the platform where the sextortion occurred as well as law enforcement.

You should report the sextortionist’s account to the system administrator of the platform where the crime occurred. This can help them identify the profile engaging in this abusive behavior and allow them to suspend or permanently remove it.

You should also inform law enforcement. To inform your local police, you can file a report in person by going to the station. Some precincts also allow victims to report crimes online or over the phone.

If the local police can’t solve your case, you should notify the FBI. You can report cybercrime to the FBI by visiting your local field office, calling 1-800-CALL-FBI, or online through the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

There’s no foolproof answer to whether a sextortionist will follow through on their threats. However, there are factors that can influence the chances of exposure.

Factors That May Lead a Sextortionist to Follow Through:

• Targets with high social status, net worth, and more to lose if their reputation is tarnished.
• Targets who have responded with either a willingness to comply or immediate confrontation.

Factors That May Deter a Sextortionist from Following Through:

• Loss of leverage by releasing the content they are trying to extort you with
• Fear of getting caught either from their additional criminal behavior or the involvement of law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals.

Our team has years of experience and thousands of supported clients in our history that have helped us develop proprietary techniques. We know how sextortionists operate, and we’ve developed strategies that can aid your mission to protect yourself and hold them accountable.

We can follow the cybercriminal’s digital footprint to gather evidence that can be instrumental in identification efforts. Furthermore, our reports can be used to support legal action. We can provide ongoing threat monitoring and security guidance to help you position yourself to safely operate online, even after our investigation has concluded.