'Sextortion' reports triple to start 2023 with young men targeted

eSafety has revealed more young men are being blackmailed after sending explicit photos and videos to criminals posing as young women online.

Reports of sexual extortion tripled in the first three months of 2023, compared to the same time last year.

Of the more than 1700 reports, most were from 18- to 24-year-olds and 90 per cent were male.

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eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said criminals would often send fake explicit content to manipulate and coerce their targets.

"They're also ruthless but targeted in their demands, applying more and more pressure to people who respond to their threats," she said.

"If you pay once, they keep coming back with more demands. And because they're mainly based overseas, it's virtually impossible for people to get their money back."

Some young people have lost thousands of dollars after being blackmailed.

"We need to educate young people, especially young men, to be very wary of attractive strangers approaching them out of the blue who get sexual straight away," Ms Inman Grant said.

"There's a big risk it's an impersonator account being managed by organised crime, looking to blackmail that young person once they share sexual content."

Victims are told not to engage with blackmail or pay, but report the account to the social media platform and to eSafety.gov.au

eSafety has also had an almost three-fold jump in reports of child sexual abuse material online.

Between January and March almost 8000 reports were made.

Ms Inman Grant attributed some of the rise to Australians being more educated about reporting the material.

But she said there had also been increased global demand and supply of the "horrific material" since the start of the pandemic.

She called on industry to take greater steps to implement safety features and systems to address the sickening trend.

"With the next evolution of technology almost upon us, we need industry to work much harder to actively prevent current and new technologies, such as generative AI, from being weaponised against children and young people," Ms Inman Grant said.

"These new technologies have the potential to cause harms that are more visceral and more difficult to detect."

For more information visit esafety.gov.au/report