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Instagram To Introduce New Measures To Stop “Sextortion”

By Hugh Fort in US business news, posted April 11, 2024

Instagram is taking steps to protect teenagers from financial "sextortion", a rising crime where scammers threaten to share victims' nude photos unless they receive money.

The platform plans to introduce measures, including blurring explicit images in direct messages and alerting users about interactions with potential extortionists.

The new features are set for initial testing among select users and aim to shield young users from such exploitation.

Antigone Davis, Meta’s director of global safety, told CNN: “It is a really horrific crime that preys on making people feel alone and ashamed.

“It’s been well documented that the crime is growing, and this is one of the reasons that we want to get out ahead and make sure people are aware of what we’re doing as we continually evolve our tools.”

The new tools introduced by Instagram owner Meta include a nudity protection feature that blurs explicit images in messages.

This encourages recipients to either ignore or block the sender.

“It is a really horrific crime that preys on making people feel alone and ashamed"

This feature, which uses on-device machine learning to detect nudity, will be enabled by default for users under 18, with adults also prompted to activate it.

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Meta is also enhancing its ability to identify and restrict sextortion scammers by monitoring suspicious behaviors and limiting their platform interaction.

This is part of a broader effort, including participation in the Tech Coalition's Lantern program, to share information across platforms and combat child exploitation more effectively.

Davis added: “What I would like to see accomplished with this announcement is that parents are more aware of this crime and take time to learn about it.

“I also want to make sure parents know it’s important to let their kids know that it is okay to come to them if something has happened.

"They shouldn’t feel ashamed to come forward and there are tools available that can help.”

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