Todd and I wrote our new book as law enforcement professionals to address the growing threat of cybercrime. Elderly fraud is on the rise, and while we’ve long been concerned about minors being targeted by online predators, the recent surge in sextortion cases against minors is alarming.

Sextortion

A study by Thron¹ in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), examined more than 15 million reports made to the NCMEC CyberTipline from 2020 to 2023 to pinpoint sextortion cases. This heinous crime can affect any age group, but this report was focused on the sextortion of minors. The study found:

The vast majority of victims of financial sextortion submitted to NCMEC are male teenage victims; of minors in the NCMEC data with both age and gender, 90% were males between 14 and 17.15.

Historically, sexual predators would extort explicit images from victims, which they would use for their own perverted purpose or to trade with other sex offenders. This study found that an average of 812 sextortion reports per week in the last year of data analyzed, “with reason to expect that the vast majority of those reports were financial sextortion.” At 812 reports per week that amounts to 42,224 in a year. The majority of reports were received from Instagram and the report noted … “there are reasons to worry whether other platforms are underreporting.” This crime is often discovered tragically, not through NMEC reports, but when a sextortion victim commits suicide, and digital evidence is found on their devices as parents and law enforcement search for answers.

As is often the case with the cybercrimes the offender and the victim don’t even have to be in the same country. The report identified two countries from which sextortion perpetrators are often operating, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire.

Cybercriminals are Attacking on Many Fronts

It should be clear that no matter where you are cybercrime can attack you or your loved ones. However, it takes more than just installing anti-virus software and firewalls to survive these threats. No matter how secure we make our devices and practices, we remain vulnerable to cyberharm due to others’ mistakes. Today’s headlines should make that clear. It was recently reported that hackers stole the personal information of 3 billion people, including every existing Social Security numbers, from background check company National Public Data (NPD).

Todd and I wanted to not only provide information to make individuals, and their loved ones, save from the fraudsters and predators but also information they can use when those steps fail or when others drop the ball. Safety implies freedom from danger, but the Internet isn’t free from harm. “Cybersurvival” is a better term, acknowledging risks while emphasizing overcoming cyber threats. That is what our book strives to accomplish, to make one a cybersurvivor.

1. Thorn is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. ↩︎