Safeguarding: Understanding sextortion and deepfakes
To raise awareness and support schools during Safeguarding Awareness Week, we spoke with our safeguarding expert, Dawn Jotham, to explore the dangers of sextortion and deepfakes - and to share practical steps for helping children prevent or remove harmful content shared online.
What is sextortion?
Online sexual coercion and extortion of children, often referred to as 'sextortion', is a form of cybercrime in which perpetrators manipulate, blackmail or threaten children to obtain sexual material, money, or other forms of compliance.
Recent statistics reveal the alarming scale of the issue:
- In 2023/24, Childline provided over 900 counselling sessions to children on online sexual coercion and extortion. This figure does not include an additional 150 calls made by concerned adults.
- The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reported a disturbing rise in younger children being targeted.
The report went on to say that:
In the first six months of 2024, child sexual abuse reports related to sexual extortion were up 19% compared to the same period in 2023.
While boys still make up the majority of victims, there has been a 2,600% increase in reports involving girls.
What are synthetic sexual content and deepfakes?
Synthetic sexual content
Synthetic sexual content, often referred to as a 'deepfake', involves the use of technology to alter an image or video, replacing a person's face or voice with another's. Offenders can exploit this technology to create fake images of children, even when the victim has shared no images. These fabricated images are then used to blackmail victims into paying to prevent the content from being shared with family and friends.
Deepfakes
Deepfakes can act in several ways:
- Demeaning: Deepfakes can falsely depict someone in harmful or humiliating scenarios, such as sexual activity. They are often used to extort money or force victims to share more explicit material.
- Defrauding: By mispresenting someone's identity, deepfakes can be used in fake advertisements, romance scams, or fraudulent schemes.
- Disinforming: Deepfakes can spread false information online, influencing public opinion on critical societal or political issues, such as elections, war, religion or health.
How to support children to remove or prevent images from being shared online
- Report remove: The Internet Watch Foundation and Childline's tool helps report and remove harmful images.
- Take it down: Provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, this tool assists in stopping the online sharing of images across participating platforms.
- Report harmful content: Use official reporting channels to flag harmful material.
- Revenge porn helpline: Offers support to those affected by intimate images being shared without consent.
- Direct reporting: Encourage reporting incidents directly to the platform or app where the content is shared.
Explore more for Safeguarding Awareness Week
Looking for more support, activities and resources?
Visit our Safeguarding Awareness Week homepage for free assembly packs, expert advice, resources, and more ways to get involved in promoting online safety and wellbeing in your school.
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