Published: Mon 18 Sep 2023
Reports of children falling victim to a form of online sexual extortion have soared this year, a charity has warned.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had received an "unprecedented" 191 reports of "sextortion" in the first half of this year, compared to 30 reports across the whole of last year.
The number of reports that saw action taken rose by 257% in the same period - and at least 6% of that content involved the most serious Category A images, the IWF said.
Sextortion is a form of blackmail in which a child is tricked into sending sexual images of themselves to abusers, who then threaten to share the pictures with friends, family or more widely on the internet if they are not paid money.
Read the full article at Sky News.
Messaging app Telegram will deploy new tools to prevent the spread of images of child sexual abuse after teaming up with the Internet Watch Foundation.
After years of ignoring pleas to sign up to child protection schemes, the controversial messaging app Telegram has agreed to work with an internationally recognised body to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The images that Nelson made have been linked back to real children around the world. In some cases, he then went on to encourage his clients to rape and sexually assault the youngsters.