Combating Sextortion: New Measures to Protect Teens and Young Adults

Sextortion is a serious crime where scammers exploit victims by threatening to expose their intimate imagery unless demands are met. To counter this growing threat, we’re launching a comprehensive campaign and introducing new safety features aimed at educating and protecting our community, particularly teens and young adults, from these malicious tactics.

Raising Awareness Among Teens and Parents

Education is a powerful tool in preventing sextortion. In collaboration with child safety organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Thorn, we’ve developed resources to help young people recognize the warning signs of sextortion scams. These include:

• Red Flags to Watch For: Scammers may approach victims with excessive friendliness, request photo exchanges, or suggest moving the conversation to another app.
• Educational Video: Teens are introduced to strategies for identifying and avoiding scams, reassuring them that sextortion is never their fault.

The campaign also directs users to resources like NCMEC’s Take It Down tool for preventing intimate images from being shared online and offers live chat support via Crisis Text Line in the U.S.

Parental Resources

To assist parents, we’ve partnered with creators who share guidance on discussing sextortion with teens. This includes identifying scams and responding effectively if their child is targeted. Helpful conversation guides, co-developed with Thorn, are also available.

New Safety Features to Prevent Sextortion

We’re introducing innovative features to disrupt sextortion attempts on our platforms:

1. Stronger Messaging Restrictions: Teens under 18 will now experience stricter limits on who can send follow requests. Accounts showing signs of suspicious behavior may have their requests blocked or marked as spam.
2. Safety Notices: Alerts will notify teens when they’re chatting with someone potentially located in another country.
3. Privacy Enhancements: Scammers will no longer see follower lists, likes, or tags on posts for accounts flagged as suspicious.

Additionally, we’re rolling out screenshot prevention for ephemeral messages, ensuring sensitive images shared via the “view once” feature cannot be captured or recorded without consent.

Nudity Protection and Global Rollout

To further protect teens, we’ve launched a nudity protection tool in DMs that blurs inappropriate images. Enabled by default for users under 18, this feature provides warnings and empowers teens to report unwanted content.

Taking Action Against Sextortion Networks

Meta is intensifying efforts to dismantle organized sextortion rings, such as the “Yahoo Boys” network. Recent enforcement actions include removing thousands of accounts and groups engaging in such criminal activities. By sharing insights with initiatives like the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, we’re helping other platforms strengthen their defenses.

Providing 24/7 Support

Our partnership with Crisis Text Line offers users access to confidential mental health support. When reporting sextortion-related issues, users can now chat with crisis counselors for guidance and assistance.

These initiatives reflect our commitment to combating sextortion and evolving our defenses to protect vulnerable communities.