UK police forces are receiving more than 110 reports of child sextortion attempts every month, according to the National Crime Agency, as a new awareness campaign is launched about the online scourge.
The NCA said the use of artificial intelligence in sextortion attacks had also increased “substantially” over the past three years as criminals adapted their methods.
The agency said in the first five months of 2024 – the first time it has collected such data – police forces received an average of 117 reports of sextortion from under-18s each month.
Sextortion is a form of blackmail where teenagers – typically boys, although incidents involving girls are increasing – are tricked into sending nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves to fraudsters who have made contact on social media and messaging platforms.
The criminals then demand money and threaten to share the material publicly or with people known to the victims.
The new NCA campaign, launched on Thursday, will feature on social media platforms including Instagram, Reddit and Snapchat.
“The key message to victims is they are not to blame, it is not their fault and they are not alone. Support is available and they will receive a sympathetic hearing,” said Sean Sutton, a senior manager at the NCA.
The campaign, asking the question “Being blackmailed after sharing a nude?”, also carries the slogan “Stay calm. Don’t pay” and asks victims to contact the NCA’s CEOP (child exploitation and online protection) platform, which is staffed by child protection specialists.
The NCA said CEOP received 380 sextortion reports in 2024. Sutton said he hoped the campaign, which follows a drive last year to alert teachers to the sextortion threat to pupils, would reach parents and carers as well.
Last month the Internet Watch Foundation, an online safety watchdog, revealed that childrenaged 11 to 13 were being targeted by sextortion criminals for the first time. Sutton said the 15- to 17-year-old age group remained the most affected child demographic.
The NCA has also seen an increase in digitally manipulated or AI-generated sextortion attempts, when victims have not been tricked into sending an intimate image of themselves before being blackmailed.
Sutton said the NCA presumed AI-generated attempts were going to become more frequent as the technology proliferated. “There is going to be more potential for them to perpetrate these crimes,” he said.
Sextortion gangs are usually based overseas in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and the Philippines. Sutton said the NCA remained in discussions with Nigerian authorities about tackling offenders, with extradition of sextortion criminals among the options.
“We are in the process of trying to do more work with the Nigerians and any country where there is a focus on this type of crime,” he said.
