Sextortion email scams
Sextortion scams threaten to release real or fabricated compromising images or claim to have recorded a victim through hacked devices unless payment is made, and law enforcement agencies report a sharp rise in cases targeting both adults and minors in recent years, including a growing number linked to teen suicides.
What we know
Sextortion scams generally take one of two primary forms. The first involves a scammer claiming, usually falsely, to have compromised a victim's webcam or device and recorded them viewing explicit content, then demanding payment, typically in cryptocurrency, to prevent the supposed footage from being sent to the victim's contacts. These messages often include a password associated with the victim from a previous, unrelated data breach as supposed proof of the hack, a tactic intended to increase perceived credibility even though the scammer generally has no actual footage or device access.
The second and increasingly common form, sometimes called financial sextortion, involves scammers who build a relationship with a target, frequently a minor, through social media or messaging apps, often posing as a peer, convince the victim to share explicit images, and then threaten to distribute those images to family, friends, or classmates unless the victim pays money, typically through gift cards or payment apps. The FBI issued a national public safety alert in December 2022 specifically about this pattern targeting minors, noting a significant increase in reports and, critically, that this category of sextortion had been linked to a number of teen suicides.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that its CyberTipline received over 26,000 reports of financial sextortion in 2023, and the FBI has separately reported that this scam is frequently run by organized groups operating from West Africa and Southeast Asia, targeting teenage boys in particular through fake profiles of attractive young women on platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, according to FBI public statements accompanying the 2022 alert.
Unlike traditional extortion, the psychological pressure in sextortion is intensified by shame and fear of social exposure, which researchers studying this crime note contributes to victims paying even when they suspect they are being scammed, and contributes to underreporting, since victims, especially minors, may fear that reporting the crime to a parent or law enforcement will expose the compromising material more broadly, or that they will face consequences themselves for having shared images initially.
Law enforcement guidance from the FBI and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children consistently recommends against paying, since payment does not guarantee non-distribution and often leads to escalating demands, and instead recommends immediately stopping contact with the scammer, preserving evidence such as messages and usernames, reporting the account to the platform, and reporting the crime to law enforcement or the CyberTipline, emphasizing that victims, particularly minors, will not face legal consequences for having been targeted by this crime. Both agencies also emphasize that parents and guardians should approach the topic calmly and without shaming affected minors, given the documented and serious link between shame-driven isolation and the most severe outcomes in these cases.
Common claims
- The scammer really has a video of me from my webcamAlmost certainly false - email uses an old password as false proof, not actual access
- Paying the ransom will make it stopFalse - payment marks you as a paying target and encourages further demands
- If they have my old password, they must have my computerFalse - old passwords come from breach databases, not computer access