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Adults consistently tell students to watch out for the world around them, but sometimes forget to look at the world behind the screen. Recently sextortion cases have spiked in Colorado with students coming out about their experiences of feeling pressured to send explicit pictures of themselves to adults online only to later be threatened with the pictures for money.

Sextortion is a form of scamming where you send an explicit picture to someone you met online or someone you know. In return, they save the image and threaten to expose those pictures to your friends, your family, or your job. Officer Shaw Gifford is with the Englewood Police Department and EHS School Resource Officer, “So I’ve actually dealt with many cases involving sextortion where we (Law Enforcement) don’t always call it sextortion as far as the law goes, because it’s getting into a lot of different types of internet luring, different criminal statutes, and different types of sextortion can use different forms of manipulating and controlling an individual.”

At the end of January, 2024, at least six Aurora High School students were targeted by a so-called “sextortion” scheme. According to the Aurora police, students said they were direct targets of the sextortion scheme after someone reached out on Instagram. Police also say in dozens of other recent cases students got unsolicited invitations to pay to join a private Instagram “Close Friends” list with sexually explicit material. Aurora detectives have taken reports from Rangeview High, Smoky Hill High, Gateway High, Vista Peak, Cherokee Trail, Overland, Aurora Hills Middle and Mrachek Middle, all schools on the front range in Colorado.

Officer Gifford says students at Englewood High School are at risk as well, “It’s definitely a huge problem, especially with the age of social media, and even just technology and the way technology is developing and getting more rampant. It’s tough to deal with because it’s hard to track.”

With these cases on the rise, people need to understand the importance of internet safety and how imperative it can be to speak out about experiences they have had online. In a lot of sextortion cases in the past, victims have been devastated by the thought of being exposed and took their own lifes believing it was the only thing left to do.

Over the past two years sextorion cases have been investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security they report receiving over 13,000 reports of sextortion cases involving finacle motives from the exploiter. The victims of these reports have been primarily boys and have lead to at least 20 suicides of victims with suicides and attempts rising as the amount of cases increase.

Englewood High School junior Venus Koyama has not dealt with sextortion but has fallen victim to multiple scams once resulting in her oldest account being hacked and deleted. She says it is hard to feel safe online, “As a woman no, and as someone under 18? Absolutely not.”

Computer generated images from Artificial Intelligence have changed the game as well, “So there’s different ways of using this AI technology to change a person’s body type to be nude. So those are the ones you see and then it’s getting used as blackmail,” Officer Gifford said.

The extortion of children online doesn’t stop at sextortion. In some cases, children have been exploited online by their own parents. This is shown with the rise of family vloggers. Online crime experts say some people see a video of a child as suggestive. “Parents need to be careful with how they post their children, because sadly posting them eating fruit or in their tutus etc, etc. Gives creeps full access to what some people would consider suggestive content of children especially children under the age of 13.” said Koyama.

Officer Gifford says to report these cases to officials at the social media platform and the federal level like the FBI, “At the city level, we don’t have as many resources to go out and track down these perpetrators. But at the federal level, the FBI does a lot of these cases, and they tend to be the ones you want to contact.”

The most important thing is to be safe online, not only in the context of sextortion but it’s important to protect yourself online from people you don’t know in many ways. You should always be aware of what you’re posting and the audience it’s going out to make sure your accounts are private and the people messaging you are only people you know and trust, Officer Gifford said, “We need to just think before posting right? Also on the other end, who am I speaking to if I ever engage in a conversation, we don’t always know who’s on the other side.”

Experts say all technology can be dangerous but there are many ways to protect yourself against harm,”Social media outlets have all the technology to make sure that we can help ourselves to be more safe (privacy settings), but anything online comes with a level of danger,” Gifford said, “It’s important to remember that nothing you send disappears. Don’t send these types of pictures, or give these perpetrators what they want.”