Beware Of The Sextortion Attempts In Online Dating, Warns UK Police
As legislators play whack-a-mole with COVID-19 disease rates and attempt to adjust the financial harm brought about by lockdowns, stay-at-home requests have likewise affected those out there in the dating scenario. The United Kingdom has force stopped meeting anyone other than your personal group of family and relatives and exploiting that can cause a person to pay a fine.
Due to this, meeting up with any other person for a walk in the park, over a coffee or drink, dates or night stays, all have been terminated. So, the only choice left for people involved in the dating scenario is making connections online via dating apps and social networking sites. Keeping in mind that, sexual desires won’t go away just because everyone is confined to their places, many healthcare authorities all around the globe have suggested that no one should meet strangers for discreet encounters, as they will be contributing to the spreading of COVID-19. This introduced a new phrase with an understandable meaning “You are your safest sex partner”. However, the search for a partner has been terminated for the time, but dating apps like eHarmony, Tinder, and the new Quarantine together have received massive sign-ups (i.e. in record numbers). Once the chatting over zoom and other dating apps is over, not being alert will lead you straight to blackmailing.
Police of the UK’s Thames Valley recently registered a case of sextortion scam which began like any other basic dating steps. A woman contacted a young guy via Facebook who was interested in video chats. The police revealed that they communicated online just two times, there were no intimate events during the first online meet but turned completely upside down in the second online session. The woman involved recorded the intimate events of the guy and later she threatened him to pay 200 Euros or she would share the intimate events of the guy with his family and friends o via Facebook (family and friends were revealed to her by the Facebook connection). The guy who seemed like would have surrendered refused to pay her but still received several threats to pay the ransom, eventually, he blocked her and before informing any law enforcement authorities, deleted all his accounts.
However, in this case, the guy somehow came out unharmed, the police of Thames Valley suggest staying alert and not doing anything stupid online. It is considered that the woman was just a small fish being part of a massive phishing scam. This case is a perfect example of how careful and alert one should be while involving in any online intimate acts, keeping in mind how badly the events can be used against you.
The internet has been a major part of such cases which provides a suitable environment to criminals for sextortion, extorting sexual events or images, etc. Emotions such as fear, worry, humiliation, embarrassment are major keys for sextortion that criminals use to execute such events. Sextortion is initiated in several ways, like via emails that may or may not contain your private passwords, stating that your surfing history and visits to pornographic websites have been accessed or you have been recorded by accessing your webcam. Some emails may contain passwords to your online accounts that may have been breached in earlier events of the platform, to display themselves as more legitimate. Some may contain demands for not releasing your intimate event images and videos, such threats are generally from your earlier partners or from someone you may know.
Since there are several ways to trap anyone in such events, everyone should reconsider what things you should share online. It is suggested that anyone or everyone who faces such events and blackmailing should refuse the criminal to pay the ransom and contact authorities as soon as possible. Also, there is no surety that the criminal would let you go once you pay him/her, they will only demand more and more if you pay them once.
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