FBI Jacksonville shares how parents can protect their children from ‘sextortion’

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – There’s a safety alert for parents: The FBI is wanting about a growing trend of online extortion cases targeting teens.

The bureau issued an advisory this week, saying it has tracked thousands of what it calls “sextortion” cases — people being blackmailed into handing over money, gift cards or other payment to prevent explicit images from being published.

But “financial sextortion” cases take it a step further, FBI Jacksonville spokesperson Amanda Videll explains.

“In these financial sextortion cases, they’re saying, instead of us releasing these pictures, we want you to pay us so that we will not, and these predators are getting away with a lot of money,” Videll told NewsJAX on Friday.

The targets, Videll says, tend to be young teenagers, usually boys, who start interacting with scammers on any online communication platform — whether its a dating site, gaming console or social media app.

“They’re asking these kids to buy gift cards and send them the numbers from those gift cards or just to give them their bank account numbers directly, and then they just drain these kids’ bank accounts,” Videll said.

RELATED: FBI: Steep climb in teens targeted by online ‘sextortion’

In the past year, the FBI has tracked more than 7,000 reports, resulting in the discovery of about 3,000 victims.

Sadly, the bureau says, the trend has also contributed to dozens of suicides.

But Videll says it’s also difficult to identify all of the case, as due to the nature of the crime, it is something that young teens fear reporting.

“Unfortunately, these scams work because these predators put fear into their victims,” Videll said. “The fear is what causes people to act to try to prevent something bad from happening in their lives in the future.”

So the answer, Videll says, is to have a conversation with your children to both prepare them for what online dangers they might encounter but also to let them know that you’re there as their advocate and protector if anything does happen.

“So sit down, talk to your child about the apps, the permissions that they’re giving to these applications when they download them, the types of personal information they’re going to be sharing with the world if they do not take caution and set those settings properly when they’re putting that content down on there,” Videll said.

Videll also says you should ignore your instinct to immediately block or delete scam messages or profiles. The FBI actually wants you to keep that to give them more evidence to investigate.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a checklist with motor advice for parents on how to help their children navigate the digital world. You can find that here.