Financial sextortion<\/span><\/a> is a horrific crime. We\u2019ve spent years working closely with experts, including those experienced in fighting these crimes, to understand the tactics scammers use to find and extort victims online, so we can develop effective ways to help stop them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Today, we\u2019re sharing an overview of our latest work to tackle these crimes. This includes new tools we\u2019re testing to help protect people from sextortion and other forms of intimate image abuse, and to make it as hard as possible for scammers to find potential targets \u2013 on Meta\u2019s apps and across the internet. We\u2019re also testing new measures to support young people in recognizing and protecting themselves from sextortion scams.<\/span><\/p>\n These updates build on our longstanding work to help protect young people from unwanted or potentially harmful contact. We <\/span>default teens into stricter message settings<\/span><\/a> so they can\u2019t be messaged by anyone they\u2019re not already connected to, show <\/span>Safety Notices<\/span><\/a> to teens who are already in contact with potential scam accounts, and offer a dedicated option for people to report DMs that are threatening to share private images. We also <\/span>supported<\/span><\/a> the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in developing <\/span>Take It Down<\/span><\/a>, a platform that lets young people take back control of their intimate images and helps prevent them being shared online \u2013 taking power away from scammers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While people overwhelmingly use DMs to share what they love with their friends, family or favorite creators, sextortion scammers may also use private messages to share or ask for intimate images. To help address this, we\u2019ll soon start testing our new nudity protection feature in Instagram DMs, which blurs images detected as containing nudity and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images. This feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs, but also to protect them from scammers who may send nude images to trick people into sending their own images in return.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nudity protection will be turned on by default for teens under 18 globally, and we\u2019ll show a notification to adults encouraging them to turn it on.<\/span><\/p>\n When nudity protection is turned on, people sending images containing nudity will see a message reminding them to be cautious when sending sensitive photos, and that they can unsend these photos if they\u2019ve changed their mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anyone who tries to forward a nude image they\u2019ve received will see a message encouraging them to reconsider.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When someone receives an image containing nudity, it will be automatically blurred under a warning screen, meaning the recipient isn\u2019t confronted with a nude image and they can choose whether or not to view it. We\u2019ll also show them a message encouraging them not to feel pressure to respond, with an option to block the sender and report the chat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When sending or receiving these images, people will be directed to safety tips, developed with guidance from experts, about the potential risks involved. These tips include reminders that people may screenshot or forward images without your knowledge, that your relationship to the person may change in the future, and that you should review profiles carefully in case they\u2019re not who they say they are. They also link to a range of resources, including <\/span>Meta\u2019s Safety Center,<\/span><\/a> support helplines<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>StopNCII.org<\/span><\/a> for those over 18, and <\/span>Take It Down<\/span><\/a> for those under 18.<\/span><\/p>\n Nudity protection uses on-device machine learning to analyze whether an image sent in a DM on Instagram contains nudity. Because the images are analyzed on the device itself, nudity protection will work in end-to-end encrypted chats, where Meta won\u2019t have access to these images \u2013 unless someone chooses to report them to us.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCompanies have a responsibility to ensure the protection of minors who use their platforms. Meta\u2019s proposed device-side safety measures within its encrypted environment is encouraging. We are hopeful these new measures will increase reporting by minors and curb the circulation of online child exploitation.\u201d\u00a0 \u2013<\/strong><\/span><\/i>John Shehan, Senior Vice President, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u201cAs an educator, parent, and researcher on adolescent online behavior, I applaud Meta\u2019s new feature that handles the exchange of personal nude content in a thoughtful, nuanced, and appropriate way. It reduces unwanted exposure to potentially traumatic images, gently introduces cognitive dissonance to those who may be open to sharing nudes, and educates people about the potential downsides involved. Each of these should help decrease the incidence of sextortion and related harms, helping to keep young people safe online.\u201d \u2013<\/span><\/i>Dr. Sameer Hinduja, Co-Director of the <\/i><\/b>Cyberbullying Research Center<\/i><\/b><\/a> and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We take severe action when we become aware of people engaging in sextortion: we remove their account, take steps to prevent them from creating new ones and, where appropriate, report them to the NCMEC and law enforcement. Our expert teams also work to investigate and disrupt networks of these criminals, disable their accounts and report them to NCMEC and law enforcement \u2013 including several networks in the last year alone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, we\u2019re also developing technology to help identify where accounts may <\/span>potentially<\/span><\/i> be engaging in sextortion scams, based on a range of signals that could indicate sextortion behavior. While these signals aren\u2019t necessarily evidence that an account has broken our rules, we\u2019re taking precautionary steps to help prevent these accounts from finding and interacting with teen accounts. This builds on the <\/span>work we already do<\/span><\/a> to prevent other potentially suspicious accounts from finding and interacting with teens.<\/span><\/p>\n One way we\u2019re doing this is by making it even harder for potential sextortion accounts to message or interact with people. Now, any message requests potential sextortion accounts try to send will go straight to the recipient\u2019s hidden requests folder, meaning they won\u2019t be notified of the message and never have to see it. For those who are already chatting to potential scam or sextortion accounts, we show <\/span>Safety Notices<\/span><\/a> encouraging them to report any threats to share their private images, and reminding them that they can say no to anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.<\/span><\/p>\n For teens, we\u2019re going even further. We already restrict adults from starting DM chats with teens they\u2019re not connected to, and in January we announced <\/span>stricter messaging defaults for teens under 16<\/span><\/a> (under 18 in certain countries), meaning they can only be messaged by people they\u2019re already connected to \u2013 no matter how old the sender is. Now, we won\u2019t show the \u201cMessage\u201d button on a teen\u2019s profile to potential sextortion accounts, even if they\u2019re already connected.<\/span> We\u2019re also testing hiding teens from these accounts in people\u2019s follower, following and like lists, and making it harder for them to find teen accounts in Search results.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re testing new pop-up messages for people who may have interacted with an account we\u2019ve removed for sextortion. The message will direct them to our expert-backed resources, including our <\/span>Stop Sextortion Hub<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>support helplines<\/span><\/a>, the option to reach out to a friend, <\/span>StopNCII.org<\/span><\/a> for those over 18, and <\/span>Take It Down <\/span><\/a>for those under 18.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re also adding new child safety helplines from around the world into our in-app reporting flows. This means when teens report relevant issues \u2013 such as nudity, threats to share private images or sexual exploitation or solicitation \u2013 we\u2019ll direct them to local child safety helplines where available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIntroducing Nudity Protection in DMs<\/h2>\n
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Preventing Potential Scammers from Connecting with Teens<\/h2>\n
New Resources for People Who May Have Been Approached by Scammers<\/h2>\n
Fighting Sextortion Scams Across the Internet<\/h2>\n