{"id":289112,"date":"2026-07-13T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/13\/young-men-report-more-sextortion-than-any-other-age-group-australias-online-safety-watchdog-says-technology\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T17:35:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T21:35:50","slug":"young-men-report-more-sextortion-than-any-other-age-group-australias-online-safety-watchdog-says-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/13\/young-men-report-more-sextortion-than-any-other-age-group-australias-online-safety-watchdog-says-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Young men report more \u2018sextortion\u2019 than any other age group, Australia\u2019s online safety watchdog says | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Young men report more \u2018sextortion\u2019 than any other age group, Australia\u2019s online safety watchdog says | Technology<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jul\/13\/young-men-report-more-sextortion-than-any-other-age-group-australias-online-safety-watchdog-says-ntwnfb<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-13 16:59:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

A new report by Australia\u2019s online safety regulator has found \u201csignificant gaps\u201d in how major tech platforms tackle online sexual extortion and child sexual exploitation, as \u201creports of this abuse continue to rise\u201d.<\/p>\n

The findings come from eSafety\u2019s latest transparency report, examining how tech companies \u2013 including Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snap, Discord and WhatsApp \u2013 are addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse.<\/p>\n

Between July and December 2025, more than 2,000 complaints of sexual extortion were made to eSafety. While men aged 18 to 24 made the most complaints of any cohort, accounting for about 800 reports, younger teens were increasingly being targeted, the regulator said.<\/p>\n

Sexual extortion \u2013 also known as \u201csextortion\u201d \u2013 is a form of blackmail where a person threatens to share a nude or sexual image or video unless the victim gives in to their demands.<\/p>\n

Instagram and WhatsApp were the most frequently cited platforms, appearing in more than 1,300 complaints combined. For users under 18, Apple\u2019s iMessage and Snapchat were the services most commonly linked to threats of sexual extortion.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the comments sent to victims by criminals who have their intimate content, as cited by the regulator, were: \u201cI have everything to ruin your life\u201d, \u201conly money can help you now to end this peacefully\u201d and \u201cdo you want me to delete your video scandal\u201d.<\/p>\n

eSafety said the latest responses, collected as part of the platforms\u2019 mandatory safety reporting, revealed \u201cpersistent safety gaps in the detection and prevention\u201d of child sexual exploitation and abuse online.<\/p>\n

The watchdog said the findings pointed to \u201cserious gaps\u201d in the use of available detection technologies such as language analysis that can identify well known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders.<\/p>\n

The report also found a \u201clack of proactive detection tools\u201d in live streaming features, with most platforms…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young men report more \u2018sextortion\u2019 than any other age group, Australia\u2019s online safety watchdog says…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/82fae54ed7ab50ce144a61f00eb1155616cac21a\/481_0_4810_3848\/master\/4810.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=2b33d1c9169e8956bd74b68ab2aeeef8","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289114,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289112\/revisions\/289114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}