Make No Payment To Sextortionists, Report Cases To CSA Incident Reporting Points

The Cyber Security Authority (CSA) has called on the general public to avoid bowing to the demands of online sextortionists.

Sextortion generally is a threat to expose sexual images in order to make a person do something.

According to the CSA, such cases must rather be reported to Cybersecurity/Cybercrime Incident Reporting Points of Contact for guidance.

How Sextortionists Work
According to the CSA, a potential victim would typically make a new friend on a social media platform e.g., Facebook.

The two parties eventually exchange WhatsApp numbers and the chats continue over there, establishing a level of trust and familiarity

“After some time, a video call is initiated over which the victim ends up being persuaded to go nude. Unknown to them, the session is recorded by the other party.

“Some days afterwards, the other party (or an associate) will contact the victim indicating that they have these videos and will threaten to release them in public unless they receive a specified payment. In some cases, the criminals will go ahead to share it online, provide a link (URL) to where it is and indicate it would only be taken down when they are paid.”

The demands, the Authority said, typically do not end once the first payment is made.

Managing Such Cases
“If you are contacted by anyone claiming to have images and/or videos of you of an intimate nature requesting a payment in exchange for not releasing them to the public, report it immediately to the CSA’s Cybersecurity/Cybercrime Incident Reporting Points of Contact for guidance. Do NOT make any payments”, CSA noted.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini