Meta's Instagram implemented new policies to mitigate the surging threat of sextortion being perpetrated through the online platform. These new policies would aim to guard more users, particularly teenagers, from extortionists who are misusing intimate images to extort some amount of money from them.
In this respect, the platform will strengthen its guard on privacy as it inhibits malicious activities from occurring online.
Escalating Sextortion Scams
Sextortion is a type of scam where hackers threaten the victims to leak their "intimate" photos unless they complete the payment. According to The Washington Times, Instagram developed a set of features that block such activity and provide further security, particularly for the protection of younger users.
Restrictions on Stories About Screenshots
What's most crucially updated here is the feature preventing screenshots from disappearing from Instagram stories. This feature is sure to make the stuff shared on such platforms temporary, with no chance of being captured later by a potential scammer.
TechCrunch says that this feature is much more aggressive than applications like Snapchat - which nowadays notifies the user whenever their posted content is saved but still doesn't prevent screenshots. In addition, Instagram has blocked disappearing stories from being accessed through web browsers, where they could have been recorded easily.
Blocking Suspicious Accounts
Instagram will block suspicious accounts from viewing other users' followers or tagged photos to further add to user safety. That is important because, in most cases, sextortionists target their victims through the analysis of their social network connections. It limits access to information hence reducing chances of getting targeted by scammers.
Read More: Minors Using Instagram Instantly Bombarded With Content From Adult Sex Influencers: Study
Geolocation Warnings
Another way to combat sextortion on Instagram is by issuing a geolocation warning, sending an alert to users' inboxes if the person they're chatting with comes from another country.
Many sextortion scams are based in other countries where people posing as victims will create a false pretense of being in the victims' locations. The FBI says most sextortion scams targeted against minors come from West Africa and Southeast Asia. Geolocation warnings give users the knowledge to avoid those traps.
Teen Accounts: Stronger Protections for Minors
The new policies come with the roll-out of "Teen Accounts" from Instagram, meant to better protect users under 18 years old. These accounts have stricter restrictions and added safety precautions, most especially about explicit content.
This week, it also rolled out a feature that auto-blurs nude images in direct messages sent to teen users. The new feature will be enabled by default for all teen users as another measure against unsolicited explicit content.
Nudity Protection
Instagram is also rolling out nudity protection all across the platform. According to the reports, this feature had been effectively tested by the company this year and would automatically blur images containing nudity in direct messages.
Warnings would also be displayed to users as they include risks about sending photos privately. This means that the organization will better educate its users on the dangers involved with sharing sensitive images- especially that they relate with those that have been unknowable before.
Meta Wants to Improve Online Safety
These efforts are part of the plans by Meta to make online safety better for younger audiences. Given that the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have reported increased cases of sextortion scams targeting minors, companies like Instagram are looking for ways to minimize such occurrences.
According to reports, between 2021 and 2023, more than 13,000 sextortion cases involved minors, mostly male teenagers.
With these measures in place, Instagram sets a new standard for keeping its users safe from online exploitation, even as the company renews its commitment to online security and user privacy. And by making it harder for third parties to misuse disappearing content, Instagram is doing its best to get rid of opportunists who prey on teens.
Originally Published in MobileNApps
