I came across a post on another forum I visit warning parents not to let their teenagers use webcams in random chat rooms because of the risk of “blackmail”.
Apparently it’s sort of a favorite activity among certain groups online. The perv will get a girl to flash the cam(tinychat?) or somehow obtain nude pics/vids and then use the threat of sending that footage to her friend’s/family’s Facebook or Myspace pages to get her to do degrading things(sometimes coercing them into messing around with dogs and other sick shit:eek:). The perv records it all and then posts THAT to interested message boards and maybe even follow through on the threat.
I’m not very internet savvy, but that seems sort of far fetched to me. I guess I could see a young person being coerced into these things because of the fear of being humiliated in front of friends and family, but the post made it seem like there are internet forums dedicated to this sort of thing. The post was deleted by a mod so maybe it was a sick joke?
Couldn’t these sickos be charged with something? It would seem to me it would technically fall under child pornography laws since a lot of the girls are apparently minors.
Sometimes I think I’m too old for the internet…some of it baffles me.
It happens, sure. About a year ago, a guy who was 18 at the time was charged with blackmailing teen guys into sex acts; he was recently sentenced to 15 years for solicitation of sex from minors, possessing child porn, and a bomb threat (which didn’t seem related). He made a fake profile on Facebook of a teen girl and used that to get naked pictures, then used those pics to blackmail them for more and for sex.
<aside>Speaking of Internet crime, I just had the chance to watch this documentary Talhotblond. Absolutely mind-blowing, especially taking into account that it’s all factual. Highly recommended.
I’d suggest not reading about the case beforehand if you do decide to watch it. </aside>
This kind of thing happens all the time. The 4chan* image board is rather well known for it. They will usually stalk various webcam chat services in groups (Blogtv for example) in search of gullible teenage girls. Once a suitable person is found, they are invited to a tinychat room. They do this because these rooms are not moderated and allow webcam chat, so the girl in question is free to do whatever they want.
Once they find out their name and where they’re from it’s usually a very simple task of finding their Facebook, since Google kindly links you to that kind of thing (and if you haven’t set privacy options on Facebook, there’s a big fat picture of you right there for all to see).
They certainly can be charged with blackmailing etc, and that does happen. But the internet is a tricky thing to moderate properly and those who are doing this make every effort to remain absolutely anonymous (in fact, Anonymous is what they are collectively known as).
I have made efforts to report this kind of thing, but it’s usually to no avail. Police don’t seem to have the resources/training/know how to actively pursue online criminals like this. They’d probably have to get on the inside somehow.
*Don’t worry, it’s a link to the wikipedia page. I advise against going to the actual site. But that’s probably like telling you not to press that big red button, isn’t it?
It isn’t just the fact that they’re naked, it’s that people will know they were stupid enough to actually remove their clothes for complete strangers on the internet. That’s the embarrassing part of it. Most parents would probably never let their kids go on the internet ever again if they found out. There goes Facebook and msn messenger!
If I still had a teenage daughter (my only daughter is now a high-school teacher), I’d tell her:
(1) Don’t flash your tits to random strangers in internet chat sites.
(2) If you’ve been stupid enough to do it, it’s still not the end of the world. Don’t let them use such pictures to blackmail you into doing something worse. In other words, when you find yourself in a hole (metaphorically), stop digging.