Instagram has announced a new educational sextortion campaign and the rollout of additional safety features to help teens + parents spot sextortion scams early, and stay protected.
In collaboration with global leaders in child safety, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Thorn, this campaign includes an informative video outlining the common tactics scammers use. For example, pushing for photo exchanges or moving conversations off-platform, and provides teens with actionable steps to take if they’re targeted.
The educational video will start rolling out next month and follows the recent launch of Instagram Teen Accounts in Australia.
Alongside this awareness campaign, Instagram is also rolling out significant safety features designed to further protect teens and make it harder for criminals to succeed.
These additional features include:
- Enhanced privacy for teen accounts: Teens under 18 are automatically placed into stricter messaging settings, which prevents them from being contacted by anyone they don’t follow. We’re now adding further protections by making it harder for accounts showing scam-like behaviour (e.g., newly created accounts) to follow teens or even send follow requests.
- Screenshot and screen recording prevention: Soon, photos and videos sent in Instagram DMs or Messenger via “view once” or “allow replay” will be protected from in-app screenshots or recordings. This will help prevent sensitive images from being captured without consent.
- In-app safety notices: We’re testing alerts in Instagram DMs and Messenger to inform teens when they are chatting with someone who might be based in a different country, helping to prevent scammers from misrepresenting their location.
- Nudity protection: After first announcing the test in April, the nudity protection feature will now be rolled out globally for teens. This feature blurs potentially explicit images in DMs and warns teens of the risks before sending sensitive images. This feature is enabled by default for users under 18.
- Follower and following list protections: Accounts flagged for scammy behaviour are no longer able to see follower/following lists, as well as likes and tags on posts, making it harder for scammers to exploit this information.
“Our research at Thorn has shown that sextortion is on the rise and poses an increasing risk to youth. It’s a devastating threat – and joint initiatives like this that aim to inform kids about the risks and empower them to take action are crucial,” said Kelbi Schnabel, senior manager at Thorn.
“The dramatic rise in sextortion scams is taking a heavy toll on children and teens, with reports of online enticement increasing by over 300% from 2021 to 2023. Campaigns like this bring much-needed education to help families recognise these threats early. By equipping young people with knowledge and directing them to resources like NCMEC’s CyberTipline, and Take it Down, we can better protect them from falling victim to online exploitation,” said John Shehan, senior vice president from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
These new features and actions are part of Meta’s ongoing commitment to enhancing safety for teens and preventing sextortion criminals from succeeding on their platforms.
