{"id":797759,"date":"2026-07-13T15:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T15:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/797759\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T15:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T15:09:09","slug":"young-men-report-more-sextortion-than-any-other-age-group-australias-online-safety-watchdog-says-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/797759\/","title":{"rendered":"Young men report more \u2018sextortion\u2019 than any other age group, Australia\u2019s online safety watchdog says | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a><\/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 lacking the mechanisms to identify abuse in video calls and live streams.<\/p>\n

Microsoft was the only company that reported using both technologies.<\/p>\n

The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the findings show that the watchdog hasn\u2019t \u201cseen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOffenders are continuing to exploit gaps in platform design, weak detection systems and inconsistent safeguards to move seamlessly between services and escalate harm against children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis report shows that platforms could and should be doing a lot more to prevent these harms and there are simple steps they can take today to protect users.\u201d<\/p>\n

The University of Sydney academic Dr Joanne Gray said one of her biggest concerns was that the platforms \u201cstill tend to be taking a reactive approach\u201d rather than a preventive one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are taking it down when they find it or are made aware of it, but they are not doing enough to prevent it from being there in the first place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gray said this approach fell short of protecting users and that greater effort needed to go into embedding safeguards into the design of services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese technology companies are investing billions of dollars in innovating and creating all sorts of new technologies, and if they want to provide live-streaming services, then they need to do so in a way that is safe and responsible \u2026 if they can\u2019t, then don\u2019t allow live streaming,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new report by Australia\u2019s online safety regulator has found \u201csignificant gaps\u201d in how major tech platforms tackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-797759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}