Telegram’s collectible digital gifts and usernames, some now reportedly selling for over $100,000, have made users targets ...

The method employed by “Pandora” is similar to that of the so-called “Vigilante” blackmail ring run by Kim Nok-wan, 33, who was charged with leading the largest known Telegram deepfake ...

In some cases, children and teens were blackmailed even when they didn’t send a nude image. Roughly 1 of 10 reports Thorn reviewed involved artificially generated content.

The 33 forces (out of a total of 45) who responded recorded almost 8,000 blackmail cases logged with a reference to sextortion in 2023. The same number of forces recorded just 23 in 2014.

Sextortion can lead to mental health problems and, in extreme cases, suicide. It has been connected to at least 30 deaths of teenage boys by suicide since 2021, according to a tally of private ...