| | | | The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) will join many organizations across the globe on Feb. 6 to celebrate Safer Internet Day 2024, empowering children to make safer decisions and educating them about the dangers of sextortion with the release of two new videos.
Each year, NCMEC receives a staggering number of reports to our CyberTipline. In 2023 alone, the CyberTipline received 36.2 million reports, containing more than 105 million files.
Of those reports, 186,819 were of online enticement, the category that includes sextortion. This is up from 80,524 reports in 2022 and 44,155 reports in 2021.
Sextortion is a form of child sexual exploitation where children are blackmailed by a person who has obtained nude or sexual images of them. Oftentimes the victim is threatened that their images will be released publicly unless they provide additional sexual content, sexual activity or money.
“The drastic rise in sextortion reports is alarming,” said Stacy Garrett, vice president of Content & Community Engagement at NCMEC. “At the National Center, we hope that Safer Internet Day will serve as a crucial reminder of the collective responsibility we all have to strive for a safer online environment for our children. It’s critical that we teach our children how to stay safe online, but also what to do if something goes wrong. NCMEC is here to help.”
As part of our stand against sextortion, NCMEC is releasing two new educational videos that showcase different aspects of sextortion. View these videos and read more about Safer Internet Day here. |
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