Sextortion: A Prevalent Online Scam in India

An elevation of 11% was witnessed in the year 2020 regarding cyber crime. In the year 2022, fifty thousand cases were registered against cyber crime in India as per the data. Online fraud has become a global threat as 518 million users are using social media in India.  Nowadays, cases like phishing, online booking fraud, extortion through sextortion taking place on Internet and blue bugging are widely witnessed in the news.

The case of sextortion on online sites has come around a lot. Sextortion on Internet is a mean through which people gain money by threatening someone of revealing the evidence of their sexual activities. Recently Shakti Avasthy an IPS officer from Muradabad has tweeted against online fraud wherein, people get calls from an unknown number. Meanwhile, the caller remains nude and switch on the screen-recording of the call. Later they blackmail people in the name of sextortion and exploitation.

Hi all, starting this thread to inform about emerging cyber fraud trends as and when I encouter them in daily affairs.
1. Video call from unknown number with naked person at other end and recording the video call, later blackmail and sextortion that receiver forced into nudity.

— Shakti Avasthy (@ShaktiAvasthy) February 26, 2022

Reaction to the Tweet posted against sextortion through the means of online fraud

 

Coverage of Media houses over the case of ‘Sextortion’

According to the article in the Times of India, nine cases were filed against the crime of extortion through fake claims regarding sexual exploitation on social media. Mostly callers are women who talks sweetly and request to switch on to video calls. The article also mentioned that male users are behind all of it and they intends to trap the user to grab money.

According to the Hindustan Times, 60 cases of cyber-crime was registered in Thane. In which 25 cases were of sextortion were witnessed despite several awareness spread around the area.

According to The Indian Express, 4000 cases of sextortion under cybercrime were registered across the country. As per the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department, 3 accused were found guilty or involved in around 3000 cases of sextortion. All of them belongs to different parts of Haryana.

 

Story of Victim

1. The team of DFRAC interviewed a victim of the case. The man wants to keep his identity anonymous but the call regarding has been pasted below for the detailing. The man told us that first, he got a friend request and later the user started messaging him on Messenger, Facebook. The name of the user was Aliya Patel and as per her, she belonged to Gujarat and was working in a beauty parlor. Within a few minutes of the chat, she offered the man to do dirty talks and video call him. The victim claimed that an obscene video was played on the other side of the call. Thus the call lasted for 30 seconds. After the call, the girl sends a video where she cropped the face of the guy and pasted it under a filthy video. Immediately, she started blackmailing the guy and asked for money in return for not leaking the video.

Audio Player

In the Facebook profile of Aliya Patel there are 300 friends and 95% of her friend list is filled with male users. She has put the location of Mumbai, whereas she claimed that she belonged to Gujarat.

Screen shot where the blackmailer (Aliya Patel) is asking for money.

Next day after the incidents, he got a fake call from the crime branch saying that an FIR is filed against him under the case of sexual assault on Facebook.

2. LokmanSunar in his tweet inserted a short clip of a chat where the user is asking for WhatsApp numbers and making tempting offers for friendship. In the caption, he suggested to beware of the fake ids, who ask for nude video calls and later blackmail or ask money from people in the name of sexual exploitation on social media.

Guys see once again the same one Be very careful pic.twitter.com/V2gqMlOENn

— Lokman Sunar (@luks_sunar) May 15, 2021

• After digging further we came across a few fake ids and adult pages that send dirty texts, obscene images and videos to people and later threaten them with the screenshots.

 

One thing which is common about these IDs that most of the users have made a profile of a female, putting on the display picture of a female. Then they again change their username, profile picture and bio as per their convenience. Through their profile, it is hard to recognize their original identity.

• Many profiles claim to provide online paid services (sensual video or images). These accounts put on fake profile pictures and fake WhatsApp numbers. As per MeenuPaidfun, they provide escort services and sensual video content. After checking the number on True Caller, we found that the number was registered by the name of Neha Happn. On WhatsApp, it was mentioned about a broker Ravi.

 

This Facebook id is a proof of how in a name of online paid services, fake ids come into existence and online fraud takes place.

• We also found several profiles under the Category of Paid Fun. On the other hand, many of these profiles that are made between 2020 to 2021 get high number of followers within very short span of time.

 

• After analyzing few accounts we encountered some accounts which has a probability of being a bot account. These accounts gain followers through posting explicit, vulgar contents. After getting larger number of followers they either do paid promotions or sell the whole account at a high cost.

Sexual Hub is one of such accounts. The account joined Twitter on 2018 and currently, it has 590.7K followers. The account has done 1.1 M tweets, mostly related to sexual content and services. After gaining ample number of followers they offer paid promotions.

According to the Truth Nest, an app for identifying bot accounts. There are 80% chances of Sexual Hub being a bot account.

Number of these accounts are rising with every passing day. Bot accounts are widely used to spread fake and misleading contents, and now they are becoming a new threat on internet.

• Prevention and cure

1. Avoid unknown calls and friend request from the unknown accounts.
2. Avoid sending personal and intimate pictures of yourself to anyone, irrespective of any fact.
3. Turn of your web camera while not in use.
4. Block and report the account of the user as soon as you find something fishy about them.
5. Report the case, profile of culprit in the cyber cell as soon as possible.

Conclusion: In our report, we have briefed how sextortion is becoming an underlined threat under cyber crime. 3000 cases have already been registered as per the record of 2021. The only mean through which we can avoid such situation is by avoiding calls from unknown numbers and immediately blocking such accounts and fake callers. These users also run an agenda through to gain followers through posting vulgar and obscene content and later sells the account. A whole racket is run by such accounts on social media and works for the cause of extortion, blackmailing and destroying the harmony of the people. Sextortion has taken many lives.