Following the tragic news that a teenage Michigan soccer player committed suicide after allegedly falling victim to online predators, health experts
As unscrupulous operators world wide now have unrestricted access to AI, sophisticated deepfakes and AI-generated pornography may be created with just a couple of mouse clicks.
These advances raise the stakes in so-called sextortion: when individuals are blackmailed after sending compromising photos, text messages or information to someone who seems to be a fraudster.
And they make vigilance more vital than ever.
Jordan DeMay, 17, took his own life after Nigerian scammers tricked him into sending compromising photos via Instagram to a lady he thought was interested.
The scammers hacked into the girl’s account, demanded nude photos from DeMay, and demanded a ransom of $1,000 or they might send the photos to his family and friends.
DeMay was considered one of a dozen sextortion suicides recorded last yr – a serious crime that has claimed 3,000 lives this yr, mostly young men and boys, in line with the FBI.
On June 5, the office warned that technological advances in artificial intelligence would push such scams to nightmarish recent heights with deepfakes and face-generating programs.
“The FBI continues to receive reports from victims, including underage children and non-consenting adults, whose photos or videos have been altered in adult content.” in line with an FBI announcement.
“Since April 2023, the FBI has observed a rise within the variety of victims of sexual abuse reporting using fake images or videos created from content posted on their social media sites or web posts, provided to a malicious actor on demand, or captured during video chats. ”
Artificial intelligence is now so powerful that any peculiar person can create believable fake content on a big scale — no advanced training required, Lisa Palmer, chief AI strategist at consulting firm AI Leaders, told The Post.
Here are some steps parents can take to guard their teens from falling victim to this growing threat.
Privacy settings to max
For the higher a part of twenty years, scammers have been scouring the world of social media for his or her victims.
Now that we’ve got the flexibility to control innocent content – extract clips or photos from an individual’s profile – it’s doubly vital to rigorously analyze effective privacy settings. Be sure to limit your content with very restrictive settings in order that it is just visible to people in your tight network.
Otherwise, anyone online can access it, Palmer advises.
Read the high-quality print of the social media terms and conditions
Social media apps fairly often share a number of usage data, personal information and sometimes biometrics with third parties as noted deep of their terms and conditions. While it’s tedious and time-consuming, Palmer said reading these contracts rigorously is best practice to make sure your data, photos, and more don’t find yourself within the hands of bad actors.
For this purpose, he recommends using artificial intelligence.
“You can copy the terms right into a language model like ChatGPT and make it break down all of the riskiest stuff you comply with,” Palmer said.
Have an honest conversation
The best strategy to prevent teenagers from being exposed to danger online is to tell them about life-changing threats, said cybersecurity expert Joseph Steinberg.
“You wish to protect them from dangerous situations, but you’ve gotten to teach them. There is solely no substitute… There isn’t any technological strategy to prevent this sort [dangerous] communication with the Internet,” he told The Post.
While “there are numerous technologies that try to do that, none of them are perfect,” Steinberg said. “You cannot control with 100% certainty what your child has access to.”
He added that teens are clever at hiding their online activity and sometimes hide a second, low-cost mobile device.
Palmer also warns parents that children may find ways to cover suggestive apps on their phones so that they’re invisible when others are around.
It can be very vital that folks know that they’ll and will come to them in the event that they are victims of sex, stressed Frank Ahearn, a privacy expert who consults blackmailers.
“One of the most important problems is that children have nowhere to go,” Ahearn told The Post, adding that he is usually contacted by frantic teenage boys, but he cannot do anything to assist because they’re underage.
“I tell them, ‘You have to contact your parents, they love you, they may hearken to you,'” he said. “But they’re so deathly afraid of it.”
