The Guardian has learned that detailed written manuals and video tutorials on financially motivated sexual extortion – commonly known as sextortion – are available for free on the internet. Criminals also offer specialised and individually tailored training courses for an additional fee.
The instructions can be found on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Telegram.
Sextortion involves young people being tricked online into sending intimate pictures of themselves to scammers who then demand money and threaten to pass the material on to others.
Adam Priestley, senior manager at the National Crime Agency (NCA), said: “Written manuals and video tutorials, often titled ‘sextortion guides’, are available on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
“The videos we saw on YouTube provide a step-by-step guide on how to carry out these extortion crimes from start to finish. This includes creating fake online accounts, obtaining an SMS number, tips on how to target victims and how to profit from the crime.
“There is advice for criminals to target secondary schools and instructions on how to threaten victims and what language to use when doing so. There are examples of the tutorials for sale online, advertised as a ‘complete blackmail guide’ at a price of around 10,000 Nigerian naira (about £5).”
Separately, the Guardian has seen a written guide of more than 80 pages discovered by a cybersecurity firm and posted on a channel on the messaging app Telegram in February. The guide was provided to the NCA and Telegram removed it after the Guardian drew attention to it.
It is a brutally comprehensive document in the style of a perpetrator’s manual, written by an anonymous author who claims to have committed these crimes over a period of seven years and to have exploited 5,000 “successful targets” during that time.
The guide promises “valuable insights and tools,” including advice on creating fake profiles, distinguishing between short-term and long-term targets, accessing strangers’ social media accounts and establishing an initial connection to then manipulate victims and coerce them into sending explicit content.
The author claims that the three countries where online blackmail is most successful are the UK, the US and Canada. He advises the reader to focus on teenagers and young adults, pointing out that they can expect to receive sexually explicit content “from at least 5-10 out of 200 targets”.
The guide explains how this practice has been expanded to other platforms after some social media groups became more aware of the threat. For example, it warns that recent updates on Instagram have made it “virtually impossible to unmask your target on Instagram.”
This guide also offers readers access to the ransomware scripts used by the author for $50, as well as three months of one-on-one counseling for $250. Security experts have found evidence of at least 276 financial transactions with the author, suggesting that these services were purchased by individuals.
The guide shows how professionalized this crime has become and highlights the potential to turn it into a lucrative business.
A YouTube spokesperson said: “We take this issue extremely seriously and have implemented strict policies to protect our users from scams and other harmful behavior. Content that contains instructions for activities such as phishing and cryptophishing is not allowed on YouTube and will be removed.”
TikTok said the platform proactively detects and removes such content, including through investigations by its moderation teams. Regarding the so-called “Yahoo Boys” – Nigeria-based cybercriminals – TikTok said it has brought in local moderation experts to develop its enforcement strategy.
A Telegram spokesperson said: “Sextortion is expressly prohibited on the Telegram platform. Moderators proactively monitor public parts of the platform and accept user reports to remove content that violates Telegram’s Terms of Service.”
