Some of the tactics employed by the offenders included distributing images and hacking the Snapchat accounts of teenagers. In certain instances, the perpetrators threatened to hack the victims’ Snapchat accounts and share their intimate images. This alarming trend has led to a total of 27 reports received by both Cybertip.Ca and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) since August 2021. These reports are related to the extortion trend mentioned above.
The images of the teenager’s intimate story, either shared directly with the offender’s contacts or sent to the offender’s contacts, were reported to Cybertip.Ca in a number of cases where the teen’s Snapchat story was hacked or threatened to be shared.
In order to prevent the offender from sharing the intimate videos/images, few reports have already obtained additional content by asking the perpetrator. However, in almost every report, the offender demanded money to keep the teenager’s hacked account from sharing the imagery.