Seven ways to prevent & respond to online sexual extortion

By Dan Furness, Head of Safeguarding & Well-being, CIS; and & Will Gardner, CEO, Childnet

The prevalence of AI is accompanied by safeguarding concerns facing international schools around online harms. Online sexual extortion is one of these concerns.

We’ve outlined seven key responses when experiencing online sexual extortion yourself or supporting those affected by it.

What is online sexual extortion?

Online sexual extortion, also known as sextortion, is a serious crime that involves threats to distribute private and sensitive material unless the victim provides more images of a sexual nature or money to the blackmailer.

Recently, there’s been a significant increase in cases of financially motivated online sexual extortion carried out by criminal gangs in certain parts of the world, particularly targeting boys.

In such cases, the victim is groomed into sharing an image; they believe they’ve received an image from a girl and reply with a picture of their own.

However, online sexual extortion and criminals obtaining sensitive images can also happen in other ways, like hacking or images generated with AI.

In some cases, the blackmailer does not have an image of the victim and simply uses the threat of having and sharing one to extort money or more images.

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What can schools do?

Here are seven essential steps to support victims of online sexual extortion:

Inform parents of the risk: Adopt a preventative approach by informing parents in your school community of the risk of online sexual extortion. There are sample letters available. This one is designed for use in the UK, but it’s good to craft one that incorporates your school community’s cultural considerations.

In response to an incident, it's vital to immediately communicate the situation to parents, particularly to ensure a high degree of supervision at home to support the student. There are several cases where victims have experienced such a high degree of pressure from criminal gangs to act quickly that this creates desperation that then leads to instances of self-harm and suicidal ideation. In some cases, this has tragically led to death by suicide.
Education: Understanding the risks and how to respond can prevent future incidents. Schools and parents should educate young people about the prevalence of online sexual extortion and the behaviour of would-be blackmailers. Ensure students know it’s ok to tell someone (see point 5 below) if it has happened to them and they won’t be judged or blamed, and that online sexual extortion is very common.
Do not respond to the blackmailer: It’s important to advise the students and families to stop all communication with the blackmailer. It’s also important they do not give in to blackmailer demands, whether they ask for money, more images, or anything else. Engaging with them can encourage further extortion attempts. Paying them often leads to asking for more money.
Preserve evidence: Advise families to save all communications with the blackmailer, including emails, messages, and any other types of contact—this evidence is crucial for law enforcement to track and identify the perpetrator.

During this period, ask victims to avoid turning off their phones or letting them run out of battery, as this can delete important data. It’s also important not to delete any images shared with or obtained by the blackmailer; they’ll need the original versions on their devices to enable the technology we recommend later.

If the messages have been sent using an app where the sender can delete all messages (e.g. What’s App), take screenshots of the messages where you can. Be aware that taking screenshots on some apps like Snapchat may alert the blackmailer that they are doing so.
Report the incident: It’s vital that victims inform someone they trust, such as a parent, teacher, or school counsellor. Additionally, the incident should be reported to the relevant authorities, including the police and the platform/app where the extortion took place. Most social media platforms have mechanisms to report abuse and harassment.

Contact local or international organisations that specialise in helping victims of online abuse. They can provide emotional support, legal advice, and practical assistance.

Remember, let the student and family (or any victim) know that they are not alone, and there are people and organizations ready to help.

See the resources below for more information about these organisations.
Use online tools to remove images in the public domain. Tools like Take It Down for under-18s and Stop NCII for over-18s create a hash of the image that participating platforms can use to prevent it from being re-uploaded.

A hash is a digital fingerprint—like a QR code—and online service providers can search their platforms for matches. When identified, they remove the image and can prevent uploads.

Using tools like these can significantly reduce the circulation of the image and provide some peace of mind. Please note: You’ll need the original device and the original shared or taken image.
Don’t blame yourself/the child: It's important to know that online sexual extortion is very common. It’s never yours or the child’s fault. Blame will only exacerbate the shame victims may experience and create more barriers to reporting in the future.

Adopt a low-judgement/ high-support approach for the student and the family, supporting them with the steps above. Recognise that being pressured to share images is abusive and is a crime.

By following these steps, we hope you can take control of the situation and reduce the impact of sexual online extortion.

Remember, the key is to …

Act quickly, preserve evidence and seek help from trusted individuals and organisations.

Get your students involved & celebrate online safety

It's a global celebration! Students in more than 200 countries and territories got involved in 2024!

On 11 February 2025, Safer Internet Day presents an opportunity for you to do targeted learning and awareness with your students and community to celebrate online safety.

We invite you to get your school, students and community involved by:

looking up the national Safer Internet Day campaign for your country or region,

following the theme and campaign of the largest Safer Internet Day campaign globally which is organized by Childnet in the UK as part of the UK Safer Internet Centre. Many international schools worldwide follow this theme and resources.

In March 2024, Childnet’s survey of young people across the UK revealed the areas of their online lives where they want more support: scams and phishing. This was the top answer for children aged 11–17 and second top (after Gaming) for 7–11 year-olds. Following further focus groups with children of all ages, Childnet set this theme for 2025:

‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others against scams online.’

We use Safer Internet Day to raise awareness, offer support and advice, and, crucially, listen to young people about scams online, including their experiences, ideas, and strategies for managing the risks they face online.

The goal is to lead to better-informed conversations and better support for young people and, ultimately, protect children, young people, and those who support them from online scams.

In the free educational resources and teacher support materials for 11–14s and 14–17s, online sexual extortion can be covered as a deception/scam in the form of financially motivated sexual extortion before it turns into coercion and blackmail.

Educators can also use the resources to cover scams more broadly and in age-appropriate ways with children aged 3–17 and encourage conversations about these issues in school and at home and learn where to get help.

We hope the information in this post is helpful. Please get in touch if you seek further assistance or additional information.

Related content:

Organisations that can support schools with online harms

For staff at CIS member schools:

Virtual workshop in February 2025:
Child Protection Deep Dive Workshop: Online Harms and Technology; A Whole School Approach
Webinars on demand:
The AI & Education webinar series explores challenges and opportunities related to AI, emerging educational practices and regulations, the potential of AI for learning communities, and the digital transitions experienced by students moving from secondary school to higher education. Log into the CIS Community Portal > KnowledgeBase > Webinars to view them and download the accompanying slides.

For everyone: