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Meeting dates on Facebook? Beware of 'sextortion'

An investigation started in December 2018 after reports from the public about “unusual” cyberactivity, which led to the arrest of a suspect in Sidrap, South Sulawesi, on Feb. 6.

News Desk (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, February 16, 2019

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Meeting dates on Facebook? Beware of 'sextortion' An investigation started in December 2018 after reports from the public about “unusual” cyberactivity, which led to the arrest of a suspect in Sidrap, South Sulawesi, on Feb. 6. (Shutterstock/-)

T

he National Police said on Friday that a hundred people lost tens of millions of rupiah in a sextortion scheme in which victims were tricked into sending sexual images that were used as blackmail.

Adj. Sr. Comr. Zahwani Pandra Arsyad, a police spokesperson, said a suspect identified only as SF had opened numerous fake accounts on Facebook to trick victims.

“How the suspect baits the victim depends [on the gender]. If the victim is a woman, he would show a photo of an attractive man using language that draws the attention of internet users. The same goes with male victims, but a photo of an attractive woman is used instead,” Zahwani told The Jakarta Post on Friday via phone call.

The investigation started in December 2018 after reports from the public about “unusual” cyberactivity, which led to the arrest of SF in Sidrap, South Sulawesi, on Feb. 6.

The police are also searching for two other suspects. One of them allegedly helped SF set up fake accounts while another is believed to have managed bank transactions for the scam since February of last year.

Zahwani said the suspect would then have “intense” communications with victims through messaging services like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, obtaining contact details from their social media accounts.

When victims were fully engaged, the suspect then allegedly sent videos of sexual acts in a bid to persuade the victim to do the same.

“After the victim shows his or her private parts, the suspect would capture the nudity and immediately demand that a ransom be sent to the suspect’s bank accounts, saying that the captured nudity would otherwise go viral […] There are three [bank accounts] in total,” Zahwani said.

The ransom ranged from Rp 300,000 (US$21) to Rp 30 million depending on the “random” selection of victims, Zahwani said.

“On behalf of the police, we are urging the public to avoid trusting online acquaintances too easily or just avoid unknown individuals altogether,” Zahwani said.

The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) revealed earlier that sextortion was on the rise in 2018 and children were common targets.

The KPAI handled some sextortion cases against children last year but has said it will not go into detail on the cases to protect the victims – all of whom are girls.

“The perpetrators date the girls online and ask for their suggestive photos. By the time they get the photos, they will ask for money or else threaten to share the photos online,” KPAI commissioner for pornography and cybercrime Margaret Aliyatul Maimunah explained, urging all of society to work together to protect the children from pornography and cybercrime.

The Communications and Information Ministry blocked microblogging and social networking website Tumblr and app Tik-Tok after learning that they contained pornography and inappropriate content, but the platforms were later unblocked.

The ministry said that, in 2018, 984,441 pieces of negative content were blocked on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google.

“Around 80 percent of the blocked content is pornographic,” said the acting head of the ministry’s public relations bureau, Ferdinandus Setu. (mai)

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