Young men report more ‘sextortion’ than any other age group, Australia’s online safety watchdog says

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, pictured, said the findings show the watchdog hasn’t ‘seen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPIMAGE/AP View image in fullscreen Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, pictured, said the findings show the watchdog hasn’t ‘seen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPIMAGE/AP Young men report more ‘sextortion’ than any other age group, Australia’s online safety watchdog says In six months last year, more than 2,000 such complaints were made to eSafety Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A new report by Australia’s online safety regulator has found “significant gaps” in how major tech platforms tackle online sexual extortion and child sexual exploitation, as “reports of this abuse continue to rise”. The findings come from eSafety’s latest transparency report, examining how tech companies – including Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snap, Discord and WhatsApp – are addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse. Between July and December 2025, more than 2,000 complaints of sexual extortion were made to eSafety. While men aged 18 to 24 made the most complaints of any cohort, accounting for about 800 reports, younger teens were increasingly being targeted, the regulator said. Sexual extortion – also known as “sextortion” – is a form of blackmail where a person threatens to share a nude or sexual image or video unless the victim gives in to their demands. Instagram and WhatsApp were the most frequently cited platforms, appearing in more than 1,300 complaints combined. For users under 18, Apple’s iMessage and Snapchat were the services most commonly linked to threats of sexual extortion. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Among the comments sent to victims by criminals who have their intimate content, as cited by the regulator, were: “I have everything to ruin your life”, “only money can help you now to end this peacefully” and “do you want me to delete your video scandal”. eSafety said the latest responses, collected as part of the platforms’ mandatory safety reporting, revealed “persistent safety gaps in the detection and prevention” of child sexual exploitation and abuse online. Use of VPNs to bypass age checks on porn sites to be investigated by Australia’s eSafety watchdog Read more The watchdog said the findings pointed to “serious gaps” in the use of available detection technologies such as language analysis that can identify well known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders. The report also found a “lack of proactive detection tools” in live streaming features, with most platforms lacking the mechanisms to identify abuse in video calls and live streams. Microsoft was the only company that reported using both technologies. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the findings show that the watchdog hasn’t “seen