The phone rings constantly in the Paris offices of 30 18, the number of the national listening system for victims of online violence. “We’re crumbling. We could employ fifteen people full-time and on a tight schedule,” confides one respondent, Taïssi Dini, a trained lawyer. With an average of 150 calls per day, the teams of the E-Enfance association are struggling to cope. Of all these calls, one dominates: “At least 30% concern cases of sextortion or revenge porn,” explains Taïssi Dini.
The same stories come back day after day, revealing well-established and widely used methods. “Sextortion” tends to target boys. An online scammer pretends to be a girl the same age as a victim who she contacts through social media or a chat room. As the conversation progresses, the victim ends up sending naked photos of herself, for example. The scammer threatens to make them public to those close to him if the victim does not cooperate, most often by giving large sums of money to young people.
Girls more exposed in general
This is one of the favorite stratagems of these crooks from small criminal companies mainly targeting young people. Girls, “more exposed to digital violence in general”, according to the association’s director of operations Samuel Comblez, are most often victims of “revenge porn”. Either a criminal practice which consists of distributing, or threatening to distribute, naked photos or compromising videos of the victim on social networks.
Unlike boys, girls are most often victims of relatives, ex-boyfriends for example, who try to keep them under control, rather than professional extortionists. The interlocutors give advice on how to protect yourself, escape the domination of scammers and, if possible, take legal action. But filing complaints is extremely rare: only 6% of victims of online attacks report the facts to the authorities, according to the investigation report “Experienced and felt in terms of security 2022” from the Ministry of the Interior.
“A scourge” for Romain Chibout, coordinator of the listening teams: “The laws exist but the legal machine is at least ten years behind schedule and is not functional.” In September, one of the rare trials in this area saw two crooks sentenced to prison terms under electronic bracelet for acts of “sextortion”, a case for tens of thousands per year. And Romain Chibout warns: “This will continue for lack of sanctions, but we are having a lot of difficulty making ourselves heard. Many police stations simply refuse to record anything related to cyber, and prosecutors, most of the time, do not want to take up any case where the damage is less than 500 euros.”