Extortion and Sextortion. This is a tough topic and is personal for various reasons because it gave us a lot of motivation to solve the overall scam problem.
Online extortion occurs when criminals threaten to harm someone—by releasing sensitive information, disrupting accounts, or damaging their reputation—unless the victim pays money or complies with demands. Sextortion is a specific form of extortion where scammers use real or fabricated intimate images, videos, or messages to pressure victims into paying money or providing additional explicit content. These scams often begin through social media, dating apps, email, or hacked accounts. The goal is psychological pressure and rapid payment, not the long-term release of material. This is happening to everyone across all social demographics, our kids, our parents, our loved ones.
A few observations and tips are below if this is happening to you and your loved ones:
1. Extortionists will usually NOT publish photos when you refuse to pay
As hard as it is to believe, in our experiences dealing with these actors, extortionists will usually NOT publish photos of potential victims when you refuse to pay. This is just a pressure tactic, and they will bother you incessantly for a couple of days, maybe weeks. But they will eventually leave you alone.
Program your phone to not answer calls or texts unless they are in your contact list.
2. Extortionists operate with their own return-on-investment mindset
Extortionists will often move on if you block and ignore them. Most work from scripted playbooks in scam centers that rely on two psychological tactics: either pressure you into paying by threatening to release photos, or release the material and eliminate any chance of payment afterward.
Victims sometimes wonder if scammers will post the photos and then remove them once payment is made, but both victims and scammers know that once something is online it can persist indefinitely—and images can also be dismissed as fabricated or AI-generated, which weakens the scammer’s leverage.
One thing is consistent: if you pay, they will almost certainly demand more money over the following months; if you refuse to pay, they typically harass you for a short period before eventually moving on.
Real cases we have seen
- We’ve seen cases when someone was extorted for $3,000, they came to Backgrounder, we convinced them not to pay, and the actors moved on after 1–2 weeks.
- We’ve seen cases when someone did pay the initial $3,000, they came to Backgrounder when the extortion was increased to $10,000, and they did not pay the $10,000. In these cases, Backgrounder was with them the entire way. The heavy harassment persisted for 1–2 weeks, and then trailed off over the course of 1–2 months.
3. Screenshots of posted photos are generally not real
When extortionists send screenshots of nasty photos to bully you, they are generally not real. These are just pressure tactics. We’ve seen it so many ways where victims say "they posted this photo to a social media platform. I am screwed. I must pay now!" They have not. They are lying to increase your temperature.
Stay safe out there
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