Instagram bosses finally step in to help track down scammers behind online sextortion plot that drove Scottish teenager to suicide

• Murray Dowey, 16, committed suicide after being targeted by blackmailers last year
• Teen tricked into sending compromising photos to criminals posing as a girl on social media app
• Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, confirmed that it has now cooperated with police and will now release Murray's account information.

The owner of Instagram has handed over data to police about a Scottish teenager who committed suicide after being the victim of sextortion.

Technology company Meta has shared data linked to 16-year-old Murray Dowey, who took his own life after being targeted online.

In sextortion cases, blackmailers threaten to share intimate details and images unless the victim pays a sum of money.

Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, confirmed it has now co-operated with police, after the boy's family urged Sir Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister, to intervene.

This information could help detectives track down the culprits who tried to coerce Murray.

His mother, Ros Dowey, previously accused Meta of “unforgivable behavior” after failing to share her son's account information.

The teenager, from Dunblane, Perthshire, died in December last year after being tricked into sending compromising photos to criminals posing as a girl on the social media app.

As of Wednesday, Meta had not shared the information – despite a request from Police Scotland and a court order, Ms Dowey told BBC News.

She said the US Department of Justice had obtained a court order requesting the data on May 1, 2024 – but Meta had not yet responded.

Ms Dowey said Meta was not doing “enough to safeguard and protect our children when they use their platforms” and accused the company of “unforgivable behavior” by “obstructing the investigation”.

She said the company appeared unwilling to “cooperate with international law enforcement when things go horribly wrong.”

Ms Dowey said: 'How many other children could the abuser who pushed Murray to take his own life have tormented since Murray's death?'

She had asked Sir Nick, who is now Meta's president of global affairs, to “sort this out”.

Yesterday, Meta confirmed that it had now passed the data to the police.

A spokesperson for Meta said: “Our thoughts are with the Dowey family during this difficult time.

“We have cooperated fully with law enforcement in this investigation, including responding to any requests for data.”

Police Scotland confirmed last night that they had received the relevant data.

A spokesperson said: “Investigations are continuing to establish all the circumstances leading to the death.”

Cases of sextortion are increasingly common – accounting for two-thirds of reports to the Revenge Porn Helpline in 2023.

Meanwhile, a study by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, covering the period between 2017 and 2023, found that at least one in 20 children have been exposed to sexual risk or harm online .

This equates to more than 630,000 children.

Earlier this year, Graeme Biggar, director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), “Britain's FBI”, said US companies such as Meta had “consciously blinded themselves” to serious crimes, including terrorism and child sexual abuse, by default. added new privacy measures.

End-to-end encryption, already standard on some apps, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, prevents anyone other than the sender and recipient of a message from seeing it, making it impossible to detect potential breaches.

The NCA is urging young victims of sextortion scams to tell their parents or someone they trust as quickly as possible.

Murray committed suicide hours after an online blackmailer threatened to reveal intimate details about him to everyone on his contact list.

The predator posed as a young woman wanting to form a friendship and spent a day exchanging messages with the schoolboy.

Hours later, Murray panicked and committed suicide.

Her parents pleaded for social media to “immediately” improve protection for teenagers as sextortion cases skyrocket.

Ms Dowey told ITV News earlier this year that there “need to be consequences” for those who targeted their son and to deter others from doing the same.

She said: “I just think they are evil – these criminals killed our son.

“They can’t just be anonymous people behind the keyboard thousands of miles away.”

Murray was chatting and watching TV with his parents and brothers one evening in December last year before going up to his room.

His family never thought it was the last time [they] let's go see him.”

Ms Dowey said: 'To think of my little boy in such distress and not seek help is horrible.'

■ For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org