Snapchat rolls out new safety tools aimed at protecting teens from sextortion

Snapchat is working to make it harder for teens to be contacted on the app by people they don't know, its latest move aimed at stopping the sexual and financial exploitation scam known as of sextortion.

The company announced a set of new safety features Tuesday, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don't have mutual friends with or haven't met. among his contacts. Now, teens will also receive a warning message if they receive a chat from a user who has been blocked or reported by others or is from a region where the teen's other contacts are not located “Signs this person might be a scammer,” Snapchat said in a blog post Tuesday.

And Snapchat will now prevent teens from sending friend requests to or from an account with which they don't share mutual friends and that is also located in regions often associated with scammers.

In addition to expanding Snapchat's broader suite of youth safety measures, the new features specifically aim to prevent financial sextortion, a worrying and growing type of scam on social media where bad actors gain the trust of young people users, convince them to send sexual or explicit messages. photos, then demand payment in exchange for keeping the photos secret.

“These features were designed to better protect teens from potential dangers online and to enhance the connections with real friends that make Snapchat so unique,” ​​said Jacqueline Beauchère, Snap's global head of platform safety, in an exclusive statement to CNN ahead of the announcement.

Law enforcement officials have warned in recent years of a rise in online sextortion scams, in which bad actors, usually located overseas, target children and teenagers, often with profiles that seem to belong to other friendly teenagers. In some cases, sextortion has led to suicides.

Meta also announced new features in April aimed at combating sextortion, including notifying users when they have interacted with someone who has engaged in financial sextortion. And the chief executives of Meta and Snap, along with other social media executives, were called to testify earlier this year before a Senate subcommittee about their efforts to protect young people from online exploitation.

Also among Snapchat's announcements Tuesday are improvements to the app's blocking tools, which will prevent users from simply creating new accounts to bypass a block. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also be automatically blocked.

Snapchat is also introducing more frequent reminders to all users, including teens, about their location settings on the app's “Snap Map” feature, which is off by default but which users can update to share their location. live position with friends. The company said it would allow users to update their location settings, remove their location from the map, and customize which friends they share their location with, all in one place on the app.

The updates build on Snapchat's existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of users aged 13 to 17, and mechanisms to remove inappropriate content for their age.

Editor's Note: If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or mental health concerns, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a qualified advisor or visit the NSPL website.

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