Instagram unveils new features to protect teens from sextortion scams

In a bid to protect teens from sextortion scams, Meta’s Instagram has introduced a series of new safety features.

The new features make it harder for accounts with signs of a potential scam to ask to follow teens. Depending on the strength of these signals, such as how new an account is, Instagram will block the follow request completely or send it to the teen’s spam folder.

Instagram will also remove the ability to see an account’s following and following lists. This way, potential sextors won’t be able to see the list of accounts that have liked someone’s posts, the photos they’ve been tagged in, or other accounts they’ve tagged in their photos.

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Instagram will also let teens know when they’re chatting with someone who might be based in another country. This is especially true since sextortion scammers often misrepresent their location to trick teens into trusting them.

Soon, Meta will also no longer allow users to use their device to directly capture or save ephemeral images or videos sent in messages.

This means that if someone sends a photo or video in Instagram or Facebook Messenger direct messages (DMs) using the “show once” or “allow replay” feature, the user will not have to worry about screenshotting or recording in app. without consent.

At the same time, Meta will not allow users to open “view once” or “allow replay” images or videos on the Instagram web, to prevent fraudsters from bypassing capture prevention screen.

Additionally, after first announcing the test in April, Meta will roll out its nudity protection feature globally in Instagram DMs. The feature, which will be enabled by default for teens under 18, will blur images containing nudity when sent or received in Instagram DMs and warn people of the risks associated with sending sensitive images .

Earlier in August, it was reported that Meta and Google had struck a secret deal to target 13- to 17-year-olds with Instagram ads on YouTube. This violates the search giant’s rules banning advertising aimed at children, according to the Financial Times.

According to Financial Timesthe Instagram campaign “deliberately targeted a group of users characterized as ‘unknown’ in its advertising system.”

He added that Google knew ‘unknown’ was primarily for under-18s and that documents seen by the publication suggested “steps were taken to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised”.

When MARKETING-INTERACTIVE contacted us at the time, Google said it “prohibits personalization of ads to people under 18, period. These policies go well beyond what is required and are backed by technical guarantees We have confirmed that these guarantees work properly here We will also take additional steps to emphasize to sales representatives that they should not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns that attempt to circumvent. our policies.

Meta, on the other hand, reportedly said it was open to marketing its apps to young people as a place for them to connect with friends, find community and discover their interests, reported Financial Times.

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