Instagram rolls out new safety features to protect teens from sextortion

Instagram is introducing a series of new security features to protect users from sextortion scammers, the company announced Thursday. Most notably, the company will no longer allow people to screen capture or record fleeting images or videos sent in private messages.

Until now, you could capture fleeting content in Instagram DMs (direct messages), but the other person would be notified that you saved it. With this change, if you send someone a photo or video via DM using the “show once” or “allow replay” features, the other person will not be able to save the content. Additionally, Instagram will not allow users to open “view once” or “allow replay” images or videos on desktop to ensure that they cannot bypass security measures.

By preventing users from taking screenshots of ephemeral content, Instagram goes a step further than Snapchat when it comes to ensuring ephemeral content stays that way. On Snapchat, if you send someone an image, they are allowed to take a screenshot of it. Although Snapchat notifies the user that their image has been saved, the app does nothing to prevent users from taking screenshots of fleeting content.

Instagram, for its part, now ensures that content intended to be viewed once can actually only be viewed once.

The Meta-owned social network says the new features announced today complement the recent launch of Teen Accounts, which automatically enroll young users into an app experience with built-in protections that limit who can contact them.

With teen accounts, younger users can’t receive messages from people they don’t follow or aren’t connected with, but they can still receive follow requests from anyone. Now, Instagram is making it harder for suspicious accounts, like newly created ones, to request to follow teens.

Depending on how scammy an account is, Instagram will block the follow request entirely or send it to a teen’s spam folder.

The app also delivers safety notices in DMs to let teens know when they’re talking to someone who might live in another country. The company says it does this because sextortion scammers often lie about where they live in order to get teens to trust them.

Since sextortion scammers often use a teen’s following and following lists to try to blackmail them, Instagram will block accounts depicting fraudulent behavior from seeing people’s following and following lists. These accounts also won’t be able to see who liked a person’s post or see which photos that person was tagged in.

Additionally, Instagram is fully rolling out its nudity protection feature globally after first testing it starting in April. The security measure automatically blurs images containing nudity in DMs. The feature will be enabled by default for teenage users. As for the people who send them, Instagram will warn them of the risks of sending private photos.

To provide more support within its app, Instagram is partnering with Crisis Text Line in the United States. Now, when a user reports an issue related to child safety or sextortion, they will have the option to speak to a crisis counselor.

The changes come ten months after Instagram, alongside other major social networks, was criticized by lawmakers for not doing enough to protect its platform’s young users.

As part of its efforts to combat sextortion, Instagram will begin showing users an educational video about scammers linked to teen sextortion in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. The social network also partners with influencers like Bella Poarch and Brent Rivera to create content about spotting sextortion and what to do if it happens.