Jan. 31 (UPI) —<\/span> Men have been twice as likely as women to fall victim to online blackmail since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study published Monday by the journal Victims & Offenders found.<\/p>\n This includes threats to publish explicit photos, videos and personal information, the researchers said.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n Young people, Black and Native American women, and LGBTQ individuals also were at higher risk for being victims of this form of cyber-crime called “sextortion,” the data showed.<\/p>\n “Recent research has highlighted gender disparities in unpaid care work and household-related work since the start of the pandemic,” co-author Asia Eaton said in a press release.\n<\/p>\n “It is possible that men had more time to spend online than women during the pandemic,” said Eaton, an associate professor of psychology at Florida International University in Miami.<\/p>\n The findings are based on a survey of more than 2,000 adults in the United States conducted in 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Eaton and her colleagues said.<\/p>\n Sextortion is a form of extortion in which the blackmailer threatens to publish explicit, private images or videos online unless their demands are met, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.\n<\/p>\n The blackmailer often is a current or former partner, but they also can be a stranger who has hacked into a victim’s online photos or webcam or an online dating scammer, the law enforcement agency says.<\/p>\n Reports of sextortion to the FBI rose during the pandemic, when many people remained home due to work and school closures and turned to online social platforms, particularly among teens.<\/p>\n The researchers asked 2,006 survey respondents if they had ever been a victim of sextortion, defined as “the act of threatening to expose a nude or sexually explicit image” in exchange for payment or sex acts.\n<\/p>\n Of male respondents, 4.5% said they had experienced sextortion since the start of the pandemic, compared to 2.3% of women, the data showed.<\/p>\n Black and Native American women were around seven times more likely to be victims of sextortion than White women, the researchers said.<\/p>\n LGBTQ respondents had an up to three-fold higher risk for being victims of sextortion compared with heterosexual individuals, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n More than 5% of respondents ages 18 to 29 years reported being victims of sextortion, compared with 4% of those ages 30 to 40 years and 3% of those ages 41 to 64 years, the data showed.\n<\/p>\n Respondents who were victims of sexual violence by a partner before the pandemic were up to 17% more likely to experience sextortion during the pandemic, the researchers said.<\/p>\n Sextortion was most commonly perpetrated by strangers and romantic partners, both current and former, they said.<\/p>\n “Sex education programs that teach about consent, pleasure and healthy relationship communication and decision-making may reduce both in-person and technology-facilitated sexual violence,” Eaton said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Men were more likely than women to be victims of sexual blackmail during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study has found. Photo by Pixelkult\/Pixabay Jan. 31 (UPI) — Men have been twice as likely as women to fall victim to online blackmail since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study published Monday by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":774151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[3790,177,698,1505,1040,425,3791,28,427],"class_list":["post-774150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-blackmail","tag-higher","tag-men","tag-online","tag-pandemic","tag-risk","tag-sextortion","tag-study","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"'Sextortion'](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Sextortion-study-Men-at-higher-risk-for-online-blackmail-in-pandemic-than-women.jpg\" "\\"'Sextortion'")
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\nMen were more likely than women to be victims of sexual blackmail during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study has found. Photo by Pixelkult\/Pixabay<\/div>\n\n