Instagram's new safety features tackle sextortion against teens

Social apps can be very useful for staying in touch and sharing moments with your contacts. However, they can also be dangerous, especially for teenagers, as they facilitate direct contact with bad actors. Meta has announced a series of safety features aimed at teens on Instagram. The changes aim to address cases of sextortion.

Sextortion is a form of blackmail under the threat of sharing intimate photos with your contacts or posting them publicly. The perpetrators can demand large sums of money to not publish such content or even other things. Teenagers are currently the most vulnerable to this type of attack due to the nature of social networks.

Instagram’s new safety features against sextortion on teen accounts

Now, Meta has announced some changes that seek to even prevent “potentially scammy” profiles from contacting more potential victims via Instagram. Firstly, users’ main inboxes will hide or even completely block message requests from such accounts. In addition, accounts belonging to teenagers (up to 16 years old) will not be able to exchange messages with anyone they do not already follow.

Instagram will also display a warning to teens when they receive a message from a suspicious account. Accounts tagged as “potentially scammy” by Instagram will not be able to access the list of followers or people tagged in photos of teen accounts. This will prevent them from being able to access a list of new potential victims.

There are no more specific details on how Instagram determines that an account is “potentially scammy.” However, some factors the system considers are the age of the account, contacts in common with a particular profile, or the country of origin of the account.

Security shields integrated into DMs too

If bad actors manage to bypass those safety features, Instagram still has built-in tools on DMs for teen accounts. The temporary messaging feature will prevent screenshots or screen recordings for photos or videos. These types of images will also not be available on Instagram web. There is also a tool that detects photos with nudity in DMs and automatically blurs them.

Meta has recently been making additional efforts to ensure the safety of teenagers on the platform. The company is in the crosshairs of US authorities for potential harm to young people’s mental health. So, it must try to gain the trust of the public and state representatives.