Online Scams: Blackmail, Deceptions, and Victims

This report outlines sextortion scams that target victims—primarily men—via dating and messaging apps, where attackers pose as women to escalate conversations into sexual exchanges, move chats across platforms, and either deploy malicious APK/IPA files (gaining access to contacts, SMS, call history, camera, and recordings) or use fileless methods by scraping social media followers to threaten exposure; it details the typical flow from initial approach to blackmail, emphasizes the psychological and financial harm, and notes that the crime weaponizes shame in ways analogous to ransomware without requiring advanced technical tools.