B.C. online safety advocates warn AI is making teen sextortion harder to spot

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LANGFORD, B.C. – Just outside B.C.’s capital, a high-tech home studio has become the base for a unique mission: helping families navigate the dangers of the internet and the new threats posed by AI.

The father-and-son team behind The White Hatter, Darren Laur and Brandon Laur, spend their days producing podcasts, conducting online investigations and delivering presentations to schools about digital safety. Over the past 18 years, the Laurs say they’ve presented to 680,000 students.

What started as an effort to educate young people about online risks has grown into something much larger. The pair say they have now helped hundreds of families dealing with one of the most serious online crimes targeting teens: sextortion.

“Things are moving at breakneck speeds right now,” Darren Laur said.

Boys are most common targets of sextortion

Sextortion typically begins when a young person is persuaded to send an explicit photo to someone they believe is another teenager.

The person on the other end, often a scammer operating overseas, then threatens to distribute the image to friends, family or classmates unless the victim pays money.

However, the White Hatter team says those who are most at risk may surprise you.

“Of the 355 cases we’ve dealt with, only 14 were teen girls,” Darren said. “The rest were all teen boys.”

He says shame and embarrassment can make boys less likely to ask for help when they become targets. “Girls are a little bit more careful online, believe it or not, before they start to share any kind of nudes, where boys aren’t,” Darren added.

While the White Hatter team finds boys are more often targeted by unknown predators, teen girls are most likely to be victimized by ex-partners who threaten to share nudes they obtained during the relationship.

Artificial intelligence changing the threat

The Laurs say emerging technologies are making the problem even more complex.

Artificial intelligence can be used to create fake explicit images using ordinary photos pulled from public social media accounts.

“The less clothing you are wearing in an online social media picture, if you’re wearing a bathing suit, it does make it a bit easier to ‘nudify’ it,” Brandon Laur told CTV News.

Because of that, the pair advise families to ensure teens keep social media accounts private.

The scammer will then reach out to the victim, send them the ‘nudified’ photos, then threaten to post them online, unless they receive actual nudes.

The White Hatter team is also warning about increasingly convincing deepfake technology that can make scammers appear to be someone else, even during live video chats.

“Although you think you’re talking live to a 16-year-old from California, it could be a 55-year-old male from the Ivory Coast of Africa, trying to capture you online for sextortion,” Laur said.

The pair say they recently worked with a 17-year-old victim of such a scheme, who couldn’t believe the teen girl he thought he was speaking with on video chat was actually a scammer.

“He said to me ‘I did everything – I had them touch their head, touch their nose, give me a thumbs up. They were real,’” Darren recalls the teen explaining. But then everything changed once the teen accepted an invitation to expose himself. “The screen went black, and then it de-cloaked, and sitting in front of him on the screen was a guy wearing a mask going, ‘I got ya,’” Darren said.

Education as the first line of defence

The White Hatter duo say the most effective protection is education. They encourage parents to have open conversations with their children about online behaviour and potential risks.

That communication can become crucial if something goes wrong. Victims of sextortion often experience extreme panic and anxiety, Brandon said, sometimes reaching what he describes as a “red alert” mental health crisis.

In the worst cases, several Canadian teens have taken their own lives after being targeted.

The importance of the right response

If a child becomes a victim, Darren says the team coaches parents in how to respond because their first reaction can make a critical difference.

“Give your son a big hug and let them know, ‘I love you and I’m going to help you,’” he said. “They don’t need to hear, ‘How could you have done that?’”

Despite the risks they regularly confront, the White Hatter team say they try to remind parents that the internet is not inherently dangerous.

Most young people, Brandon said, simply want to connect with friends and enjoy their time online.

“Most people are just like your kids,” he said. “They want to go online, have fun and just enjoy life.”