BRIGHTON, N.Y. — In today’s digital age, there are plenty of ways for criminals and scammers to take advantage of you online. An increasingly common method is called sextortion. Now, the Brighton Police Department is teaching people, especially minors and young adults, how to be safe online.

“Financial sextortion is an online crime where people meet online. At some point, the goal of the predator or the suspect is to get the victim to upload either a picture or a video. It could be, you know, sexually explicit nude or even partially nude,” Sergeant Julio Montes of the Brighton Police Department explains.

“At that point, they will turn around and try to exploit the person into sending them money or some sort of product or something like that, or get more footage of them in exchange for to avoid them posting it online,” Montes says.

According to the FBI, the online crime is on the rise. It is primarily targeting teenage boys. So has Brighton experienced any cases?

“We haven’t had too many. I just know that they’ve been growing quite a bit in the area, especially with students, college-aged students, where they’re meeting people online, maybe on a dating app or something like that. And they’ll end up sending something that’s inappropriate or sexually explicit,” Montes shares.

Montes says they haven’t seen any cases involving minors in Brighton yet. “I know that statistically it seems like it’s growing a lot in the last few years, especially with the Internet. And so it’s something that we just want our goal was to try to get some information out there for parents to pay attention to.”

He advises parents to “keep in mind that this is happening. Monitor their kids’ websites, their online activity. Make sure that they know what they’re doing and protect their kids.”

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