New Forms of Blackmail: Targeting Women via Telegram and TikTok

The Telegram channel that claims to be "a Just Judge" has turned blackmail against women into a form of entertainment and leisure. Those behind this channel also run the TikTok account "Honor or Dignity". This was reported by 'Hetq'.

There are posts circulating on social networks with phrases like, "Tomorrow, I will post a 18+ video on this," and, "There's plenty of material here, which I will post piece by piece," accompanying stolen photos and videos of women.

With the rapid development of the internet, such forms of blackmail have become widespread globally, to the extent that there is a specific term for it: revenge porn. This term is used to describe stealing and distributing photos or videos without the person's consent. In some countries, due to legislative changes, revenge porn has begun to be classified as a criminal offense.

This global trend has also spread to Armenia in recent years. In addition to the mentioned accounts, there are other similar pages that are active.

Any woman can become a target. Gayane Avdalyan shared with 'Hetq' that she was recently targeted for blackmail and money extortion. One day, an unknown person contacted Gayane via Telegram and sent her photoshopped pornographic images. These images were ordinary pictures of Gayane posted on her Instagram, but manipulated to make it seem like they were her in explicit situations. They demanded money to avoid posting the images.

"I didn’t respond but immediately blocked them and spoke out about it on my Facebook. It turned out this is not just one case but a big problem," Gayane recounted.

After publicizing her incident, she received messages from hundreds of unknown women who shared that they had also been blackmailed. One woman recounted that when she received photoshopped images of herself from an anonymous account and was threatened that they would be sent to her brother, she felt scared and complied with the demands. However, after transferring money once, the blackmail did not stop; they demanded money from her three more times over the year, which she was forced to pay.

In addition to altering photos, they also hack women’s social accounts and post personal data. One of the most common methods of hacking social media accounts is phishing. Blackmailers send messages from fake accounts to victims on platforms like Instagram, claiming that their photo has appeared on some page, for example, "best Armenians", which features pictures of the most attractive Armenian women. To see the photo, the person is asked to follow a link.

When the victim clicks on the link, they see a duplicate of the Instagram login page (this is phishing), and when they enter their username and password, this information is recorded by the creator of the phishing page. After this, they change the password, and the person loses access to their account.

There are cases where members or sympathizers of this group initially start a conversation with women in order to blackmail them later. They chat online, meet, and then threaten to expose personal data, photos, and correspondence, claiming they will tell the victim’s family and friends about her “immorality” and demand sexual favors, money, or both.

These pages also make money. For example, one of the mentioned Telegram channels claims that for 30,000 drams, it can hack any Instagram account.

Details on the matter are available in the original source.