Pedophiles hack webcams, tape kids undressing and blackmail for more

Predators are forcing children to perform sex acts by covertly filming them and threatening to publish the images if they do not participate in sex games.

Anti-bully group Cybersmile Foundation says it has received five reports of this sort of extortion in the last three months. The number of cases is likely higher because many victims do not report abuse.

The abusers use tools like Facebook, Skype and special search engines to find youths who have access to webcams, before hacking their PCs and laptops.

They attack using computer viruses that enable remote control of the victim’s webcam.  The pedophiles can “turn on the webcam of a bedroom computer and begin recording,” Mail Online reports.

Cybersmile founder Scott Freeman called the issue “one of the scariest things we have seen.”

He said the blackmailers “have this material, them getting dressed or undressed or whatever. . . They want them to do more, to do sexual stuff. I have got my daughter to put a plaster over her webcam, that is how real the worry is.” 

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.