Paris (AFP)
Webcam blackmail, degrading photomontages, "revenge porn", insults ... Favored by successive confinements, cyberviolence targeting minors jumped by 57% in 2020, alert Tuesday the association e-Enfance, which manages a platform of listening dedicated to these phenomena.
Last year, the number of calls to the "Net Ecoute" line (0800 200 000, the national toll-free number for the protection of minors on the Internet and help with digital parenting) relating to this violence rose. at 4,315, against 2,747 in 2019, said the general manager of the association, Justine Atlan, to AFP.
An increase mainly linked to the explosion of two phenomena of "sextortion, threat or dissemination of sexual content without consent and insults", webcam blackmail and revenge porn, with a share of 15-17 year olds increasing sharply among victims.
The first mainly concerned 14-year-old boys, victims for example of individuals pretending to be women to trick them and extract money from them by threatening to disclose compromising videos, when the second mainly affected high school girls of 15-16 years, victims of the dissemination of photos or videos of a sexual nature, wrongly or rightly associated with their names, explains Ms. Atlan.
"There have been a lot of delinquents of opportunity," she analyzes.
"Teenagers, quite vulnerable" continued "to live online", and "conversely, it was necessarily easier" for crooks or stalkers to find victims, adds Ms. Atlan, a week before the international day to raise awareness of the digital uses of young people, the Safer internet day, which this year will be "placed under the sign of the pandemic".
The association has also identified "a lot of insults online", alerted in particular by teachers at the end of their virtual classes, where they sometimes observed "intrusions" with offensive messages and "links to pornographic content, without being able to "regulate" them.
In total, the association recorded 12,000 calls on its platform in 2020, for topics ranging from personal data breaches, exposure to shocking content to requests for advice from parents on screen time. minors, according to Ms. Atlan.
Free and confidential, the platform is part of the European Commission's Safer Internet program and reports dangers and cyberviolence directly to social networks, while cooperating with the public authorities.
© 2021 AFP