Video sextortion guides and manuals found on TikTok and YouTube.

Becoming a criminal nowadays seems to be a rather simple activity to undertake - on most online platforms, such as Tiktok, Telegram and YouTube, it's quite easy to come across tutorials and guides on how to carry out a number of particularly current crimes, including ‘sextortion’.

The term indicates a form of online blackmail or extortion. More specifically, the perpetrator uses sexually explicit content as a form of psychological coercion to extort sexual favours or money from a potential victim, who tends to be a teenager. Usually, victims are tricked and forced to send the content in question and are subsequently blackmailed.

The platforms mentioned periodically take action to remove content of this kind, although malicious offenders with a fascination for the field are particularly recidivist. The Guardian, the newspaper behind today's reference article, had the opportunity to see one of these ‘guides’: consisting of more than 80 pages, the text contains all the information needed to commit this kind of crime and not get caught.