How your school website could be used for cyber crime
Whole-school sextortion is a serious cyber crime that could affect your school community, so we're focusing on it in this article. Don't worry, it is still extremely rare, but it's important you understand the potential threat and how to respond if it happens at your school.
Find out more about the most common cyber crimes affecting schools and how to protect your school.
What is sextortion?
Sextortion is financially motivated sexual extortion. It's a criminal offence. It involves the attempted blackmail of an individual or an organisation after an offender has (or is threatening to) release nude or sexually explicit images or video (either real, or generated with AI) of them.
In a small number of recent cases, schools have been targeted by criminals who have created explicit content that combines AI/deepfake technology and photos of pupils taken from school websites or social media. The criminals then threaten to release