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The Wiretap is your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here . On Tuesday, Instagram announced it was going to set teenager accounts to private by default .
A recent sextortion case on the platform, one of many to have plagued Instagram over recent years, highlights why Meta has felt the need to lock down accounts owned by younger users. A Virginia man was charged in May this year with carrying out a sextortion campaign over Instagram and Kik Messenger , using a real-life porn actress’ photos to trick as many as 60 victims into sharing nude images, previously-unreported court records show. Gary Owens Jr.
has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which allege he grabbed online photos of the porn star, who now lives in Florida, and convinced victims he was a real young teenage woman named Jessica Lincon who wanted to engage in a sexual relationship with them. The government did not say why Owens was doing it other than to trick victims into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) for him . After the cops searched Owens’ iPad, they discovered Google searches for the adult entertainment actress and evidence he’d visited porn sites to view images of the porn star, as well as hundreds of photos and videos of her undressed or performing sex acts.
Investigators also found over 900 images of “males in some stage of undress or engaged in a sex act,” according to a search warrant. Forbes understands the actress has not been contacted by law enforcement regarding the use of her photos. She did not respond to requests for comment and Forbes is withholding publishing her name.
From online discussions amongst porn enthusiasts, it appears the actress has removed many of her videos and photos from popular adult content aggregators as well as an OnlyFans page. The government gathered evidence indicating Owens operated his sextortion campaign from 2021 through to 2024. In its criminal complaint against the defendant, the government said it had identified 13 minors as definitive victims, but said “there are at least 51 additional potential victims that have not yet been fully identified .
" In the search warrant, filed after the complaint, the FBI said it had identified more than 30 minor victims and was continuing to investigate. A trial is due to go ahead in early 2025. Kik Messenger owner MediaLab.
ai didn’t respond to a request for comment. Meta declined to comment on the case, but pointed Forbes to its new protections against sextortion. In announcing Instagram Teen Accounts on Tuesday, the Meta site said not only will teenage users be set to private, meaning they can only be messaged by people they follow or are already connected to, those under 16 will need their parent’s permission to use less protective settings .
Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, praised Meta for taking “ a tremendous step forward to ensuring minors are better protected from harm by defaulting teen accounts to private.” “Instagram has been a leader in facilitating harm to minors – it’s been the top platform where perpetrators have threatened to and have actually distributed sextortion images ,” Hawkins added. “We are grateful that Meta has acted on our concerns to ensure that accounts belonging to teens 16 and younger are defaulted to the highest safety settings.
” Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964 . Why Ex-Intel Agents Think Hezbollah Pagers Started Exploding Amid Suspicions Of Israel Hack An ex-IDF agent and a former NSA analyst tell Forbes that it’s unlikely Israel carried out an entirely remote hack to make Hezbollah pagers explode , as they did en masse on Tuesday. Instead, they suspect the devices were intercepted, tampered with and sent on to Hezbollah operatives before being set off.
It’s not a particularly difficult piece of sabotage to pull off either, requiring some rudimentary hacking skills and explosive materials that could be bought off Amazon , the ex-analysts say. Stories You Have To Read Today My colleague Alex Knapp is launching a new newsletter, The Prototype , focused on science and emerging technology. Find out more details and sign up here .
The White House announced a commitment from a number of AI companies to counter the rise of AI produced child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Participants range from old school industry titans like Microsoft and Adobe , while Anthropic and OpenAI have also made commitments in partnership with the Biden-Harris administration. Earlier this month, Forbes reported on allegations that a pedophile took images of innocent children at Disney World and a middle school to turn them into AI-generated CSAM.
During a meeting with industry analysts last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison shared his vision of the future, in which AI surveillance tools will constantly be monitoring peopl e to ensure that “citizens will be on their best behavior," Business Insider reports . The billionaire would, of course, stand to become even richer should such a dystopian, Big Brother world ever come to pass. Many of the technologies he described already exist, including AI-powered cameras via the likes of Flock Safety , which continue to proliferate across the U.
S. The U.K.
National Crime Agency arrested a 17-year-old for an attack on Transport for London , the government agency responsible for running the Underground and buses across the capital. Thousands of travelers may have had their bank details stolen as a result of the breach. Winner of the Week Mastercard has acquired cyber intelligence provider Recorded Future for $2.
65 billion . The cyber business digs up intelligence on criminal and government hackers , claiming to have 1,900 clients across 75 countries, including the governments of 45 countries. “By joining Mastercard, we see an opportunity to help more businesses and governments determine the steps to realize their full potential – and to enable everyone to feel safer in their daily lives,” said Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future.
Loser of the Week Semafor spoke with two dozen former CrowdStrike employees following the catastrophic outage that grounded flights in July, the result of a faulty update from the cybersecurity giant. They said executives had been warned of “rushed deadlines, excessive workloads, and increasing technical problems” in the year leading up to the outages. CrowdStrike disputed the reporting, blaming “disgruntled former employees” for the allegations, though Semafor said it spoke to numerous ex-staffers who left of their own accord.
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