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'I never expected it to happen to me' - Perth man tells of sexting scam

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Imagine you're on Tinder, you get a match and start hitting it off and a couple of days later things start to get steamy.

But suddenly, things have gone massively downhill.

You're sent a link to an online directory with compromising photos of yourself, and your red hot match is now telling you to pay $500 or she'll send these pictures to your friends and family. 

It's a nightmare situation to even think about but for one Perth man recently it was a reality.

"I was kind of shocked, I thought well 'this is going to be a disaster'."

25-year-old Jimmy R (not his real name), from Perth's southern suburbs said that once his initial shock had passed, he knew what he had to do.

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"Paying wasn't an option," Jimmy says.

"I prepared a Facebook statement for friends and family in case they got a link to the photos, and hoped that they would understand... and they did."

Facebook post.

People often associate scams and blackmail attempts like this with older demographics, people who aren't as conscious of the internet as the younger generations.

Jimmy however, has grown up around the internet and is very aware of it's dangers, having heard of scams like this many times in the past.

"Usually I'm extremely cautious, I'm very careful with the fake people on the internet because they're everywhere," Jimmy says.

"I had never expected it to happen to me, but it's got to happen to someone."

After matching on Tinder, and hitting it off for a couple of days the two decided to move to another messaging app, KiK messenger.

The conversation then turned sexual, in which both parties sent compromising photos to each other. This type of sexual interaction is often called 'sexting'.

Jimmy says that he was wary throughout the conversation but the person on the other side passed every level of identity test he could think of.

He says her Tinder and KiK profiles had multiple non-descript photos of the same person on them, often in the same settings, with Australian power sockets.

A reverse Google image search (which allows you to trace if a photo has been posted online) turned up nothing.

"I was very skeptical all through but they were very convincing," Jimmy says.

The final straw came in when Jimmy asked the lady to send a photo of her with thumbs up. She replied within two minutes with the photo as asked.

"The thumbs up photo, I thought well there's no way someone has access to that at a moments notice, a thumbs up photo of a fake person."

Jordan Foster is a psychologist and director at ySafe, a Perth based cyber safety company which aims to give skills and knowledge to parents over the dangers that the internet presents.

She says this issue is becoming increasingly common and it was probably the case that there was more than one person working to pull the blackmail off.

"It's very likely that the pictures he received, were from the girl," Ms Foster says. "A lot of the time you can see that it's very well thought out and structured."

Ms Foster says what Jimmy did in making a Facebook statement was a very brave and great thing to do.

"These people have power when more people go along with that they're doing, so to have the courage to then stand up and go against what they are requesting is taking their power away from them," she says.

"It also raises awareness to other people about the same situation so what he may have also done is help someone who may have found themselves in a similar situation."

Jimmy says that he feels like he is not the first victim of this blackmail and thinks whoever was behind it has probably been doing it for years. And whilst he didn't pay, he sees in retrospect that it was bound to happen if he was to trust someone like that.

However, it hasn't dented his ideal for sexting, with Jimmy saying he's do it again if he knew the person was real.

Ms Foster says that when it comes to sexting, to tell adults to just not do it is unrealistic. She suggests instead to be as safe as possible when sexting and to use measures that protect your identity.

"If you do get blackmailed and it's only an image of a private area, it's quite easy to turn around and say that's it's not you," Ms Foster says.

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