Australia's online safety regulator eSafety says tech giants including Apple, Meta, and Google are not doing enough to combat sextortion. Victims tend to be younger, including children below 16.

A typical attack involves impersonation and flirtation, then explicit photos exchanged, followed by threats to expose unless paid. The regulator says platforms fail to deploy language analysis to detect recognisable coercive scripts repeated across thousands of approaches. For Apple, it should detect these scripts via iMessage similar to its nude photo detection for children.

Gaps persist across WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages, with some lacking clear reporting for sexual extortion. The problem is large-scale: more than 10% of teenagers aged 16 to 18 fall victim, over half before age 16.

9to5Mac notes teen suicides linked to sextortion. While iMessages use end-to-end encryption, Apple's existing on-device nude image detection shows it can analyze without compromising privacy. A developer spotted malicious message detection in iOS 26.6 beta.