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Online Blackmail of Czech Children

Focused on So-Called Sextortion
(Analysis of Culprit and Victim Behaviors)

Article in Telematics and Informatics April 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.tele.2016.04.004

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Telematics and Informatics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tele

Online blackmail of Czech children focused on so-called

sextortion (analysis of culprit and victim behaviors)
Kamil Kopecky
University Olomouc, Czech Republic
Palacky

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The online blackmail of children within the environment of Internet services (specifically,
Received 5 January 2016 social networks) has become an extremely dangerous phenomenon that affects 68% of
Received in revised form 3 April 2016 Czech children. Within the following text, data obtained from research conducted in
Accepted 18 April 2016
20132015 by the Centre for the Prevention of Risky Virtual Communication, Faculty of
Available online 19 April 2016
Education, Palacky University in Olomouc will be discussed. A selection of analyses aimed
at gender and age differences connected with the blackmailing of children will be
Keywords:
presented. Additionally, whether the children participate in blackmailing on their own
Sextortion
Online blackmail of children
and whether they eventually become offenders of other individuals will be examined.
Cyberbullying The text will also be supplemented with a typical blackmail model using intimate and
Online blackmail model sexually explicit materials (which are referred to as sextortion) that was created based
Blackmail stages on a detailed analysis of 25 serious cases of online blackmail. The model has been divided
Sexting into several connected stages through which the online attack is carried out. The specific
Cybergrooming stages are subsequently elaborated on using documented evidence. Based on the analysis
Safer Internet of individual cases, we have compiled a model that describes the different stages of the
process of extortion and can predict communication of the attacker and the victim.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction to the topic terms definitions

The term extortion (blackmailing) is obviously defined as the illegal and intentional use of threats to ones person or property,
coercion, or fraudulent claims of right of public duty (such as impersonating a Police officer) for the purpose of taking money, goods,
property, services or some other thing of value from a victim against his/her will (HG.org Legal Resources, n.d.).
Within the framework of international and European law extortion is defined similarly, eg. In the Irish Criminal Justice
Code (Criminal Justice Act, 1994, Section 17, 1994) is blackmail defined as follows: It shall be an offence for any person
who, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, makes any unwarranted demand with
menaces. British law (Theft Act, 1969, Section 20, 1969), then for example defines extortion as follows:

(1) A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes
any unwarranted demand with menaces; and, for this purpose, a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person
making it does so in the belief
(a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and

E-mail address: kopeckyk@seznam.cz

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.04.004
0736-5853/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
12 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky

(b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand.
(2) The nature of the act or omission demanded is immaterial, and it is also immaterial whether the menaces relate to action to
be taken by the person making the demand.

esk republiky, 2009) in Sec-

In the Czech Republic extortion is defined under the Act No. 40/2009 Coll. (Parlament C
tion 175 as follows:

(1) A person who by violence, threat of violence or threat of other severe injury forces others to act, neglected or suffer, will be
punished with imprisonment from six months to four years or with a fine.
(2) The offender will be imprisoned for two to eight years if he
(a) commits an offense referred to in paragraph 1 as a member of an organized group,
(b) commits such an offense at least with two other persons,
(c) commits such an offense with a gun,
(d) causes damage by such a crime,
(e) commits such an offense against a witness, expert or interpreter in connection with the performance of their duties, or
(f) commits such an offense against another person for his actual or perceived race, ethnicity, nationality, political beliefs,
religion or because they are actually or allegedly without religion.
(3) The offender will be punished with imprisonment of five to twelve years if he
(a) causes grievous bodily harm by the act.
(b) commits such an act with the intention of enabling or facilitating the act of crime of treason ( 309), terrorist attacks (
311) or terror ( 312), or
(c) causes damage by offence of great extent.
(4) imprisonment for eight to sixteen years, the offender will be punished if he causes death by offense stated in paragraph 1.
(5) preparation is punishable.
There are differences between the terms blackmailing and extortion in modern usage blackmail differs from extor-
tion in that the money or other valuable object or act is not extorted by threat of direct bodily harm, but by the threat of
revealing something presumed to be injurious to the victim. The difference is noticeable only in US English (Maddox, 2011).
In our study we work with the term sextortion, a combination of the words sex and extortion, which is generally defined
as a specific kind of blackmail in which the offender uses intimate material to achieve his goals, whether of their own (in primary stages
of blackmail), or materials obtained from the victim (Clark, 2014; Kopecky, 2014; Wilson, 2011). Other authors (Flores et al., 2015)
define sextortion as a means of coercing cybercrime victims to perform sexual favors or to pay a hefty sum in exchange for the non-
exposure of their explicit images, videos, or conversations. These extortion tools are normally obtained through various chat programs.
Another authors defines sextortion as blackmail via having cybercrime victims pay money to prevent sexually explicit images and
video from being made public (Cyber criminals turn to sextortion blackmail | Fin24, n.d.).
It is necessary to distinguish between the terms sextortion and cyber grooming. The term cyber grooming (child groom-
ing, online grooming) indicates the behavior of Internet users (predators, cybergroomers), which goal is to cause victims false
confidence and force the victim to go to a personal meeting (Kierkegaard, 2008; Kopecky, 2010; OConnell, 2003). The result
of this meeting can be sexual abuse, physical violence on a victim, abuse of victim for child prostitution, production of child
pornography etc.
Other authors define cyber grooming as a process where the offender (in cooperation with accomplices) prepares the child for
abuse and ensures good conditions for this act. Among the targets of the attack belong gaining access to the child, ensuring
compliance of the child and ensuring the confidentiality of the child to avoid disclosure (Craven et al., 2006). Cyber grooming is
a kind of psychological manipulation carried out through the Internet, mobile phones and other related technologies (Berson,
2003; Knoll, 2010; Kopecky, 2009; OConnell, 2003; Penna et al., 2005).
The boundary between sextortion and cyber grooming is not sharply defined, but there are some differences that can be
used to distinguish the both forms of risky communication. Fundamental differences between sextortion and cyber
grooming can be seen in two areas:

1. In the motivation of the offender

For cyber grooming, the primary motivation of an offender is sexual abuse of a child-within real personal meeting in the
real world. Intimate materials that an offender gets from the child are just means and instruments to achieve this goal.
Sextortion is then one of techniques that can be used in the process of cyber grooming. Primary goal of sextortion is to
lure a victim to a personal meeting, but rather to blackmail to get the victim to cover a certain amount for that the offen-
der will not release intimate materials received from the victim. However, there are also cases when a victim was forced
to a personal meeting in this way (Kopecky et al., 2015c).
2. In connection of sextortion with cyber grooming
Sextortion can be seen as one of the techniques that are used to manipulate the victim within cyber grooming; blackmail,
however, does not have to happen. In many cases, the victim arrived at a personal meeting of the offender entirely vol-
untarily without giving the offender intimate materials.
 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky 13

1.2. Sextortion focused on children

The blackmail of children on the Internet has become a taboo topic due to the nature of materials used for blackmail-
ing. However, because of efforts to avoid harm to the victim, the blackmail cases are likely to be covered up in an
attempt to solve them in other ways (e.g., without Police intervention); thus, researchers inadvertently provide the
impression that these cases are not serious to children and their online predators. Nonetheless, in research conducted
in the Czech Republic in 20132015, researchers demonstrated that 68% of children reported serious cases of blackmail
(Kopecky et al., 2014b).
The offenders motivation for blackmail varies. In many cases, children were blackmailed by the offender to obtain
money; in other cases, the blackmail was merely a component of cybergrooming (Kloess et al., 2014; Kopecky et al.,
2015; Mitchell, 2005; OConnell, 2003). Furthermore, in other cases, the offender focused solely on systematically obtaining
a childs intimate materials (photographs or video recordings that show partial or completely naked children or other sex-
ually explicit materials) with no effort made to initiate face-to-face contact with the victim in the real world.
The aim of obtaining material of a sexual nature (which is referred to as sextortion) represents a relatively new and very
dangerous form of blackmail, which appears mainly within the environment of social networks (Strasburger et al., 2012). As
noted by Wilson (2011), teenagers often become victims of blackmailing through materials with sexual content because they
are easily threatened and often ashamed of informing the adults in their lives.
Some researchers also warn that girls become victims of online blackmail more often than boys (Grosskopf, 2010).
This finding is supported by our 2013 research (see subsequent text) and a large volume of cases from the Czech Repub-
lic; although there are also cases in which a boy becomes a victim of a male or female offender (Kopecky et al., 2015a,
2014b).
In a small number of cases, offenders use sophisticated computer programs to acquire intimate materials and to blackmail
the victims after the materials are obtained. These programs allow the users to remotely control a PC or laptop webcam to
record the behavior of the victim without the victims knowledge. This scenario occurred in the case of a Canadian sexual
predator (Blankstein, 2013) who was given an 18 month prison sentence in 2013 for hacking the emails, social network pro-
files, and computers of dozens of girls. He also remotely turned on their webcams and recorded girls when they were naked.
He subsequently contacted the girls and required a payment or forced the girls to get naked through Skype under the threat
of publishing their photos and videos on the Internet.
Sextortion is very dangerous, which is demonstrated by the suicide of a 15-year-old Canadian girl (Lester et al., 2013).
When she was 12, she was forced by an unknown man to get naked in front of her webcam. The offender subsequently
obtained a photo of her breasts. One year later, she became the victim of blackmail when the anonymous offender
announced that if she did not get completely naked in front of the camera, he would publish the photo on the Internet.
She refused to comply. A website with a profile photo that showed her breasts subsequently appeared on the Internet. This
photo was a trigger for bullying and cyberbullying, which the victim suffered from for approximately three years. She drew
attention to her situation through video confessions on YouTube and ultimately committed suicide.
The number of cases of blackmailed children on the Internet has increased in Europe, the USA, and Canada. A similar
development has also occurred in the Czech Republic. Based on the up-to-date data and research conducted by the E-
Bezpec team of Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc and the company Seznam.cz on a sample of more than
21,000 children, 7.33% of Czech teenagers have been the victim of blackmailing (Kopecky et al., 2014a). In accordance with
the findings of both organizations, the most serious cases of blackmail proceed according to certain simple, but very danger-
ous, schemes, which will be highlighted further in this text world.
The aim of our paper is to determine how much extortion in the population of Czech children has been extended, and
identify techniques that attackers use to blackmail the child. Then we will build a model based on the occurrence of attack
techniques that will describe the basic principles of extortion of children in an online environment (with the specific focus on
blackmail using intimate materials).

2. Methods

2.1. Data sources

In our study we use the results of two researches implemented by a team of researchers of the Centre for the Prevention
of Risky Virtual Communication (PRVoK) of Palacky University in Olomouc in the years 20142016. The first research called
Danger of Internet Communication IV was aimed at the prevalence of cyberbullying and other risky forms of communication in
the population of Czech children the data was obtained via questionnaire.
The second research was focused on the analysis of specific cases of children extortion that have been captured and dealt
with by the Centre PRVoK in cooperation with the Police of the Czech Republic. Cases have been reported to the counseling
centre via the contact form, subsequently there was a contact established with the child by an appropriate advisors and they
ensured the successful resolving of the risky communication. By combining the two types of data we can get a more accurate
idea of how much widespread the extortion in the population of children is and how extortion using intimate materials takes
place.
14 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky

2.2. Descriptive data and relational analysis

The descriptive data were obtained from the research referred to as the Danger of Internet Communication IV, which rep-
resented the fourth nation-wide research conducted within the scope of the E-Bezpec project. For the years 2014, the project
was conducted in cooperation with the company Seznam.cz (Seznam.cz is a Czech company with more than 1000 employ-
ees, which operates a large number of Internet services in the Czech Republic, including several social networks, dating and
auction portals, online television, etc.). The research was focused on the occurrence of risky behavior connected with infor-
mation and communication technologies, particularly, the Internet, in a population of Czech children.
The pool was formed from basic and secondary school students who were also users of Internet services and mobile tele-
phones within the entire Czech Republic. For the purposes of this study, the age of the respondents was fixed at 1117 years
old, and then divided into two age categories: 1114 and 1517 years old. This project was approved by the Ethical Commit-
tee at the Department of Psychology and Pathopsychology of Palacky University, Olomouc. It was conducted under the
supervision of the Olomouc Police Department, which guaranteed the safety of the minors involved and also followed up
on the criminal cases. Participation was entirely voluntary, and all parents of the children provided full written consent.
A controlled selection (proportional stratified selection) from the basic pool of the research sample was used, in which the
number of respondents selected to the imaginary subgroups (in our case, to the regions) was proportional to the number of
respondents within the basic group. The total number of respondents was 21,372. The research sample consisted of 55.42%
girls and 44.58% boys. A total of 68.57% of the respondents were between the ages of 11 and 14 years, and 31.43% of the
respondents were between the ages of 15 and 17 years. All 13 regions within the Czech Republic were included, as well
as Prague.
With respect to the intended number of respondents, the research was qualitative. An exploratory method was selected
as an initial research method; the questionnaire was selected as a research technique. The research tools features (validity
and reliability) have been previously verified (Kopecky et al., 2013, 2014b) and contained 71 items (40 true or false, 24 mul-
tiple choice, and 7 open items).

2.3. Analysis of blackmail cases

The analysis of child blackmail cases occurred from January 1, 2012 to May 30, 2015 as the cases were reported to the
online advisory center of the E-Bezpec project. Every year, the advisory center addresses approximately 220290 cases of
various types, which are anonymously received; the users are not required to state their real personal data, and an e-mail
address is the only data that is archived.
The online counseling center is connected with the online search systems of Seznam.cz and Google and is publicly avail-
able on the Internet address www.napisnam.cz. Individual cases are processed by a team of experts specializing in the area of
cyber-crime (including the Police staff of the Czech Republic), who recommend specific solutions for the problem to the vic-
tim. Both adult and children users of the Internet services use the online counseling center. The online counseling center
registers cases of cyberbullying, cybergrooming, stalking, phishing, webcam trolling, etc. Currently, the database contains
more than 1400 cases (since 2010).
For our study, the researchers selected only cases of blackmailing under the following conditions: the victim was an indi-
vidual younger than 18 years of age (a child); the victim did not inform the parents or other adults regarding the blackmail;
the victim did not report the blackmail to the Police. In all cases, the blackmail was conducted over the Internet, mainly
within the environment of social networks (e.g., Facebook and ASK.fm). Girls were victims in 73% of the cases, and boys were
victims in 27%. The ages of the victims ranged from 11 to 17 years. For each case, the members of the research team mon-
itored the synchronous or asynchronous communication of the victim and offender; they joined an offender social network
profile determination (e.g., Facebook) and monitored the offenders activities within the frame of other Internet services. In
all monitored cases, the real identity of the offender was identified. The time interval required to analyze the blackmail cases
varied from 2 to 3 months. In all cases, the offender consisted of an adult individual (aged 2839).

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive data

Table 1 shows the observed and relative frequencies of the blackmail victims and offenders using Internet services or
mobile telephone.
To add the up-to-date observed descriptive data, the following figure indicates the trends of blackmail and threats within
this population of Czech children (specifically, when the child was a victim of blackmail) for a period of 3 years. The mea-
sured values were obtained within the frame of research surveys, Dangers of Internet Communication 2, 3, and 4 (Kopecky
et al., 2012, 2014a, 2015), on a population sample of more than 20,000 respondents. For every year, a new sample of respon-
dents was investigated (Fig. 1).
 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky 15

Table 1
Frequency of blackmail victims and offenders.

Answer Victim of blackmailing Offender of blackmailing

Frequency Rel. frequency % Frequency Rel. frequency%
No 16,856 78.6 17,163 80.0
Yes 1374 6.46 413 1.9
Missing data 3223 15.0 3877 18.1
P P
21,453 21,453

Fig. 1. Occurrence of blackmail using ICT within a population of Czech children (20112013).

3.2. Results regarding the analyses of blackmail cases

In this study, the prevalence of online blackmail in a population of Czech children was identified. These results served
as a basis for the creation of a general model of child blackmail, which was created via the analysis of 25 cases of child
blackmail registered and solved under the Online Advisory Centre of the E-Bezpec project (www.napisnam.cz). This
organization specializes in cases connected with Internet misuse and is connected to the Police, workers of the OSPOD
(authorities of social care for children), lawyers, IT specialists, and other experts. The advisory center is run by the Cen-
tre for the Prevention of Risky Virtual Communication under the Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc
(www.prvok.upol.cz).
The results of these 25 cases demonstrated that very similar techniques are used to blackmail children. These techniques
focus on gaining confidence, luring out intimate material, and subsequent blackmailing. Most analyzed cases are based on
similar schemes and actions. On the basis of the analysis, a model of blackmailing was created that was divided into logical
stages connected to each other. This model will be explained in subsequent sections.
The model aim is primarily to demonstrate that during extortion offenders repeat processes which children can be pre-
pared for and ensure their effective protection. The model is therefore used as part of the educational activities of the project
E-Bezpeci (detail below) (Fig. 2).

3.2.1. 1st stage get in touch with the child

In this stage, the offender gets in touch with the child, and the conversation is typically initiated with one of the following
simple sentences: Hello, do you want to exchange some photos? Hello, lets have a chat! Hello, how are you? In general, the
offender acts under the identity of an individual of the same sex, which means the offender pretends to be male or female
depending on the victims response. If a girl wrote to a boy or vice versa, it would likely be considered not only blackmail but
also cybergrooming, which represents blackmail for the purposes of luring a victim out to a personal meeting (Gupta et al.,
2012; Kierkegaard, 2008; Webster et al., 2012).
If the child reacts positively to the contact (Ok, lets change some photos. Kk.), the offender will send his/her first photo or
series of photos, which are not initially intimate. The intimacy is initiated in subsequent stages. In several cases, the offender
contacted a chosen victim as if it were an accident (Hello, I am sorry, I was looking for something on the Internet and I
accidentally added you to my friend list. I am Pavla. We could chat, do you want to?). The offender gradually convinced the child
to initiate communication to prime him or her to send information of a personal and intimate character (Kopecky, 2014)
(Fig. 3).
16 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky

Fig. 2. The simplified model of blackmailing of children through the usage of ICT (social networks).

Fig. 3. Example of a contact between the offender and a child on Facebook (real case).

3.2.2. 2nd stage manipulation through compliments

To obtain the childs attention, the offender begins to positively evaluate all materials sent by the victim. Thus, when the
victim sends a photo to the offender, he/she starts flattering the victim and comments on the photo in this way: You are so
beautiful in the photo. You have a wonderful body. You look so good. You are gorgeous. He typically supplements the compliment
with: Are you going to send me more photos? An offender easily attracts the child in this way; children long for admiration and
respect, and they want someone to admire and appreciate them. Manipulation via compliments goes smoothly through all
subsequent stages.

3.2.3. 3rd stage verification of the victims real identity

Within this stage, the offender attempts to confirm the victims identity. For example, the offender might require the child
to take a photo with writing and a date (e.g., For Janie, May 31, 2015). The offender is not concerned with obtaining intimate
or identifying photos of the child; he/she only wants to verify that he/she communicates with a real child and that the photos
are authentic.
 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky 17

The offender typically introduces the identity verification through the following sentences: No, its not you in the photo. I
dont believe you. Just take a photo with your cell phone and add a note saying For Theresa. Yeah, but your face does not
have to be shown. . .
This technique of an anonymous Internet individual using a photo with a note, date, or up-to-date newspaper is com-
monly used for the identity verification of Internet users. This technique is in itself rather positive; however, it can be mis-
used for blackmail. It also indicates to the offender that the child is willing to do what he/she commands.

3.2.4. 4th stage intimacy intensifying

This stage is referred to as intimacy intensifying because the intimacy of the photos, which are exchanged between the
victim and the offender, is increasing and intensifying. Photos that show dressed children are gradually replaced with par-
tially or completely naked photos. Attackers may also request that the child perform sexual acts on him/herself and pho-
tograph it. Similar photos are subsequently sent to the child; however, these photos are typically photos obtained from
foreign erotic and pornographic websites. Most materials sent by the offender to the child are child pornography. This stage
is very dangerous because the child imitates the offenders behavior and can send him/her almost anything.

3.2.5. 5th stage multistage blackmail

When the child decides to abandon the scheme of exchanging photos, the offender generally proceeds to blackmail. Black-
mail is typically accomplished in one of two ways: threats to tell friends on social networks or threats to tell the parents of
the children.
In the stage of threatening to tell friends on social networks, the offender tells the child that if he/she does not send more
materials, the offender will send all materials gained from the victim to the victims friends and other social network users,
so that the distribution speed of these materials will be very high. The offender often chooses a similar formulation as follows:
I am going to send the pictures to all friends in my friend list. So you are going to a take couple more photos and you are going to
send me the photos in a way I want or I am going to put all the photos on the Internet and all of your friends are going to see
them and that is going to be embarrassing for you. Is it clear to you? Ok, so send all the photos (real-life example).

In the next stage of blackmail, the form of the attack is repeated, but instead of friends, the parents are used. Communi-
cation between the offender and the victim subsequently proceeds in this way (an example of communication from the real
case authentic text):

Theresa (offender)
Dont you make me send the photos to your dad.
Jane (victim)
You know his name?
Theresa (offender)
https://www.facebook.com/otec.jany.petr
Could it be Petr?
Ok, so send me all the photos. Unless you want me to send all the photos to your dad and you are going to have a big problem.
Jane (victim)
OK, but tomorrow, I cannot do it now, I am sorry, but tomorrow, ok?
Theresa (offender)
No. You are saying this for the third time. Bad luck. Now or I am going to send them to him.
Jane (victim)
OK, so now.
Theresa (offender)
You have two minutes to make up your mind.
Jane (victim)
Pls, dont do it, I am going to take the photo you want right now.
Theresa (offender)
Ok, so I wanna see your breasts. . . and let your face be seen, thats the first photo, if you try to send me anything else, I am going
to send the photos to your dad. . . so take the photo of you alone. . . breasts. Do what I am saying. . . Youve got 3 min to take the
photo of your breasts.
Jane (victim)
(Jane sent the photos by the stated time; her face and naked breast was shown in the photo taken in the bathroom).

The blackmail continues in this way, in which the offender gains photos that contain the childs face. The probability that
the offender obtains further intimate materials from the child drastically increases (interannual case increase by approxi-
mately 17%). In many cases, the offender forces the child into a personal meeting by using the intimate materials
18 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky

Fig. 4. Demonstration of educational outreach activities for children.

(Berson, 2003; Quayle et al., 2014; Webster et al., 2012). Blackmail can consequently turn into prostitution when many of the
offenders offer money to the children for sexual services during their personal meetings (archive of project Meet Safety CZ).
The children subsequently come back to the offender of their own free will.
One hundred percent of the child victims did not contact an adult (e.g., parents, teachers, or adult siblings) during the
23 months of blackmail. During the advanced stages of the blackmail, the children contacted the anonymous Internet
advisory helpline.
Communication was subsequently initiated with the children, and the helpline worker contacted the Police of the Czech
Republic for further investigation. It can be assumed that a high number of cases are not reported to the Police, and they are
not involved in the official statistics for the Czech Internet crime rate.

4. Discussion

Several serious findings emerged from the selected relational analyses conducted within the frame of our research Danger
of Internet communication IV (Kopecky et al., 2014a), which investigated the blackmail of children over the Internet or by
mobile telephone. The most serious result is the fact that compared with the respondents who have never been blackmailed,
the respondents who had been blackmailed more often state that they engaged in attacks against other individuals and per-
petuated the cycle of abuse. Thus, in many cases, the victim becomes the offender. In our opinion, the potential explanations
of this phenomenon include a childs desire for revenge in connection with the experienced suffering or a need to experience
the same feelings that he/she experienced.
The gender differences are also alarming; girls become the victims of blackmail more often than boys. Grosskopfs argu-
ment (Grosskopf, 2010) that states girls become victims of online blackmailing more often than boys can be supported.
Regarding the age range, it appears as though the children aged 1517 years old are in a worse situation with regard to
blackmail, which does not support the previous assumption that because of the lack of life experiences, the younger children
would be predisposed to be blackmailed more often.
Preventative measures and programs aimed at girls older than 15 years of age are recommended because these findings
indicate that girls in this age range most frequently experience blackmail. The basis of prevention programs should primarily
work with specific case studies in which the child will understand the value of personal and sensitive data, how to recognize
a potential attack, and how to handle a critical situation. It is also very important to teach the child how to defend in a crisis
situation, such as which crisis line to call or how to contact the Police.
Based on the analyses of the blackmail cases, online blackmail follows a predictable scheme within the entire range of
cases. Specific, repetitive forms of communication are identified within the behaviors of the offenders; on the basis of these
forms, it is possible to predict the development of the blackmailing process. Therefore, it is critical to advise potential victims
of the forms of online blackmail and to inform them about cases that occurred in connection with the leakage of intimate
materials on the Internet. This approach can be accomplished within the school environment and eventually through media
campaigns.
Every elementary school in the Czech Republic must have drawn, according to the law in accordance with school
curricula, a so called minimum preventive school program, which includes activities aimed at preventing risk phenomena
associated with the Internet. In many cases, schools use external certified entities, which run the preventive program in
school. As examples, the Czech Republic has been successfully operating the preventive project E-Bezpeci, a project Meet
safely!, and international project Webrangers (Kopecky et al., 2015b).
 / Telematics and Informatics 34 (2017) 1119
K. Kopecky 19

The model described in this paper is used in the context of the educational activities of the E-Bezpeci project oriented
towards students of elementary and lower secondary Czech schools. Within them, children learn to recognize risk commu-
nication situations associated with the use of social networks, identify harmful forms of communication, verify the identity
of Internet users, ensure the protection of their privacy and learn effective ways to fight back (Fig. 4).
The role of prevention is invaluable in these situations. Most cases have one thing in common, which is the fact that the
offender was successful in obtaining intimate material from the victim. If researchers can prevent children from providing
intimate material in the first place, it will be impossible for offenders to proceed.

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