SHARING her nude photos with a boyfriend proved costly for a woman when her boyfriend lost his phone (theSun, Sept 14).
The woman received phone calls from a person who threatened to upload the photos on the internet if she did not pay him.
Out of fear, she paid the man but as the extortion continued, the woman reported the matter to the police and the man was caught.
The woman is lucky that the extortionist only demanded money because in most cases, extortionists will demand sex from their victims.
Sharing intimate photos with your boyfriend can take a turn for the worse if the relationship breaks down.
The boyfriend can threaten the woman to give in to his sexual demands or he would expose the photos.
And then there are cases of local women who fell prey to online love scams run by foreigners.
These online “lovers” prowl the internet in search of lonely single women. Somehow they managed to convince the women into giving them money for their expenses in exchange for promises of marriage.
Since 2017, a few thousand women have collectively lost a staggering amount to love scams.
Over the years, reports of female lawyers, bankers, businesswomen and lecturers who have lost their hard-earned money to these love scams have gone viral on the internet.
The modus operandi is to prey on lonely and vulnerable women and befriend them via social media and then woo them with affection and passion. In some cases, the women trusted the men and were so bedazzled that they send their online lovers their nude photos, thinking that the men would marry them eventually.
Then the men would threaten to expose the women’s nude photographs if they do not bank in money into their accounts.
Some of the women would borrow from loansharks to pay the extortionists.
Despite widespread media coverage, gullible women still fall into these licentious relationships – losing their hard earned money and themselves. Women need to be more careful and exercise greater caution when they get into relationships with new acquaintances online.
Sharing photographs of themselves in the nude, even with their husbands or boyfriends, is an act of stupidity.
Samuel Yesuiah
Seremban
