“Sending each other naked photos is commonplace. The statement may come as a surprise or, on the contrary, seem banal – depending on the age, quite often. It is taken from “Sextorsion” (contraction of “sex” and “extortion”), one of the three episodes of the series on Les Pièges du numérique put online on France.tv in December. And this first salvo of videos should reach a wide audience, well beyond the targeted generation.

The series was indeed designed for ‘digital natives’, born after 1984, after a study by The Local Government Association, the voice of UK local authorities, claimed that 18-34 year olds are more likely to be scammed online than fifty-somethings. So the designers have adopted their codes: short videos and presentation by youtubers or influencers.

Jüne Pla, 38, illustrator and founder of Jouissance.club – 985,000 subscribers on Instagram –, thus evokes the difficult subject of blackmail for the false distribution of compromising sexual videos, which can lead to suicide. As witnessed by Adeline, Matéo’s sister, found hanged in her room.

Jüne Pla nevertheless remains smiling to warn against “friends” who demand “nudes” (naked photos) or against “fisha” accounts, which disseminate intimate images of young people without their consent. Above all, she wants to make the victims feel guilty, repeats that “anyone can be trapped”, and explains what to do if this happens – the emergency number is 3018.

Practical advice

Another tone, funny, another look, all in black, for Sandoz (484,000 subscribers on YouTube), who came to decipher the CPF (personal training account) fraud – while the government tabled an amendment to the project on December 10 2023 budget establishing the principle of a co-payment…

Since 2018, this Alsatian has denounced “grazers” (net scammers) in videos with sometimes flowery language. Nothing rude here. He relies on the testimonies of scammers to emphasize that “as the money does not come out of their pocket, no one thought to file a complaint”, before going up the training courses.

At the same time, Sandoz looks back on the creation of the CPF in 2018 and its unexpected success, then discusses practical advice. While we would like more details, Laurent Durain, director of vocational training at Caisse des dépôts, imposes his conciseness: “A proposal that is too good… is too good. »

The advice also applies to cryptocurrency scams, decoded in a more classic video by Amy Plant, computer science student at Ecole 42. After a kind of press review of the latest scams discovered and tempting advertisements, the young woman goes to fishing for information before investing – little, but for real.

On his way are a victim, a con man, a policeman and ThaHomey, a “scam rapper” who raps about “cryptos”. A trend developed in a historical sequence, which goes from the anarchic “cypherpunk” movement of the 1980s to the announcement, in September 2021, of the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. Too briefly, again. But other videos are already announced for 2023.