Snapchat Introduces New Features to Combat Sextortion & Protect Teens

• Snapchat has announced a bunch of new features to protect teens from sextortion.
• This includes improvement to its blocking function, better control over location settings, and safety pop-ups that encourage teens to be cautious of people they meet on the app.
• Users will also be encouraged to update their apps at the earliest.

On Tuesday, Snapchat rolled out a bunch of new safety features to protect teens from sextortion and encourage real friendship on the app. The company said that these new features include expanded in-app warnings, enhanced friending protections, simplified location-sharing, and blocking improvements"

Here's a complete breakdown of the new safety features added to Snapchat

Friend Requests

Friend requests will be altogether prevented. Teens can neither send nor receive friend requests from someone they don't have mutual friends with or if that user has a history of accessing Snapchat in locations often associated with scamming activity.

Protection from Scammers

• The app will warn teenagers against users who have been blocked or reported by other users. This move will ensure that people with a bad reputation cannot approach young users.
• A warning popup will appear if a teen is contacted by someone who is not from their region/country, which might indicate that the person is a scammer.

Regular Updates

Snapchat already sends reminders to all users, including teens, to be up-to-date on their security settings and be sure of which friends they are sharing their location with. This feature will now get an update as Snapchat will send these reminders more often.

Location Sharing

It is also introducing simplified-location sharing" which will help you easily customize which of your friends can see your location. It basically creates a single control center for updating/removing their location and managing who can see it.

Enhanced Blocking

Blocking has always been an option on Snapchat. But sometimes, scammers create new accounts to pester their victims after being blocked.

With these latest updates, once a user is blocked, they can no longer send friend requests from other accounts, as long as they are created on the same device.What Else Has Snapchat Been Doing These Past Months?

This isn't the first time that Snapchat has taken the initiative to safeguard young users on the app.

• In November last year, it introduced an update that showed an expanded popup to teens when they receive a message from someone who is not in their contacts or they don't have a mutual friend with.
• Since the launch of this feature, millions of Snapchat users have together done 12 million blocks.
• Snapchat location sharing is off by default which means unless you explicitly consent, no one can check your location. And even then, it's just your friends.
• Other than that, it uses signal-based detection to identify and eliminate bad actors before they can target someone.
• Also, teens are not shown in Quick Add or Search suggestions unless they have multiple mutual friends with the user.
• In March last year, Snapchat introduced new parental control features, which allowed parents to restrict their children from viewing sensitive' or suggestive' content.

Last but not least, Snapchat has heavily invested in research and collaborated with multiple other organizations to curb sextortion and minimize its impact on the victims.

Recently, Instagram also announced similar features to protect its young users from the growing instances of sextortion.

Features included blurring explicit media files on DMs sent to teens, better reporting tools including a helpline number, and special popups for teens to warn them against sending private photos via DM.

Social media giants like Meta had earlier faced EU investigations for not doing enough to protect minors on the platform. These new measures from Meta and Snapchat are always a welcome move, especially in the face of increasing crime against children.

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