Sextortion Statistics Canada [2026]

Canada’s national tipline, Cybertip.ca 2026, logged 14,153 sextortion reports between 2020 and 2025 — a six-fold jump from 458 reports in 2020 to 2,827 in 2025. Most victims are teenagers pressured for money or more explicit images. This post compiles the sextortion statistics Canada relies on: report volumes, age and gender breakdowns, platform tactics, and Criminal Code sections. Links below lead to the fraud research hub for wider context.

What is sextortion in Canada

Sextortion is a form of online blackmail in which someone convinces a person to send sexual images or videos of themselves, then threatens to share them with others unless the victim pays money or sends more images. Youth and young adults aged 14 to 24 are the demographic most frequently targeted.

RCMP 2025 data shows two dominant patterns. Girls and young women are typically pressured for more sexual imagery, while boys and young men are typically pressured for money; both groups concentrated in the 14-to-24 age range. Canada prosecutes sextortion under Section 346 of the Criminal Code, the extortion provision. It criminalizes inducing a person to act, including sending money or additional images, through threats, accusations, menaces, or violence.

How common is sextortion in Canada: headline statistics, 2020-2025

Cybertip.ca reports climbed from 458 in 2020 to a peak of 4,762 in 2023 before settling at 2,827 in 2025, according to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. The six-year total reached 14,153 reports.

Police-reported figures tell a narrower story. Statistics Canada recorded 1,380 sextortion incidents involving victims 17 or younger between 2018 and 2023, rising from 103 in 2018 to 404 in 2023. That is a fraction of the tipline volume. The RCMP counted more than 2,600 Cybertip.ca sextortion reports between September 2023 and August 2024 — over six times the 404 incidents Statistics Canada logged for 2023.

Who sextortion targets: age and gender breakdown

These figures tag victims, not reports — a single report can list more than one victim, so they don’t sum to the 14,153 total. Boys and men accounted for more than five times as many tagged victims as girls and women in Cybertip.ca’s 2020-2025 dataset, according to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. That imbalance reflects the dominance of financial sextortion, a scheme built to target boys.

The RCMP identifies youth and young adults aged 14 to 24 as sextortion’s primary targets. Girls in that age range are typically pressured for more images; boys are typically pressured for money. Teenage boys are the most common target of financial sextortion schemes. An offender poses as a young woman online before demanding payment, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children — a pattern that mirrors Canada’s financial-sextortion data.

Among police-reported child and youth victims from 2018 to 2023, 94% were aged 12 to 17, according to Statistics Canada. Cybertip.ca also logged 2,150 under-18 and 206 adult sextortion reports naming a victim located outside Canada between 2020 and 2025, per the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Platforms, tactics, and how sextortion schemes work

Instagram and Snapchat together accounted for 74% of sextortion cases where the platform was identified, according to the RCMP. The RCMP breaks the typical scheme into five stages:

• Initial contact through social media or a messaging app
• Trust-building with the target
• Soliciting explicit images or video
• Threatening to release the material publicly
• Psychological pressure to enforce compliance

Sextortion and the law: Canada’s Criminal Code framework

Section 346 of the Criminal Code, the extortion provision, is the core sextortion offence in Canada. It criminalizes inducing a person to act, including paying money or sending more images, through threats, accusations, menaces, or violence, and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

When an offender follows through on a threat to release images, Section 162.1, the non-consensual intimate-image offence, applies. It makes it indictable, punishable by up to five years, to knowingly publish or distribute an intimate image without consent.

Cases involving victims under 18 frequently add a third charge. Section 172.1, luring a child, criminalizes communicating with a minor by telecommunication to facilitate a sexual offence, carrying a one-year mandatory minimum and a 14-year maximum.

Reporting trends and why most sextortion goes unreported

Only 22% of police-reported sextortion incidents involving victims 17 or younger were cleared by Canadian police between 2018 and 2023, according to Statistics Canada. Just 75% of those cleared incidents resulted in a charge.

That clearance gap sits alongside a reporting gap. Statistics Canada’s own analysis notes that Cybertip.ca received more than 2,600 sextortion reports between September 2023 and August 2024. That is more than six times the 404 police-reported incidents recorded for all of 2023. Most sextortion disclosed to a tipline or a platform never reaches police at all.

The same surge shows up south of the border. Online enticement reports to NCMEC’s CyberTipline, the category that includes sextortion, grew by more than 300% between 2021 and 2023, reaching over 186,800 reports in 2023 alone. Canada has no equivalent single-category tally, but the tipline-versus-police-report gap points the same direction.

What sextortion victims and families should know

The RCMP advises anyone targeted by sextortion to stop all communication with the offender immediately and never comply with payment or additional-image demands. Screenshots and other evidence should be preserved before an offender can delete a message or an account. The RCMP recommends reporting to Cybertip.ca, local police, or the platform itself, along with a trusted adult or Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868.

The stakes are severe. The RCMP warns that sextortion victims can experience serious psychological harm, including self-harm and, in extreme cases, suicide. NCMEC is aware of at least 36 teenage boys in the United States who died by suicide after being victimized by financial sextortion since 2021. That is a US figure, but it underscores why speed matters once a scheme starts.

As licensed PIs, we treat a sextortion threat as a digital-evidence problem first. Preserving usernames, message timestamps, and payment demands before an offender deletes an account gives investigators and police the material they need to identify a suspect. Social media and internet investigation services at +1 (888) 680-0036 — Licensed · Insured · Bonded — document sextortion evidence for referral to police and legal counsel across Ontario.

Two related patterns deserve a closer look. The extortion-for-money mechanic in sextortion overlaps with broader romance scam statistics, where offenders build trust before demanding payment. The image-based half of the scheme connects to online harassment statistics Canada’s coverage of non-consensual intimate image distribution under Section 162.1.