In recent years, people around the world have lost hundreds of millions of dollars to online romance scams.
One of the most lucrative of these, being run by criminal gangs across South East Asia, is called the “pig butchering romance scam”.
The scammers refer to their victims as pigs, whom they fatten up to be "butchered" - or conned, out of as much money as possible.
Beauty filters like TikTok's new Bold Glamour can transform people's appearance, and the technology is now strikingly seamless. What can research tell us about the psychological consequences?
As a young girl, Alice (not her real name) logged on to the popular live video chat website, Omegle, and was randomly paired with a paedophile, who coerced her into becoming a digital sex slave. Nearly 10 years later the young American is suing Omegle in a landmark case that could pave the way for a wave of lawsuits against other social platforms.
Rape jokes, racism, bullying - if you've picked up a controller, or scrolled a mouse, to dabble in some online gaming then you've likely come across plenty.
The gaming industry, like others where people interact online, has been trying to figure out how to get to grips with behaviour like this for years.
Dakota Fink didn’t mean to spread a lie. Honestly, she didn’t.
It was May 2021 and the 23-year-old LA-based model was wearing a face mask. “I was thinking I needed to be more involved with TikTok,” she says. So she decided to record a video as a joke: She’d pull off the flesh-coloured face mask on camera, and subtitle it with a claim that women had to peel layers of their skin off after their period.
Daria Gusa was 16 and still at school, when she says she received a private message on Instagram from Andrew Tate, a high-profile influencer almost 20 years older than her.
"It just read 'Romanian girl' and he put some flirty emoji," Daria told me. "I was confused because I [only] had 200 followers, and it was a private account."
She is one of two teenagers who have described to the BBC how Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan approached them online, apparently using a standard formula.
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