A romance scam victim, a fraud expert and the writers of a new BBC thriller explain how gaslighting is used to cheat people out of their money.

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'Minutes after opening a Snapchat account pretending to be a 15-year-old girl, I'm amazed at what I see.

Drugs seem to be readily available - just a couple of clicks away. I thought this world was hidden and hard to access, but it is so easy to find.'

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In today’s digital age, young people are increasingly vulnerable to online threats, and one such menace is sextortion. Sextortion is a cyber-enabled crime that exploits a young person’s trust and seeks to control them through the threat of public humiliation. It can happen to anyone, but it is particularly prevalent among teenagers and young adults.

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When the minor was abducted by Roberts, she was not allowed to bring anything, though she did have her Nintendo Switch on hand.

The girl used the console to download games and watch YouTube, with a friend seeing her name pop up.

That friends' family alerted the police, and with the help of Nintendo, they were able to track down the girl once and for all.

The console manufacturer were able to to retrieve the console's IP address, allowing the FBI to locate the girl just 11 days after she went missing.

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Paedophiles are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create and sell life-like child sexual abuse material, the BBC has found.

Some are accessing the images by paying subscriptions to accounts on mainstream content-sharing sites such as Patreon.

The National Police Chief's Council said it was "outrageous" that some platforms were making "huge profits" but not taking "moral responsibility".

The makers of the abuse images are using AI software called Stable Diffusion, which was intended to generate images for use in art or graphic design.

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Forget what you know about chatbots. My AI, which Snapchat launched in May, is so convincingly real, it feels like there's a real person on the other end.

My daughter chats with it several times a day about just about everything, from school stress to friend troubles.

"This [AI] is perfect. No mean things to say. No weirdness. Everything is just perfect and they're willing to learn about what I want. They said even though I'm not a real person I can still be a good friend and listen to talk about things you love," explained my daughter.

"I love My AI. It's my best friend."

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