Sextortion stats time.

[Wayne]

One of the things we don't show when we put up the sextortion forms we receive is how the people found us. Today I decided to have a looksee at what those tell us. I took the latest block of 218 forms and stripped down everything but the answers to the question "How did you find us?" to see what it showed. Removing all blanks answers, answers that don't really say anything or times where a site was named just once narrowed it down to 129. Let's look at those to see what it shows. I'll round the numbers up or down to make them easier to look at. It makes 101%, but you'll get the idea.

In 52% of cases the answer was Google.

16% said Reddit

12% said they found us via a media article.

In 11% the answer was a generic "search". This could mean Google, but we'll label it as "search" to make things simpler as it could have been with any search engine.

4% answered friend or family member.

3% named the website frmtr.com

3% said they were sent to us by the police.

What does this tell us? Mainly that posting this information works. In 63% of the cases listed they found us by searching either the scam or the scammer's details. 12% for media isn't bad. Some gave a link to the actual article, while some simply stated "An article on XXXXXX". YouTube, the BBC and ITV were most mentioned. 3% sent by the police may seem like a small number, but it means that law enforcement are in fact sending people our way. I've read some of the Reddit articles, and most seem to say we're good. One person did say he didn't trust us as the site looks crap, but I've never claimed to be a web designer. Overall I'm pretty pleased with what I see. I'd like to see the police numbers rise, but let's consider it "baby steps", yes?