Sexual predators on the Internet: their traits and manipulation strategies

Some people are able to use the resources of the network to detect our vulnerable side.

Between 1915 and 1919, a French man named Henri Désiré Landru murdered at least eleven women, although the police estimated that the real number of his victims exceeded one hundred.

Taking advantage of the effects of the war, he placed advertisements in the newspapers presenting himself as a well-to-do man seeking to meet a widow. who was looking to meet a widow and, after meeting his victims, would make them disappear and keep their fortune for himself.

Nowadays, this way of attracting victims through the media has been refined with the advent of the Internet. The network of networks provides a series of resources that make a trap look like an opportunity in which the danger is surprisingly camouflaged.

But... What are the defining characteristics of predators? How do they act?

The profile of the digital predator

People who set traps through the Internet to meet people and murder or abuse them are mostly men between 18 and 60 years of age. Beyond this physical description, however, there is a whole series of psychological characteristics and skills that explain how they act to set up that explain how they act to set the trap. These are as follows:

They are very skilled at detecting vulnerabilities 2.

The masking offered by the anonymity of the Internet makes it surprisingly easy to learn details about victims that can be used to intuit their vulnerabilities.

On the one hand, social networks offer the possibility of knowing a significant amount of information about a person: musical tastes, most visited places, what their circle of friends is like, etc.

On the other hand, the fact of not being in a face-to-face dialogue with a person makes it easier to reveal intimate information, among other things because you lose the fear of seeing how the interlocutor reacts in an uncomfortable way.among other things because the fear of seeing how the interlocutor reacts in an uncomfortable way is lost.

These two factors allow the digital predator to exploit his skills when it comes to offering a personal image that totally fits with what the other person is looking for or wants to get to know. It is easier to be liked if there are common likes and dislikes, if they pretend to have gone through similar experiences, etc.

In other words, these people are very good at reading between the lines and imagining what vulnerabilities can make the other person act in predictable ways.

2. They act alone

The ability to act through the Internet means that sexual predators don't need anyone's help to weave their plan - if they want to, may pretend to be two people at the same time to further influence the victim, through fake user profiles. When it comes to setting up the trap, their efforts are mainly intellectual, and in this respect they are self-sufficient and very methodical.

3. They know how to use advertising resources

Digital predators are capable of designing advertisements that are particularly attractive to the victim profile they want to attract. They use messages that that capture attention on the spot and express a clear message, and place them in forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums, forums and forums.and place them in forums, applications to meet people, specific virtual groups, etc.

Sometimes, they can even match the content of their message to what is known about a potential victim so that, once posted in a group with a relatively small number of people, someone will alert whoever is interested. If this attempt fails, the ad can be modified and republished.

This way of attracting victims lowers the other person's defenses, since it enters a psychological framework in which it is the victim who must "seduce" the predator, which means that the predator has a lot of room for maneuver.

4. The abuse of depersonalization

Depersonalization, which consists of perceiving others as if they were objects, is one of the characteristics of people with a high level of psychopathy or narcissism, and in the case of digital predators it is also very present.

The Internet only reinforces this degree of depersonalization, which makes the potential guilt potential guilt, which is already very low in psychopaths, disappears almost completely. almost completely.

The digital media predator takes advantage of both the options of covering his or her identity with a fake user profile and the advantages of not having to interact face-to-face with the other person until the trap is already set and "there's no going back".

5. Set long-term goals

In cases where the trap is not an advertisement, sexual predators seeking victims over the Internet are able to set long-term goals so that dating seems like a natural step with fewer implications.

Nowadays it is relatively normal to have constant contact with people you don't know in person, and this makes this kind of cheating seem less obvious. In the beginning, there may be hardly any conversation at all, and after a few weeks, you may start talking. This is done because in this way, by the time the dialogue has started, the victim has already begun to get used to the (virtual) presence of the other.

Contrary to popular belief, sexual predators do not have to be need not be clearly impulsive, and in fact this is penalized; in the case of those who actIn the case of those who act through the Internet, their plan needs to have a series of intermediate steps to work.