Sextortion -- using nude photos of someone to press for even racier content or other goods -- is surprisingly common, a US think tank says in what it calls the first in-depth study of another danger lurking in cyberspace.
美國一家智庫稱，“性敲詐”行為——利用一些人的裸照獲取更不雅的內容或者其他東西——驚人地普遍。該智庫稱，這是為網絡空間的另一大潛在危害所做的首份深度研究。

Most victims are minors, the predators are almost always men who prey on multiple targets, and almost all adult victims are women, it said. Most victims choose to stay anonymous, out of shame.
研究稱，大多數受害者都是青少年，而侵害者幾乎總是對多個目標下手的男子，而且幾乎所有的成年受害者都是女性。大多數受害者都選擇匿名以免丟臉。

And while US law enforcement officials acknowledge the problem, no agency or advocacy group keeps data on it, said the Brookings Institution, which published the study on Wednesday.
布魯金斯學會11日發布了這項研究結果，稱盡管美國執法官員承認這一問題，但還沒有機構或者利益團體追蹤這方面的數據。

Even the term 'sextortion' is not a real word, but rather slang that prosecutors use to refer to an offense that does not fit neatly into a single category.
甚至就連“性敲詐”也并非一個真正的詞，而是檢察官使用的一個俗語，用來代指不完全符合任何一個類別的侵害行為。

"Legally speaking, there's no such thing," the report states.
報告稱，“從法律上講，并沒有‘性敲詐’這個罪名?！?/p>

Sextortion can entail a hack into someone's computer to rob a sexy picture or video or take over a webcam, then the use of this content to extort victims for even more.
性敲詐可以通過侵入某人的電腦竊取色情照片或者視頻，或者侵入網絡攝像頭，然后利用這些內容對受害者進行敲詐。

It is even more common for perpetrators to resort to social media to elicit a photograph from a victim, then use it to demand more.
更常見的情況是，犯罪者通過社交媒體獲取受害者的照片，隨后進行敲詐。

The Brookings Institution said it studied 78 cases from recent years that met its definition of sextortion and many others that contained elements of it.
布魯金斯學會研究了近年發生的符合其“性敲詐”定義的78起案例，以及其它諸多含有“性敲詐”因素的案例。

Those cases involve at least 1,379 victims. But for a variety of reasons -- such as prosecutors not seeking out all victims of a given predator -- the true number of victims from those 78 cases could actually range from 3,000 to 6,500 or even more, the study said.
這些案例中的受害者至少有1379位。但由于多種原因，比如檢察官并沒有找出遭受某一位侵害者侵害的所有受害者，這78起案例的受害者真實人數可能會達到3000到6500人，甚至更多。

One involved a woman who opened an email from an unknown sender and found sexually explicit photos of herself, data about her job, husband and three kids, and a demand for a porno video of her.
在其中一起案例中，一名女子打開一封來路不明的郵件，而后發現了她自己的不雅照，還有有關她的工作、丈夫和三個孩子的資料，發信人還要求獲得她的情色視頻。

Vocabulary

think tank: 智庫，智囊團
in-depth study: 深入研究

英文來源：雅虎新聞

編審：yaning