NCAA and FBI announce partnership to combat athlete sexploitation - ESPN

As college athletes become bigger targets for sexual exploitation online, the NCAA and FBI announced a partnership Monday to educate athletes on how to prevent private images from falling into the wrong hands.

Financial name-image-likeness deals have increased the online public presence of college athletes, making them desirable victims for criminals, an FBI cyber expert said during a media call Monday.

«Student-athletes maintain large public-facing social media followings and in many cases expanded further by name, image and likeness activity,» FBI Cyber Division Section Chief Taushiana Bright said. «That visibility increases both their exposure to targeting and the leverage an offender believes they hold when threatening to expose an athlete to a coach, team, school or sponsor.»

Bad actors obtain private images of athletes by conning them and by hacking into personal accounts to steal content. Images and videos are then used to extort athletes under threat of having the images made public.

The FBI and NCAA are calling on coaches and athletic department leadership and compliance staff to help educate athletes about sexual exploitation, as «they may be the first trusted adults an athlete would turn to,» the FBI said in a statement Monday. Through the partnership, the organizations plan to educate athletes on how to prevent exploitation, and give them access to law enforcement, specific tools to report possible criminal behavior, victim services and mental health treatment.

NCAA vice president of enforcement Jon Duncan said the NCAA «grieves the sexual exploitation of young men and young women, including college athletes.»

«The criminal behaviors we talk about here, like stealing explicit images and using them for