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.
美国一家智库称，“性敲诈”行为——利用一些人的裸照获取更不雅的内容或者其他东西——惊人地普遍。该智库称，这是为网络空间的另一大潜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.
研究称，大多数受害者都是青少年，而侵害者几乎总是对多个目标下手的男子，而且几乎所有的成年受害者都是女性。大多数受害者都选择匿名以免丢脸。
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.
布鲁金斯学会11日发布了这项研究结果，称尽管美国执法官员承认这一问题，但还没有机构或者利益团体追踪这方面的数据。
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.
甚至就连“性敲诈”也并非一个真正的词，而是检察官使用的一个俗语，用来代指不完全符合任何一个类别的侵害行为。
"Legally speaking, there's no such thing," the report states.
报告称，“从法律上讲，并没有‘性敲诈’这个罪名。”
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.
性敲诈可以通过侵入某人的电脑窃取色情照片或者视频，或者侵入网络摄像头，然后利用这些内容对受害者进行敲诈。
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.
更常见的情况是，犯罪者通过社交媒体获取受害者的照片，随后进行敲诈。
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.
布鲁金斯学会研究了近年发生的符合其“性敲诈”定义的78起案例，以及其它诸多含有“性敲诈”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.
这些案例中的受害者至少有1379位。但由于多种原因，比如检察官并没有找出遭受某一位侵害者侵害的所有受害者，这78起案例的受害者真实人数可能会达到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，一名女子打开一封来路不明的邮件，而后发现了她自己的不雅照，还有有关她的工作、丈夫和三个孩子的资料，发信人还要求获得她的情色视频。
Vocabulary
think tank: 智库，智囊团
in-depth study: 深入研究