A child protection organization warned that “sextortion” targeting children is on the rise as they spend more time online during the COVID-19 pandemic.  “Simply put, sextortion is blackmail,” said Cybertip, a Canadian national tipline for reporting online sexual exploitation of children, in a news release on Tuesday. “It’s when someone online threatens to send a sexual image or video of the child/youth to other people if they don’t pay the person or provide more sexual content.” Operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP), the tipline said they have seen a 88 percent spike in reports of different forms of online sexual exploitation, one of which is sextortion.  Cybertip said they receive an average of 40 sextortion reports monthly. In many cases, the perpetrators initiated their contact with children and youth through social media and live stream platforms like Snapchat, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and Omegle. Once connected, they systematically lure the …