InterLink Initiative

The current situation in Finland and what youth workers should know

—

by

InterLink
in ,
This segment is part of the AIwareness project e-toolkit, a resource developed to help youth workers understand emerging AI-related risks and confidently address them in workshops with young people. This section focuses on the current situation in Finland and what facilitators should keep in mind when preparing sessions on this topic.

With the rapid development of AI and related technologies, Finland’s cybersecurity threat level has remained high throughout 2026. Traficom’s Cybersecurity Centre (Kyberturvallisuuskeskus) reports a clear increase in more sophisticated phishing methods and greater automation of attacks (Traficom, 2026). Traficom notes a steady rise in compromised Microsoft 365 accounts. New attack techniques increasingly allow criminals to bypass multi-factor authentication, and a single successful breach often triggers a wave of follow-up phishing campaigns launched from the compromised account itself (Traficom, 2026).

Attackers typically build their scam messages around current events and everyday situations — tax refunds, parcel deliveries, seasonal shopping periods — designed to steal login credentials and payment information. What has genuinely changed is the quality of the deception: generative AI has made these messages far more convincing than before, to the point where the old advice (“watch for bad spelling and clumsy Finnish”) is now outdated (Traficom, 2026). Deepfake technology adds a further layer of risk, both by making impersonation scams more convincing and by increasing the spread of misinformation.

Young people as targets: money mule recruitment

Yle, Finland’s national broadcaster, together with the police, has warned that young people in particular are being drawn into money laundering with promises of “easy money” (Yle, 2026). In these schemes, young people act as money mules: they move money between accounts to break the trail, or transfer funds directly into accounts controlled by criminals.

According to Yle, by July 2026 around 158 crime reports concerning “account mule” activity had been filed in Finland, and most of those involved were between 18 and 29 years old (Yle, 2026). The Central Finland Police Department’s cybercrime investigation unit describes the scheme as follows: a young person is asked to hand over personal details and banking credentials, supposedly to open a card in their name; criminals then use that card to buy cryptocurrency, and the young person is promised a cut of the proceeds (Poliisi, 2026). In reality, there is no guaranteed payout, and the young person is left legally exposed — criminal liability in Finland begins at age 15, and even a minor can be held liable for the resulting damages.

Young people as victims: AI-generated sextortion

According to Ulrika Eerola Hovio’s reporting in Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, young people are also being blackmailed with nude or otherwise sensitive images generated using AI, often built from perfectly innocent photos the young person has posted themselves (Eerola Hovio, 2026). The threat is usually the same: pay, or the images get shared publicly. Based on police reports cited in the article, the people behind these schemes are typically based abroad, and in practice they rarely follow through on the threat to publish the material (Eerola Hovio, 2026).

Paying is not advisable. It doesn’t guarantee the images will be deleted, the blackmail can simply continue, and money sent this way is very rarely recovered. In most cases, once a victim refuses to pay or send a gift card, the perpetrator moves on quickly to the next target (Eerola Hovio, 2026).

Two threats to keep front of mind

At the start of 2026, the two threats most relevant to young people in Finland are money mule recruitment and AI-generated sextortion. Both rely on the same psychological lever: making the victim feel too embarrassed, frightened, or complicit to tell an adult or report it. That silence is precisely what protects the offender — which is exactly where workshop facilitators can make the biggest difference.

What youth workers should be aware of when running workshops

  • Drop the outdated “spot the fake” advice. Poor grammar and obviously fake senders are no longer reliable warning signs; AI has closed that gap. Shift the focus to behaviour — urgency, secrecy, requests to keep something from parents or friends, and unusually generous offers.
  • Address the shame factor directly. Since both money muling and sextortion depend on silence, workshops should explicitly normalise telling a trusted adult or reporting to police, and state clearly that doing so will not make things worse for the young person.
  • Name money muling as a crime, not a favour. Many young people don’t realise that lending out a bank account or making a transfer for someone else is money laundering, and that legal responsibility starts at age 15 — not 18.
  • Be precise about sextortion advice. The core message is: don’t pay, don’t panic-delete evidence, keep screenshots, and report it. Emphasise that AI-generated images can be made from a single public photo, so no risky photo-sharing is required for a young person to become a target.
  • Watch the platforms, not just the message. Recruitment and scams are concentrated on the apps young people already use daily (e.g. Snapchat, Telegram), so workshop scenarios should reflect real platforms rather than generic “email scam” examples.
  • Keep the material current. This is a fast-moving threat landscape; check Traficom’s Kyberturvallisuuskeskus site and recent police releases before each workshop, since specific scam formats and figures change quickly.

References

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *