Human trafficking does not always begin with abduction or physical violence. Increasingly, it begins with a message on social media, the promise of a well-paid job, or an online acquaintance that develops into a seemingly perfect relationship. On 18 October, the European Day Against Trafficking in Human Beings, we are highlighting how traffickers use new technologies to recruit, manipulate and control their victims.
Article prepared by International Justice Mission (IJM) in collaboration with Marshal’s Office of the Pomorskie Voivodeship, in recognition of the European Day Against Trafficking in Human Beings.
When Human Trafficking Begins with a Conversation
The internet is nowadays a space where a significant part of our lives takes place: we meet people online, look for work, make friends, and search for love. The widespread availability of digital platforms has impacted almost every aspect of human life, creating opportunities for connection but also new avenues for organized crime, including human trafficking.
Today, trafficking increasingly begins not with physical coercion, but with a notification, a friend request, or a message received through social media, a dating app, or an online gaming platform.
Although technology-facilitated trafficking may seem like a recent phenomenon, the European Commission was already analyzing the issue in 2007. This highlights how traffickers were taking advantage of emerging digital tools[1]. A follow-up study published in 2022[2] shows that the role of technology in trafficking has expanded significantly. Today, technology is used not only to recruit victims, but also to control them, coordinate traffickers‘ activities and, in some cases, carry out the exploitation itself. There is a growing demand for paid live-streaming services in which individuals, even children, are exploited. Digital payment methods, used by traffickers via commonly used banking or money transfer apps or cryptocurrency, can also be used to pay for services that involve exploitation.
Across Europe, law enforcement agencies and civil society organisations report an increasing use of digital platforms and tools in both the recruitment and exploitation of trafficking victims. In Poland, survivors of human trafficking have identified apps such as Telegram and Snapchat as channels through which they first encountered traffickers. Technology is also increasingly used to monitor and control victims. In a high-profile case involving an organised criminal group from Łódź that forced women into prostitution, victims were advertised online and kept under constant surveillance through GPS tracking applications and wireless cameras installed in rented apartments. In another major operation this year, ten suspects were arrested across Poland in connection with an organised criminal group involved in human trafficking, pimping and money laundering using cryptocurrencies. Earlier, authorities in Warsaw dismantled another trafficking network that operated under the guise of a call center. The group lured victims through online job advertisements offering employment opportunities, only to imprison them upon arrival and force them to work in drug distribution schemes. Trafficking is a hidden crime and while these successes highlight the good work of law enforcement, we know that the actual numbers of those in exploitation are much higher.
As more social and professional interactions move online, efforts to fight human trafficking and investigate the crime must evolve at the same pace and must mirror the agility that traffickers are utilizing. Comprehensive efforts involving law enforcement, civil society and social services must form a comprehensive and holistic approach toward combatting human trafficking.
The Loverboy Method: Trafficking Disguised as Romance
One of the most common recruitment methods used in trafficking for sexual exploitation is the so-called ‘Loverboy Method’. It exploits something many people naturally seek: connection, affection, and belonging.
For Mara* (pseudonym), it began with a conversation online.
Young Mara came from a vulnerable family struggling with severe economic hardship. In her early twenties, she dreamed of something simple: a stable job, financial security and the chance to build a family of her own. When she met George* (pseudonym) online, it seemed those dreams were finally within reach. George lived in the UK. He seemed attentive, affectionate and quickly won Mara’s heart. Their online conversations turned into a romantic relationship. He spoke about a future together and promised that if she moved to the UK with him, a job at a retail company would be waiting for her there. For Mara, everything seemed to be falling into place: a new country, a stable income and a future with someone she believed loved her.” It was actually a game,” Mara would later say. “He was playing a charade.”
Her experience reflects how the Loverboy method is used in practice. It often starts with carefully crafted displays of attention, affection and emotional connection. With the promises of a shared future, a house to build together, a family, the perpetrator manipulates the victim into believing the relationship is genuine. The goal, however, is to gain her trust and create a strong emotional attachment. Once emotional dependency has been established, the Loverboy gradually coerces the victim into exploitation through a range of tactics, including deception, manipulation, coercion, physical and psychological control or violence, for financial gain. The exploitation often continues until the trafficker identifies a new victim or the current victim is no longer considered profitable.
Mechanisms of Manipulation and Recruitment
Identifying Vulnerabilities
Technology plays a significant role in this process. Through social media and messaging platforms, traffickers can learn about a person’s life circumstances, hopes, dreams and insecurities. Information about financial difficulties, family situation, education, relationships or future aspirations can help them tailor their approach and present themselves as exactly the person the victim has been looking for.
It is important to emphasize that there is no single, simple profile of a victim; traffickers can target people from any background. Certain vulnerabilities are consistently associated with increased risk to trafficking including young age, difficult family conditions, social isolation, economic hardship, previous experiences of abuse or being in the foster care system. With such vulnerabilities in mind, perpetrators develop approaches within the Loverboy model to establish a connection and create dependency.
In person, a Loverboy can only groom one or two victims at a time, while online he can recruit and exploit several victims at the same time. A trafficker using Loverboy method online can use scripts, multiple fake profiles, and simultaneous chats to groom dozens of vulnerable girls and women at once, even across different countries. Technology has expanded the reach, speed and cross-border nature of Loverboy recruitment method.
Love Bombing: How Traffickers Create a False Sense of Love and Security
Once the perpetrator has identified a potential victim and has made contact online, often using social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or dating apps, he initiates a romantic relationship marked in the love bombing stage. This involves intense displays of affection, interest, and commitment that are disproportionate to the length of the relationship. This can take various forms: overwhelming the girl with compliments and gifts, very rapid declarations of love, creating a vision of a shared future, or convincing the person that the relationship is unique. To an outside observer, this contact may appear no different from any other intense romantic encounter.
Isolation and Control
The next stage may involve an attempt to gradually or suddenly separate the victim from their existing environment and support network, meaning family and friends. This may take a very direct form, such as in Mara’s case, a proposal to travel abroad together and start a “new life,” or it may happen gradually, through discouraging contact with loved ones. In an unfamiliar environment, without support, often with a language barrier and financial dependency, it is much easier to maintain control over the victim. The perpetrator is meant to become the most important person in the victim’s life and their only source of support.
Exploitation and Trauma Bonding
Only later does a shift occur, and the exploitation begins. For Mara, moving to the UK marked that turning point. The loving boyfriend she thought she knew disappeared. The promised job did not exist. Instead, George and his parents forced her into sexual exploitation, strictly controlled her interactions and profited from her abuse for almost a year.
Even during this stage, psychological or physical violence from the Loverboy acting as partner or even husband of the victim are interwoven with displays of tenderness and affection. This mechanism can lead to the formation of a trauma bond: a strong attachment to a person who both causes harm and provides a sense of closeness. As a result, even after the relationship has ended, victims do not always recognize themselves as victims and may defend the perpetrator.
Technology in Human Trafficking: From Recruitment Tool to Source of Evidence
Technology not only facilitates recruitment of victims but also allows traffickers to manage exploitation and financial transactions across borders with greater speed and anonymity, allowing criminal operations to thrive cross-border across Europe.
To effectively investigate human trafficking cases in which Loverboy methos is used, law enforcement has to determine the exploitative nature of the relationship with the victim but cannot rely solely on the victim’s testimony. Digital communications, financial records, online advertisements, geolocation data, and open-source intelligence can provide valuable evidence to build stronger cases. Thus, technology can also serve investigators by providing potential sources of corroborating evidence.
This is why, at International Justice Mission, we place particular emphasis on collaborating with law-enforcement to use a victim-centered trauma informed approach and develop capacity building activities, such as trainings, best practices exchanges, cross-border practitioners’ events in areas such as financial investigations, including those involving cryptocurrency, survivor services or the use of open-source intelligence. Developing these kinds of capabilities will help investigators and will also help victims engage with the justice system.
Beyond the Hollywood Myth: Human Trafficking Is Not Like in the Movies
Human trafficking nowadays does not occur in many instances like it is portrayed in the movies – with women being abducted from the street, drugged, and held in confinement. Rather, as with the Loverboy Model, it starts with online conversations, a message on Instagram or a dating platform, that quickly develops into a romantic relationship with the promise of a beautiful life together, often in another country. In this form of human trafficking, the role of “locked doors” is replaced with the intentional development of emotional dependency, isolation from loved ones, and the victim’s belief that, apart from the trafficker, there is no one left they can trust.
Understanding how Loverboy method operates online and recognizing the signs of emotional manipulation can help identify situations of potential exploitation at an earlier stage and even stop the exploitation before it occurs. Strengthening the capacity of law enforcement to early identify victims, gather digital evidence, recognize coercive control, and respond in a victim-centered manner is essential. At the same time, timely reporting of potential exploitation indicators can help authorities detect cases early and provide victims with access to protection and support, so they can find justice and begin their journey of healing.
About International Justice Mission (IJM):
International Justice Mission (IJM) is a global organization that protects vulnerable people from violence. IJM works with local authorities in 33 programs in 19 countries to combat slavery, violence against women and children and abuse of power against vulnerable people. Through its actions, IJM supports the reintegration of victims, holding perpetrators accountable and strengthening justice systems. The International Justice Mission launched the European Anti-Trafficking Program at the end of 2019, with the aim of supporting governments in Europe to end impunity for cross-border human trafficking. Currently the program operates in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, UK, Germany and the Netherlands. IJM has implemented a collaborative approach to combatting human trafficking and other forms of violence against vulnerable people for the past 29 years in programs in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. IJM’s model focuses on coming alongside justice system practitioners to support individual survivors, identify areas where criminal justice responses can be strengthened, and partner with government institutions to implement targeted capacity building, institutional development, and policy reform – ensuring that justice systems respond effectively and sustainably to human trafficking and related offenses.
Notes:
1. “Misuse of the Internet for the recruitment of victims of trafficking in human beings”, Council of Europe Gender Equality and Anti-trafficking Division, 2007,https://documentation.lastradainternational.org/lsidocs/358%20CoE%20Seminar%20Proceedings_Misuse%20of%20the%20Internet.pdf – access 30 Sep 2026.
2. “Online and technology facilitated trafficking in human being”, Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, 2022, https://rm.coe.int/online-and-technology-facilitated-trafficking-in-human-beings-full-rep/1680a73e49 – access 30 Sep 2026.
