A space of all your own, and full of danger

According to experts, TikTok is a network in which children and teenagers enjoy space of their own, free of parental interference or supervision, since accounts aren’t shared.

Data provided by Digiday points out that 60% of the network’s users are aged between 16 and 24, though there are probably younger users. The network’s main objective is for its users to have fun creating music videos, duets and challenges; it also has a wide range of creative options, meant to attract members of the GenZ.

The app makes it difficult to verify users’ actual ages. This problem is present in all social media platforms, but in TikTok’s case the issue is more pressing due to the high amount of minors using it.

This Chinese network has yet to be included in the Global Internet Forum. It’s also under investigation in the United Kingdom due to fears it may become a pedophile magnet. It’s a cyberspace in which victims and aggressors can easily cohabit: cases have been reported of children having been subjected to grooming.

British newspaper The Sun looked into many of them, especially one in which the 8-year-old victims received a number of TikTok messages sent by adults, threatening them in order to gain sexual favors.

Minors still make regular use of the app, unaware of the fact that they can become victims. Even worse, children still don’t know in which servers the videos are stored.

Chicken Nuggets and ice cream

Another social network in the hot seat is Facebook. A new strategy implemented by pedophiles everywhere in order to attract, grow close to or attack children is to pretend to be inanimate objects in order to contact them.

In order to attract potential victims, aggressors use pictures of food as avatars, such as ice cream or chicken nuggets, or names of famous streets. Some use it only to access photos of children, others to contact them.

Previous estimates placed Instagram as the network where most pedophiles contacted children, followed by Facebook. With this new method of attack, perverts have found yet another way to access private photos from minors, by hiding behind a fake profile.

Parents must be aware of the kind of pictures children upload to the web, and not only on social media. Portals such as Musical.ly attract children as young as 5, 6 and 7 since it can be used to lip-sync to their favorite songs, including short videos where they dance as their favorite singers.

A girl whose account had only 20 followers –four of which she didn’t know—received anonymous messages in which someone suggested she would get more likes if she sang in her underwear.

It’s important to know that if a child constantly publishes photos of his or her surrounding, criminals can locate them and potentially attack them. For this and many other reasons, it’s of the utmost importance to monitor all minors’ web activity.

The post TikTok has to pay millions in fines for storing data from children first appeared on Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit - Official Site.

“I am Santa Claus, I am your best friend”

The voice coming out from the system said he was the Christmas character and her best friend. In the video, the girl is seen roaming around the room while asking who the man was. The man, after introducing himself as Santa Claus, also gives the girl permission to do whatever she pleases in the room. For several minutes, the male voice insults the girl and tries to persuade her so she misbehaves.

The video was recorded by the Ring camera, and later shared on social networks by the girl’s parents. The idea was to warn other families about the security measures they can take with this device.

The family said the security system was installed in the bedroom the girl share with her two younger sisters.

The images show a very frightened girl, calling for her mom. After this incident was known, other cases similar to this came became known, the only difference was that the girl was attacked with racial slurs.

Ring is an Amazon product. The company stated that this situation is nowhere related to the security breach. The web site, Motherboard, indicated that some Internet forums offer software to easily access these devices.

Likewise, Amazon’s recommendation was to do the necessary security adjustments like the two steps verification, for example, to prevent these kinds of breaches. IT security experts say that every device connected to the Internet can be compromised if the basic precautions are not taken into consideration.

This incident was about convincing a little girl to misbehave, but this type of privacy violations can expose minors to the wrong people, becoming part of a new type of harassment: grooming.

A Ring for Grooming

Ring security cameras are meant to keep an eye on children while they are alone in their bedrooms, and to watch over their sleep hours. Nevertheless, these cases proved that a voyeur can take advantage of these cameras to spy children in the intimacy of their bedrooms and to get something more than just their privacy.

In Ring’s case, the two-step verification is the best solution to shield your security system, and to avoid these cases of invasion of privacy. Online harassment, or grooming, can be prevented with the followings measures:

• Do not give or make accessible any personal information or picture that can be used for other purposes.
• Preserve the confidentiality of your account user and computer through passwords.
• Do not give in to blackmail under any circumstance.
• Do not doubt in asking for help before any new situation that causes great emotional stress
• As adults, we must control and supervise children’s access to Internet 
• Grow awareness on children about the existing dangers on the Internet
• Keep an open communication channel with your children to create an environment of trust
• Instal an antivirus or parental control softwarefor the device the child uses so it can be protected before any situation
• As parents, we have to analyze what crimes or an illegal action has the stalker done, and which can be proved when reporting the harassment. Gather all the evidence of said crime.

Recently, Microsoft presented a tool that can identify sexual predators that chat with minors. This tool uses an automatic technique which analyzes the conversation history and then decides if the thread should be notified. Afterwards, it scores the level of threat.

This tool is part of the Artemis project to fight grooming. It will be implemented in the text-based chats’ histories to evaluate and assets the characteristics of the conversation, and then it will score the content.

Human moderators will intervene to check the tool when the company considers it necessary. They will be able to identify the threat or a possible case of exploitation and child abuse, and report it to the police.

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The post Man Hacks Security Cam and Talks to an 8-years-old Girl first appeared on Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit - Official Site.