Madeleine West reveals how online predators can learn enough information about your children in just 60 seconds
Scarily, we now live in an era where a new level of stranger danger lurks, writes Madeleine West. See what you can do to protect your child.
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From just one #firstdayofschool snap posted publicly on social media, I can learn enough about your child to convince them to get into my car in less than 60 seconds.
Snapchat allows predators to locate kids. Pics posted, or sent by teens via messaging apps are being manipulated by deepfake AI apps and weaponised against them. Kids are coerced to share intimate images with online ‘friends’ then extorted under threat of that image being released publicly.
This is the new Stranger Danger and it’s terrifying. Anecdotes like these are easy to dismiss as outliers in their magnitude, but as an educator in schools for Safe on Social I’m sorry to tell you that all these stories were disclosed to me by students, and much worse are surfacing every day.
Early in my career I had a stalker. Weekly I’d receive packages of photos taken from inside my bedroom, of an anonymous hand doing unseemly things with my bedding, my clothing, my soft toys. The culprit was eventually found because they posted the photos from the same post office, same time, each Wednesday.
Turns out I’d been spotted in Melbourne, followed home, and watched. He identified my roommates, started following one and found employment alongside him. He befriended him, was invited to a party at my home, located my bedroom and therein began his infiltration of my privacy. It took this deviant around eight months to learn enough about me to victimise me. But, as I mentioned earlier, in this new era of online engagement it would take me less than 60 seconds.
How?
On Instagram or Facebook tap in #firstdayofschool or #backtoschool to open 16.2 million, and 4.4 million posts respectively, peppered with images of children in uniform, school-bound. Specifying a local school unlocks between 100 and 2000 entries.
Tap on the smiling face of a pigtailed girl in her new school uniform and land on the public account of the poster. Hypothetically, her mother, and most of us use our real name in our social media handles so immediately I know where that girl goes to school and her mother’s name. Scrolling through her account, there’s that girl sitting in front of a Barbie cake with seven candles. #happybirthdaybaby! Posted June 12. Now I have her date of birth. There with a puppy in her arms ‘Meet our new #puppy #harvey’. Now I know the name of her pet. Magnifying a post about a #schoolexcursion, the little nametag stuck to her uniform reveals her name is Helen. Keep scrolling. There she is at pony club, with similar posts every Wednesday.
The insignia of the club in the background or tag @broadmeadowsponyclub alerts me to where Helen goes Wednesday afternoons. There she is at a #surf competition clutching a hot pink surfboard and a clutch of #hittingtheslopes shots in a purple ski suit.
Were I to approach that young girl at the school gate and inform her that I have to take her home, awareness around stranger danger would prompt her to hesitate, probably decline. But if I went up to that little girl and said “Oh Helen, your mummy Nora just called, little Harvey got hit by a car so I’m taking you to pony club”, there’s every likelihood that she would get into my car. If she questioned who I was, I’d smile “of course you know me! I was at your birthday party with that amazing Barbie cake. Oh by the way, Lisa, my little girl, wanted to know if she could borrow your pink surfboard?” What would her response be?
The sheer amount of insider knowledge accrued from just 60 seconds scrolling through a public social media account immediately transforms me from stranger to friend. It doesn’t take much for the dedicated predator to then crawl across all of that parents social media accounts, often touted in their bio, and discover the granny flat in the back yard they Airbnb, or a picture taken in the front yard, and I now have that little girls home address too.
Welcome to the new real.
I co-hosted a sell out webinar on sextortion and deepfakes this week, coupled with my usual student and parent presentations. Engaging with concerned parents and carers reinforces how insidiously social media has infiltrated our lives, aiding and abetting so many social ills challenging our youth.
Listen to Madeleine West and Gary Jubelin’s podcast, Predatory, below.
The internet IS a hunting ground. That most beloved of modern day conveniences encourages predation precisely because it guarantees anonymity, fosters lawlessness and gives access to kids. As parents, it is not enough to demand the Government and education department roll out more stringent controls. Neither body has any power over what our children do online in their bedroom. When WE hand a child device we are not just giving them access to the world. We are giving the world access to them.
Having said that, as counterintuitive as this sounds, Please don’t threaten to take away your child’s device at the first whiff on online trouble. Whenever I ask students if they have ever seen anything dodgy online their hands all shoot up.
When I ask if they would tell mum and dad they generally say no, because they are scared they will lose their device. We live in a digital age.
There has been much noise of late about raising the recommended age for access to social media to 16 and pushing for age verification. The Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act which originally enforced the recommended age of 13 is currently under review and is expected to raise the recommended age to 16. Unless age verification is rolled out on an individual device basis how will it stick? Many age verification techniques can be easily bypassed using VPNs or false information.
The fact remains that 175,000 children under the age of 12 sign up to social media every day. For context, we were up in arms at the leak of 100 or 200 data points following the hacking of Medibank and Optus, yet by the time the average child reaches 13 there are up to 72 million data points on them available online.
Section 230(c) of the United States Communications Decency Act was crucial in the internet’s early development, and holds immense sway given most platforms come out of America. Yet by mitigating media agency liability for content provided or posted by third parties, this act has inadvertently allowed social media companies to evade responsibility for harmful content on their platforms. This section grounds its provisions in the First Amendment and thus unless the US is willing to question its constitution social media will continue to wreck havoc unfettered. Reforming Section 230(c) is essential to hold these platforms accountable for their role in disseminating harmful content. Without international co-operation and regulatory alignment, efforts to enhance online safety will continue to be significantly hampered.
But as individuals, we have power over our device.
Privatise accounts, restrict access, create strong passwords with password managers, don’t post pics of your kids on public accounts, keep software up-to-date, know who follows you, and don’t share personal information. Listen to your instincts and be vigilant for red flags in your child’s behaviour. Most importantly, listen to them.
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