Actionable Online Safety Advice To Protect Your Children

Leaving kids unsupervised on their devices is putting their lives in danger.

Jordan DeMay was a 17-year-old teenager from the US. One night, he was chatting with a girl on Instagram, everything flowed pretty well and they built a sense of trust. Soon after, things got serious and the girl shared explicit photos of herself, and Jordan shared his photos as well. Immediately after, the “girl’s” persona changed and she threatened to release his pictures to his friends and family if he didn’t pay her $ 1,000. She said she would continue sharing the photos until it went viral. Ashamed and afraid, he sent them what money he could, but it wasn’t enough. He said he was going to kill himself and the “girl” said he should, she was relentless. In the end, he ended up taking his life. Everything happened in the space of 6 hours.

The same happened to Gavin Guffey, who shot himself 2 hours after a “girl” threatened him on Instagram. What’s worse, the same bad actors continued threatening Gavin’s family after, trying to get money out of them.

 

Sextortion is a serious threat to teenagers. Younger boys are targeted more, but that doesn’t mean girls are safe. If bad actors have something to use against you, they will.

Pre-teens and younger kids are often not found on social media, like Instagram and Snapchat, so bad actors find them elsewhere.

A popular player on Roblox contacted a 9-year-old girl in the UK, kids tend to hold popular players in higher regard. The player built trust with the girl (grooming) and convinced her to take the chat to Discord and other platforms. There, the person shared explicit conversations with the child, asking her to research topics she didn’t understand. A 9-year-old child was learning things she shouldn’t know about. Before things got any worse, the man was found and arrested. There are horror stories of perverts showing up at homes, when asked how they got the address, they said the child shared it with them.

These issues are quite rife in South Africa as well. Darren Wilken, a 35-year-old man from Johannesburg, was recently arrested for manufacturing, possession, and distribution of child pornography. Findings so far indicate he had 10 million images and videos depicting child sexual abuse.

Neighbors and other residents were shocked about Darren Wilken, he was friendly and their kids loved him. It’s difficult to profile these bad actors ahead of time because there are many and they could be anyone, but it’s useful to know more about them.

Who is targeting our children online?

Many attacks come from Nigerian bad actors, like the Yahoo Boys. They’ve been known to drive sextortion scams, storing their scam training manuals on popular sites, like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and some are found on the dark web. In the case of Jordan and Gavin, these bad actors were extradited to the US to face charges.

Some attacks come from child predators who have moved to use digital platforms to groom and attack children. Other attacks come from financially motivated criminals who sell child pornography to make large sums of money.

There’s no set description for who may attack your children. You cannot control who chooses to be a predator or bad actor, but focusing on what you can control is how we start fighting bad.

What can parents do to protect their kids online?

Security in business is most effective when it’s enforced from the top down, and it’s the same in every home. If you’re a responsible adult – parent, relative, guardian, teacher, etc – it’s your responsibility to enforce and maintain online safety.

Practice Personal Incident Response – an incident will happen when you least expect it to, but knowing what to do when it does happen will make all the difference.

Preventative actions against online threats

Teach your children about the dangers they face online (sextortion, predators, fake profiles, bullies, etc) and what red flags to look out for. 

Online Safety Don’ts

• • Don’t click on suspicious links, 
  • Don’t share personal or location information with strangers online,
  • Don’t send money to random strangers online,
  • Don’t share explicit photos of themselves with anyone online, especially strangers.

Online Safety Do’s

• Ensure they use strong passwords and store them in a password manager, like BitWarden.
• Ensure they set up multi-factor authentication for their applications.

Monitor their device usage and who they’re chatting with, especially on social media and gaming platforms. Teenagers tend to hide apps on their phones, but you can easily find the hidden apps by going to settings and viewing the list of applications there. This can also help you see hidden apps/services running on the device.

Don’t underestimate the power of building a trusting relationship with your children. Let them know it’s okay to come to you no matter what happens. If, for some reason, they can’t come to you, make sure they understand that they should go to someone else they trust, a relative, or a teacher perhaps. The goal is to ensure they don’t feel alone because that’s what bad actors want and take advantage of.

Reactive actions against online threats

As mentioned above, ensure they can talk to you or some responsible adult they trust when they don’t know what to do. Fighting together is better than fighting alone.

If your child is being Sextorted, under no circumstances should they respond to the bad actor or send them money. They will be abusive and assertive, but this is one of their tactics to get you to send them money. Block their contact, delete their chat, and move on. Bad actors don’t usually post the images, they move on to the next target. But if they do, there are tools you can use like https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/.

If you find yourself in these situations and need further advice, feel free to drop us a WhatsApp, and we will do our best to help you through this process.

It’s all about building a strong security culture at home and getting your children involved and excited about playing their role in ensuring their safety online. A strong security culture at home roots out to a strong security culture in the community, which grows further and further. A strong security culture will save your child’s life.

Start building one today.