Torment for kids trapped by social media scammers

Australian high school students are being left to fend for themselves and attempt to stop scammers from fleecing their friends as Meta fails to crack down on malicious operators.

Natalie Siegel-Brown, a former chief executive of Child Wise and currently a commissioner on the Productivity Commission, said there had been long-running issues about children signing to social media accounts.

“There are massive issues that have been prevalent for a long time that show that children have no idea the conditions they are signing up to regarding the sharing of their private details,” she said.

“It can take an adult six hours to read the full conditions but kids can hit the ‘I agree’ button with even less idea what they are opening their data up to. This is what leaves them vulnerable to these scams.

“When I was at Child Wise, we strongly advocated that the responsibility lay heavily in the hands of the social media companies and government to regulate against the capacity to allow it to occur.”

A 14-year-old Brisbane boy is one such victim who has been left with no option other than having to beg his friends not to click on crypto scams after a hacker took over his Instagram account and began contacting his followers.

After countless attempts to have his account restored and having to send videos of himself to Meta to prove his identity, the US tech giant has failed to restore it and stop the scams.

The incident is one of several reported recently that highlight Meta does little to protect vulnerable users of its platforms.