Holiday feasts & cocktails Nadia Sawalha: ‘Strangers were tracking my daughter’
Fiercely protective mum Nadia Sawalha, 52, opens up about the dangers of social media
Most parents warn their children not to talk to strangers – but Loose Woman Nadia Sawalha was horrified to discover that strangers were not only able to talk to her daughters in their own home, but track their location. The 52-year-old opened up about her fears for daughters, Maddy, 14 (above), and KikiBee, nine, after discovering Snap Map, an update on social media app Snapchat that reveals users’ addresses online to their followers.
‘Can you imagine if a stranger you’d never met could pinpoint on a map where your child was at any given time?’ she said. ‘ You’d be horrified. That’s exactly how I felt when Maddie showed me a new feature to an app that had automatically downloaded to her phone and that allowed people I’d never heard of to know her precise location.’
The star’s daughter showed her mum the feature before setting it to Ghost Mode, meaning that though she could still see where her friends were, they couldn’t see her.
Nadia explained, ‘The more I thought about it, the more disturbed I felt. I asked Maddie to show me how easy it would be to track her friends. Within 10 minutes, we’d pinpointed three.
‘One was Charly, the 15-year-old daughter of my Loose Women colleague Kaye Adams. From our base in Dorset, we tracked down Charly to a house in a remote village in Scotland where she was staying with friends.’
She continued, ‘Because she was in a village, we were able to pinpoint her precise location. I found it terrifying.’
Most parents, Nadia argues, don’t realise what their children are getting up to, as technology moves so quickly. She also spoke of the ‘ horrendous’ moment her daughter’s friend – only nine at the time – was flashed by men on a live-stream.
Nadia said, ‘Maddy’s friend... was innocently chatting to friends online. This message popped up saying, “Want to come and see our pets?” These guys started to talk to her, the camera changed and then all three of them flashed at her.’
Good on Nadia for highlighting this alarming new technology!