WARNING OVER THE APP How a live streaming app opens the door to paedos
PARENTS are being warned about the perils of live-streaming after an autistic boy aged eight was groomed by a paedophile.
The unsuspecting lad was bombarded with hundreds of messages and explicit images on Line Live – a popular Japanese app that has reached UK shores.
Users are invited to “broadcast your life” by sharing real-time video content.
The branding is colourful and your status rises as you gain more followers.
Users give a date of birth to say they are 17-plus – but no proof is required.
UK police are investigating after a predator coerced the eight-year-old into sharing indecent photos. Many more tried to lure him into conversation.
He is now having counselling – and charities warn parents of the dangers.
LOCKDOWN
Andy Burrows, the NSPCC’s head of child safety online policy, said: “Lockdown has exacerbated the risk of online grooming and sexual abuse like never before, with offenders taking advantage of children unable to see friends. Poorly designed live-stream sites are high-risk because they can be exploited by groomers to abuse children in real time.”
The boy’s mother is speaking out after finding sickening content sent to her son from March to July.
She said the paedophile claimed he lived in America and convinced the boy to send three indecent images – and asked for similar snaps of his younger brother and a sister in her late teens.
The pervert also demanded images of his mum – who we are calling Tina – and vile pictures he sent included child and adult pornography.
Tina said: “I was physically sick when I discovered the messages. My son had uploaded innocent footage of him playing on a swing or in the garden and was clearly under the age of 10 – though he had told this sicko that he was 14.
“What makes it really scary is I saw threads where other predators tried to contact him. He only engaged with one person who sent hundreds of messages.
“They all contained disgusting language. The only good thing – if you can call it that – is that I found them before my boy agreed to send photos of his younger brother.”
Tina discovered her boy was being groomed during a game of Mario Kart on July 5. His iPod pg pinged – and a p photo of breasts flashed up on the screen.
The mum m said: “I was stunned and my son n went into a meltdown, which ch happens due to his autism. tism. He was crying, screaming. eaming.
“I found d this app, hidden where ere the calculator and calendar is, where I never ver thought to look. I scrolled back through messages, essages, in shock and crying. g. This person had been grooming oming my son since March ch and I’d no
Colourful and trendy, Line Live encourages app users to interact
idea. I felt so guilty. This person asked where he lived. My son is clever in lots of ways and only told him England.
“They convinced him to send a photo of his sister and he sent a clothed photo – to which the person replied ‘she’s hot’.”
While the boy is having counselling, his devices will be examined by IT experts. Thames Valley Police confirmed they are investigating investigating, though it is thought the predator predato lives abroad. Line Live, which whi has had more than one milli million global downloads, was founded by a Tokyo-bas Tokyo-based firm and is backed by South Korean billionaire billionaires. It is a spin-off of Line, the world’s seventhmost used m messaging service with 200millio 200million users, mainly in Japan, Taiwan, Taiwa Thailand and Indonesia.
Line Live was w launched in 2017 by Line Corp, Corp a Tokyo-based subsidiary of the South Korean internet search engine Naver
Corporation. Founder Lee Hae-jin, 53, is worth an estimated £1.4billion.
The app encourages users to “showcase your talents and share important moments with a vast but personal audience”. Users are told chats are monitored and offensive comments will bring a ban.
Stickers and filters “provide that extra charm or cuteness when you need it” and streamers can send “gifts” to other users. Mutual followers can exchange private messages.
The app has positive reviews for its live streaming but some users warn of predators and a lack of age checks. One reviewer posting on Google App store wrote: “It is full of perving old men who sell your pictures and videos do not private chat with them!!”
Another wrote: “App is full of child predators! 13-year-old boys are really 30-40 men who sell your children’s pictures and videos on the internet.” A third posted: “Warning – this application allows child abuse with no real control on the age or the content.”
Line Live is not the first videostreaming app to come under fire for child safety issues. TikTok – which has over two billion downloads – has been probed over its child data handling.
Last year it paid a record £4.5million fine to the US Federal Trade Commission for allowing under-13s to sign up without parental consent.
TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, promised to remove all videos previously uploaded by anyone under 13. But in May a coalition of child privacy advocates said it found videos from minors still on the app.
Facebook faced criticism too. The NSPCC looked at 10,019 online grooming offences in England and Wales since April 2017, when it became illegal for adults to send sexual messages to kids.
Some 43 per cent were via Facebook-owned apps such as Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The NSPCC’s Mr Burrows said: “Tech firms have failed to design sites with child safety in mind. The Government has an opportunity to fix this if they urgently press ahead with an Online Harms Bill that holds companies and bosses to account.”
Mum Tina checks her children’s devices and has £5-amonth Sky Broadcast Buddy, allowing ageappropri a t e filters and limits on screen time. She said: “My son’s age banned him from SnapChat and Instagram because he is not old enough and I received an alert.
“It gave me a false sense of security. I hope other parents look out. This app is dangerous. My son doesn’t understand the severity and we hope the counselling means it won’t hit him later. I didn’t handle it well and he feels bad for upsetting me, though it’s not his fault at all.”
Deborah Dennis, chief executive of the Stop It Now! helpline, which aims to prevent child sexual abuse, said: “Tech companies and governments must do more to design the online places our children use to be safer.
“This includes filters to block unwanted interactions, simple ways of reporting content, and messages warning people carrying out risky or illegal behaviour to stop, but also telling them where to go for help to stay stopped.” Sky apologised to Tina and said it had reclassified Line Live so that it is rated and filtered in line with other social media.
Facebook has trebled – up to 35,000 – the number of staff dedicated to safety and security. In June it joined Google, Microsoft and 15 other tech firms for Project Protect – a plan to combat online child sexual abuse with renewed investment.
TikTok has a minimum user age of 13 in the UK and under-16s are disabled from live streaming. Parents can pair accounts to monitor activity and app bosses are working with charities to strengthen safety measures.
A spokesman said it had “rapidly” strengthened safety measures in the two years it had operated in the UK and added: “We have a zero-tolerance response on child sexual abuse material. All explicit and suspected grooming behaviours detected are escalated to our Child Safety Team in Dublin to investigate.”
TikTok said offenders were banned and any lawbreaking was reported.
Lockdown has exacerbated risk of online grooming and sexual abuse like never before ANDY BURROWS NSPCC CHIEF’S WARNING TO PARENTS