Sex offenders and paedophiles are posing as “ice cream” and “chicken nuggets” online in order to gain access to young children’s social media profiles.
Once the child accepts the request from the seemingly harmless profile, the paedophile can then view the child’s photos and albums they have shared online.
Forensic psychologist and social media safety expert Dr. Maureen Griffin said that she had experienced offenders setting up fake profiles to ‘friend’ children at primary level.
Speaking for the Ennis Mental Health Association, she said that paedophiles are finding new ways to target young people online.
The Sun reported that Dr. Griffin spoke of one “horrific” case where a sex offender set up a fake profile as a road with a secondary girls’ school on it.
“Over 400 girls at the school accepted ‘the road’ as a friend.
The owner of the account was a known convicted sex offender who made no effort to contact the girls, he didn’t follow them or meet them in real life or wait outside their school.
He simply collected their photos, pictures from teenage discos, girls’ sleepovers, and a range of selfies.”
Dr. Griffin warned parents to ensure their child knows every person they ‘friend’ on the internet, especially if the website they are using is aimed towards children.
She pointed to popular kids’ site Musical.ly as an example.
The site allows children to lip sync to songs and record videos to go along side them.
“One of (the children’s) followers told her that he would get her more likes for her songs if she sang her song again, this time in her underwear.”
She was at primary school. She saw nothing wrong with dancing around her bedroom singing her favourite song but broadcasting that to people you do not know is where the difficulty lies.”
