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KLS News shares news on how to notice if parents children are talking to a predator and how to keep them safe. They mention the signs of being secretive. And to always let them feel there is space to communicate without borderline consequences. And to be aware of what social media apps they are using. (without too much invasion of privacy)

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Signs your child is talking to a predator and how to help them stay safe

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After Utah two teen abductions this month, both from situations where predators met the teens online, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is giving crucial tips to parents on how to spot if their child is at risk of becoming a victim.

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A girl from the "Child Predator Experiment", 12 years old when Coby messages her and pretends to be someone around her age. He asks to hang out and she invites him over to her house when she thinks her dad has fallen asleep. Only to then open the door to see her father and the "young boy" she was about to let in.

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Coby Persin - The Dangers Of Social Media (Child Predator Experiment)

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An experiment performed by Coby Persin with permission from the parents of these children. To show how accessible social media has made child predators more apparent, along with relation to kidnapping. Though the video is years old, it's still relevant to bring forward to young teenagers and the dangers of social media.

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The Dangers Of Social Media (Child Predator Experiment)

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An article by Psychology Today sharing information on how to keep yourself safe on social media from predators and prevent the possibility of abduction.

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Key points

There was an 80 percent increase in online scammers between 2020 and 2021, indicating a rise of deceptive online predators.

Teaching teens to spot deceptive online users is a secondary, passive, and likely ineffective intervention as identity duplicates abound.

In an age of deception, flagrant lies, and online predators, the only effective safety strategy is verification.

You already knew there were "creepers" and untrustworthy people online but it's likely to get worse.

Just recently there was a young girl in Riverside, California who was abducted after the perpetrator had murdered her mother and grandparents. The man had attained her address by pretending to be a teenager, an online threat called catfishing.

What is catfishing? To catfish is to copy other people's photos and present yourself as them online. The FTC reported an 80 percent increase in romantic scams from 2020 to 2021 that many times use similar deceptive techniques.

Need an example of catfishing? Look no further than Nev Schulman's show Catfish on MTV. The show is in its eighth season because teens and adults alike continue to be targeted by criminals and the unwell alike.

The duplicating of identities on social media is a huge problem with no clear solution in sight.

Just in the past month, two of my influencer friends with 100k+ followers on Instagram have been targeted. Their face, their videos, and their identities were copied and pasted into new accounts that had amassed thousands of followers fraudulently.

It's not just influencers who are targeted. Most of the victims on MTV's Catfish do not have blue checkmarks verifying their accounts. These folks are just typical social media users.

We all need a more safe, more transparent, and verifiable online experience.

In an age of deception, flagrant lies, and online predators, the only effective safety strategy is verification.

If the young girl in Riverside had known she was talking to an almost 30-year-old guy in Virginia, it's unlikely she would have confided such details as her home address.

It's time for technology companies to introduce verification as a security benefit of their product.

While Elon Musk at Twitter attempts to make a profit off verification, other platforms are introducing it as a central security feature.

Hinge, a leading online dating app, verifies any user for free within hours. The feature is key in a landscape with a plethora of romantic scammers on dating platforms.

The same security of verification should be provided to all of us on all major social media apps.
Until that happens, here are my top four online safety tips to help prevent you and your children from being catfished:

1. For kids, have them not friend anyone they haven't met first in person and keep their profiles with the highest privacy settings. Encourage your kids to tell you about any new friends they meet on social media.

2. For teens who will likely meet people for the first time online, tell them to verify who they're talking to if they start talking more often. A quick video call will do the trick-this is an excellent dating safety strategy as they get older.

3. If you're an adult talking to another adult who you met online, glance at the person's profile to look for 1) consistency in photos and "voice" and 2) other people in photos with the person who is tagged.

4. Don't send personal information or photos that would allow someone to identify your home address (i.e. photos with your house/apartment number on them).

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A Simple Solution to Keep Our Teens Safe Online

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There was an 80 percent increase in online scammers between 2020 and 2021, indicating a rise of deceptive online predators. Teaching teens to spot deceptive online users is a secondary, passive, and likely ineffective intervention as identity duplicates abound. In an age of deception, flagrant lies, and online predators, the only effective safety strategy is verification.

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Kids today have even more access to the internet, but that means they also have access to more dangerous situations. And with that parents should be telling them about all those dangers online, the risks, and how to stay safe. It's a harsh thing that even very young kids have to learn about, but in the long run it will help and protect them.

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Alicia Kozak is one of the survivors from the video who specifically had social media used to her kidnapper's advantage to lure her. She spent a lot of time online, and one day she received a message from a boy who she assumed was around her age. And soon enough after months of back and forth she decided to sneak out and meet him. Unfortunately, it ended up in her being taken 5 hours away from her home and locked in a basement filled with torture devices.

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It is unfortunate how easy it is for someone of older age to go online, create a social media account, and pretend to be someone of a much younger age. All the components they need is a fake profile picture from off google, maybe even some fake post to make it more believable. Then with that understand how teenagers interact and 1,2,3 with ease adolescents are tricked into thinking this is someone they can trust. And it can be very simple to fool them because we all believe the same phrase, "Oh well, that won't ever happen to me".

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Anthony Padilla - I spent a day with KIDNAPPING SURVIVORS

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A day with Anthony Padilla where he speaks and asks questions about the stories behind kidnapped survivors. He asks from the beginning, their emotions, the closure they tried to find, the punishments, the release, the impact, and finally the best way to stay safe to prevent these situations from happening less.