Story:One in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, NSPCC finds Source The Guardian

 

According to NSPCC research nearly one in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, with harms ranging from threatening to release intimate pictures to revealing details about someone’s personal life.

The National Crime Agency has said that it is receiving more than 110 reports a month of child sextortion attempts, where criminal gangs trick teenagers into sending intimate pictures of themselves and then blackmail them.

Online blackmailing may start as a row between kids at school which spills over into verbal threats, bullying or other forms of abuse. This escalation can result in demands being made on the target to do something to satisfy the person or persons who carry out the attacks. 

Other perpetrators can be paedofiles or criminal gangs. 

Children can also be pursuaded to keep the abuse secret following threats to attack other family members or to hurt the target even more.

Monitoring communications can be useful to become aware of such threats and discuss them with the child or engage with the Cyber Choices team in your area. This police service was established deal with such perpetrators of these crimes. 

To ready the full story here. 

 

 

Story:Charities Warn Against Loopholes in UK Online Safety Act Regarding Child Protection Source: London Daily

 

A number of child protection agencies and charities including NSPCC and Barnardo’s highlighted what they describe as an 'unacceptable loophole' that could allow encrypted messaging services to evade responsibility for removing illegal content. 

The loophole arises from the fact that person to person messaging is not fully covered by the legislation and the charities are raising their concerns about the dangers of encypted person to person messaging.

Putting controls in place for this sort of communications will be challenging and only time will tell how this and other encrypted technology might be controlled.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Story:Dangerous & extremely troubled’ paedo, 18, who told girl, 14, to self-harm and carve his name into her skin is jailed Source: The Sun

 

A particularly harrowing story of a young girl being groomed by another teenager.  

The perpertator openly referred to himself as a paedophile online and he started grooming the victim, a 14 year old girl. He demanded he to behave in innapproriate ways, encouraged self harming and played on her easting disorder to make her life a misery.

The 18 year old began the abuse in September of 2024 and used  Discord, Telegram, and WhatsApp to target the vulnerable child.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

 

Story:Petition to repeal UK’s new Online Safety Act passes 300,000 signatures Source: Pink News

 

The UK Internet Safety Act came into law on 25th July2025. By Monday (28 July), a petition calling for the law to be repealed had been signed over 550,000 times. This forces a debate regarding a repeal in the UK parliament. This debate is scheduled to take place in Westminster Hall for December 15, 2025 at 4:30 pm. The debate will be opened by Lewis Atkinson MP and will be streamed on the UK Parliament YouTube channel. 

Whatever you think about the Act it is making a difference in the lives of childred and age verification systems seem to be improving as time passes.  The UK government made a statement regarding the petition as follows:

' The Government is working with Ofcom to ensure that online in-scope services are subject to robust but proportionate regulation through the effective implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023.'

UK Government have no plans to repeal the Act. 

Read the full story here. 

 

Story: Track My Teens' Phones And Discovered Something Unexpected About Myself Source: Huffington Post

 

This is not a story about children being abused or groomed online. Its a story which describes one of the unexpected outcomes of monitoring the online behavour of two sons by their father. 

As intrustive as monitoring might appear to be to some, if it is introduced following open discussions about keeping children safe it can become a useful tool to connect children with their parents when they are not at home. It needs no proactive action by the child or the parent. Simply knowing that they are on their way home after an evening out can be enough to reduce stress felt by parents whilst keeping their kids safe.

Read the full story here.