Story:Ex-teen hackers warn parents are clueless as children steal 'millions

 

A team of journalists at Sky News revealed that children as young as seven are being referred to Britain's national cybercrime intervention programme. 

Former hackers jailed for stealing millions have warn parents it's easier than ever for children to fall down the rabbit hole – and the first step is often gaming.

A former cyber criminal says he was around 15 when he started hacking. He began whilst playing a video game and was drawn into the cybercrime world.  

He ended up in jail for stealing over $7 million in crypto-currency.

Read the full story here .

Story:Life Tech - Chatbots changing minds Source: BBC World Service Sounds

 

 

A study found AI chatbots can persuade us with fake facts. The BBC podscat team explore what this means for politics. 

This is part of a three item podcast but raises some vey important issues. Chat bots are of growing interest with the young. They are often none judgmental and therefore appeal to vulnerable children and adults.

In other stories we in this blog we have presented other stories about the potential power of chatbots for human interaction but it is obviously inportant to hold onto the reality that these chatbots are AI generated responses.

This podcast raises the potential impact of fake information on election outcomes.

Listen to the podcast here.

 

 

Story:Racist and antisemitic false information spreads online following Bondi Beach terrorism attack Source: ABC Newsh2>

 

This story appeared across the world's news media and describes another danger that children face online. Artificial Intelligence is certainly a powerful tool for good, such as medical imaging improvments, analysis of complex scientific data and more. As with many advanced technologies it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. 

Children are vulnerable to false information, as are many adults, because it is often difficult to determine what is real and what is false.

This story is an example of AI generated images used to promote racism and hate.

Similar images are appearing in online forums and posts to promote fake news stories to support radical agendas. Young people and vulerable adults can be targetted by race hate groups, anarchists and anti democracy individuals and organisations.

An important role of parents will be to ensure their chilren undestand the risks of AI and how to check to see if what they are seeing and reading is real. 

Monitoring what children are encountering online is an effective way of checking what sort of material they come across.

Read the full story here.  

 

 

Story:Two men jailed for horrific online sexual exploitation of children in legal first as CPS tackles Violence Against Women and Girls Source: Crown Prosecution Service

 

 

This report from the Crown Prosecution Service referrs to the case involving two girls as young as 16, who made complaints to separate police forces across the UK. It demonstrates the growing complexity of technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The abuse took place  through online chat rooms, as they exploited and preyed upon young girls from different parts of the UK.  The shared illegal indecent images of them and encouraging them to commit acts of self-harm. 

The chair of The Cyber Trust was asked for his opinion and said, “This case underlines the need for comprehensive Cyber Security advice and education in particular for vulnerable young people and their parents so that they all may access online information safely and appropriately.  In this case, we can see the dangers of online chat rooms through exploitation by people that try and get in contact with users of such spaces for criminal purposes.”

The Cyber Trust's Family Internet Monitoring Project may become part of the solution to this sort of crime by ensureing that parents are aware of their children's involvement with people online and can intervene to protect them when required.

Read the full report here. 

 

 

Story:Online child sexual abuse surges by 26% in year as police say tech firms must act Source|: The Guardian

 

Figures for England and Wales show there were 51,672 offences for child sexual exploitation and abuse online in 2024. Online child sexual abuse in England and Wales has surged by a quarter within a year, figures show, prompting police to call for social media platforms to do more to protect young people.

We don't yet know what the impact will be of the new Online safety Act and hopefully the numbers will drop significantly do to the act.

Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable of Staffordshire police who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection and abuse, said: “I know that these platforms, with the technology that’s out there, could prevent these harms from occurring in the first instance.”

She added that technology used by children should come with inbuilt protections, such as mobile phones that allow them to only access safe platforms and websites.

This issue will clearly not go away and our Family Internet Safety Project aims to promote pro-active monitoring rather than waiting until things happen.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Story:More than 100 arrests during coordinated policing week Source: Punchline : Gloucestershire

 

Operation Scorpion is a collaboration between the South West's five police forces (Avon and Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire), alongside their respective offices of Police and Crime Commissioners, the British Transport Police, the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SW ROCU) and the National County Lines Coordination Centre, which sees resources combined to tackle drug supply and make the region a hostile environment for organised crime groups.

Many police authorities run similar coordinated multi-agency operations dealing with these and other priorities.

The operation  was focussed on situations where criminals groom and exploit young people into carrying out crimes on their behalf. This is a growing concern for police and other child focussed agencies and charities.

Police Officers visited schools, ran a social media campaign targetting TikTok and SnapChat adverts designed to reach young people. This really needs to become the focus of parental monitoring to ensure their children are not being drawn into criminal activities without knowing it. 

Read the full story here.

 

 

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.