Teen son been a victim of a scam

My kids can run around their uni town naked for all I care. As long as I get them to 18 then they can take on adult responsibilities.

I tend to go deeper with my children I talk to them about online groomers and peadophiles. When my girls were younger I regularly checked their phones like I do with my son, he is a gamer and plays with his friends. The door must be kept open and I receive the phone at the end of the day. I read all his WhatsApp messages to make sure he is talking to the same kids. I am not leaving it up to the school they are my responsibility. I had sex education at school and yet I still got pregnant at school age. No offence to the teachers on this thread but it takes a parent to set boundaries and bring them up. As you are seeing with the poor ops son it can happen to anyone and if I was her I put stricter rules in place.

I think the big problem is that it's ALL on parents and many just don't have the time or ability to constantly be checking for new ways of monitoring or restricting. I'm utterly shit with all that and I know I won't be the only one. As I said earlier in the thread, it's easier to say no than roll back, and it's easier to say no than constantly have to try and keep up with latest developments and that's the position I take (for now), but we also need a society-wide solution, the same as absolutely anything else that is harmful to children. We need belt AND braces.

Maybe yes, but I do think the education angle is still important. In my daughter's case she does also have friends and cousins who are older than her and have a different level of access to things.

Plus they also do need the education for when we they are allowed phones/social media. As this thread shows, scammers are targeting adults as well and many adults are also vulnerable to exploitation and scams.

The people who my kids went to uni with who had had the tightest restrictions went wild in a big way,

To the extent of sending nude pics of themselves just because someone they didn't know asked them to?

I agree with @joanofaardvark . The people who my kids went to uni with who had had the tightest restrictions went wild in a big way, taking a lot of risks, which they may have navigated better if they had had more ownership younger. One girl had her phone taken off her every night when she came home, which seems extreme when she was completely free at university. I think this kind of parenting teaches children to be deceptive.

@MumWifeOther you are rather quick to assume that you banning social media for your child will only have positive consequences. I'd not be so quick with the smugness if I were you. Quite aside from the chance of circumventing your bans and checks; you are making your child the odd one out, the one who can't communicate the same way as his peers, who can't be part of understanding the social media of kids by trying it out for himself. And when he is permitted to have social media (16?18?) he will be doing so from a position of having had no experience at all of what to do - and friends who have been happily communicating online without him for years.
Wrapping our kids in cotton wool and never letting them leave the supervising sight of an adult would undoubtedly keep them safer - but at what long term price? Do not assume your child will ever be grateful for teaching them how to be a 20th century child in the 21st century.

My son did almost the exact same but he believed he was messaging a male friend. Turns out the friend had their phone hacked and it was Nigerian scammers. I got in touch with the police straight away. Everything turned out ok, they had to put my son down as a suspect in a crime for sending the pic but absolutely nothing bad happened to him.

Their parents are either lax or not savvy,it is possible to ensure they don't have their own accounts. That won't protect them from what they see on others devices but it does limit the damage. At the very least the parents have gone to greater lengths to ensure SM is something worth extra measures to be protected from. I know kids who genuinely don't even want SM.

Is this not a good reason to ban smartphones or at the very least social media for under 16s? Whenever threads to do that come up, everyone says "oh they just need to be educated about responsible use" - school time shouldn't be wasted on something as obvious as this with attainment plummeting. Why can't people just see, as this thread clearly demonstrates it, education is not enough, ban them already

This happened to my friend's son and he was 20. Thankfully he told his mum who reassured him he had nothing to be ashamed of and told him to block the accounts blackmailing him and pay no money. No photos/videos were ever sent to his online friends. His mum hid from him her anger/incredulity at his behaviour as at the time he was a lonely, vulnerable young man being exploited by very clever criminals.

I think the fact he told you shows what a good mum you are and is testimony to your relationship. Plenty of boys feel they can't and react very badly indeed.

Poor kid. Hope these people burn in hell.

Darling you are not to blame for this and neither is your son. The only people to blame are the criminals. You are the victims. I hope your son gets the support from the Police that my son got when he was the victim of a homophobic assault a few years ago. It really helped him to recover.
Well done to you for raising a boy that can confide in you. This will be a bitter pill to swallow but he will move on.

Same thing happened with my BIL. Police were useless!! But he just blocked the scammers, changed all his social media login passwords, and moved on with his life.

Nothing happened, and the pics weren't identifiable as him as it was just bottom half, so could have been anyone. We laugh about it now but he was VERY upset at the time and me and DH had to provide a lot of comfort and reassurance. Your son knows what he did and his lesson is now learnt, try and offer comfort and have an important conversation later down the line when it's not so raw.

Don’t beat yourself up OP …it happened….could have been a lot lot worse….you are dealing with it….so many perfect parents on here eh who just love to twist that knife ….ignore them ….they are no better than you

There’s an App called Qustodio - it’s for parents to help minitor phones for young people, you can set the settings, you can see what they are looking at and get alerted if the try to find anything that could potentially cause harm.
we’ve used this when our children were younger, it’s really helpful and can help with conversions.

I’m so sorry your son, and you, are going through through this!

As a teacher, I am very aware that all children and teens are capable of doing things - stupid, thoughtless, mean, risky things - that their parents simply will not and cannot believe until they see it with their own eyes. There's nothing out of the ordinary about your DS, OP, and nothing wrong with your parenting. You seem caring, astute, and switched on. I'm just thinking how lucky and wise you are to have seen something was wrong and to have got it out of him, rather than him resorting to more drastic measures. It's a very painful lesson for him to have to learn, but at least he's learnt it now. Good luck in the future.

I don't think that's a universal experience though as my mum was pretty relaxed and I was good at wheedling a later curfew out of her, but she didn't know when I was in a park drunk as a skunk. She didn't know when I was sneaking out of our own home. I lied to her all the time. I told her roughly where I was going when I was leaving the village and always mentioned the main girls I would be with but she still didn't know what I was doing or who with.

My daughter is in P6 in Scotland and has had online safety sessions repeatedly for a number of years. I did ask her 'again?!' at one point, but I didn't mean in a disparaging way, just in the sense that I was surprised they seem to be taking it very seriously. The school is poor generally on communication but when it comes to online safety for some reason, we get stuff home all the time about it. I'm glad for it.

In around P4 she asked what 'send nudes' meant as she had heard it somewhere, thankfully not online or anything. I'm glad she asked as we basically just built on everything she had already done at school and home around online safety other themes like consent and peer pressure.

Do I think it's enough and that she's immune to pressure or scams? Not by a long shot. Threads like this really reinforce how vulnerable children are and how people who would exploit them know exactly where to hit them. I'm glad for mothers sharing their experiences on here as it's a constant learning curve for us all.

Unfortunately they usually operate outside the country eg in India, Cambodia etc where the UK authorities don't have any jurisdiction.

@worriedmum223 they usually move on to the next victim if they realize they don't make any money from your DS, so continue to block them and drill it into him that even if they try to contact him via other means he has to keep blocking until they stop, don't engage at all.

And you're doing the right thing by contacting the police. I'm not sure but is there a way to disable or suspend his tiktok account?

Agreed. I grew up with someone who’s parents were very righteous about great they were for having so many rules for their teenagers.

Said teenager would lie about being at the local high street when they were in central London, lie about sleeping over a mates house when they were in fact paralytic drunk with a large group in the local park at 10pm, lie about having a social media account, lie about having a boyfriend. Funnily enough the more relaxed parents were the only ones who actually knew what their kids were doing and where they were.

@Franpie it’s all tech , yes one might have to be savvy but you can easily track with the right technology

@worriedmum223 hope it all turns out ok, you don’t need to attack anyone with an opposite view, you posted here and some of us apply different thinking (perhaps due to nasty experiences ). Either way very glad your son is safe, most important bit!