Teen son been a victim of a scam

[worriedmum223]

NC for this. Over the weekend my ds14 has been the victim of a sextortion scam. He was contacted on Tik Tok by someone posing as a girl who coerced him into sending nude photos. As soon as they had them they threatened to leak them to his Tik Tok contacts unless he paid money. My son did not initially tell us, but we had notifications from his bank account of him trying to access money which prompted a discussion and despite initially lying about the reason, he did eventually come clean.

I am absolutely heartbroken and shocked. He was beside himself and in tears. I’ve never seen him so shaken. I have drilled into him from a young age the dangers of social media and how you never speak to strangers and certainly never share personal information or photos. I have contacted the police and am meeting with them later today but trying to keep my son out of it for now because he is so mortified and upset.

I am worried on a number of counts.

Firstly if they do actually leak the photos which would be horrific for him. Although I’m led to believe this is rare and they are more likely to just move onto the next victim when they realise it’s a dead end.

Secondly if they try to contact him again now that they have his number and email address (all contact via Tik Tok and WhatsApp has been blocked but they could find other ways). His phone has been removed at the moment but he will need it back at some point and I can’t monitor it all the time ( when he’s at school etc).

Thirdly whether he could be in trouble himself for sending and asking for explicit photos at his age.

But mostly the emotional impact this could have on him. He was so embarrassed and upset. The fact he didn’t initially feel like he could be honest has upset me. And of course that he did this full stop. I get teenage boys have raging hormones but it’s such a stupid and out of character thing for him to do.

Please no lectures about social media. All of his friends have it, it’s part of life and I really thought I’d done a good job educating him about the dangers. If anyone else has been through this please let me know your experience and what happened next.

You do understand all experts believe children should not have access to social media don’t you? A 14 year old is a child.

I’m not saying this for personal gratification, but actually that other mothers on here learn from your mistakes, because this post is exactly why children / under 16s shouldn’t have access to social media, and why they need very heavy monitoring. My son isn’t allowed his phone in his room past 8pm. And I check it after, every night. The world is a scary place and it’s our duty, if we allow them phones, to do our due diligence and understand the dangers of social media and actually, say no.

And, horrifically, you’re far from the only one. It’s still a really offensive and upsetting phrase for many of us. So you carry on using it to describe your own experiences if that’s what gets you through it, but don’t you dare fucking act like you’re not hurting other victims by doing so.

No he doesn’t have a secret phone, and let’s pretend he did, at least I will have done everything I could to the best of my knowledge to protect him. No experts are telling us to let our children have access to social media. We all know they shouldn’t really…!

I think it’s naive and stupid to let your kids have social media and not check phones cos LOOK where it gets you…

I’m not being smug, this is how you’re perceiving it probably due to the fact that you allow your kids to have social media.

I do my best with the knowledge I have to protect my kids and teach them not to succumb to peer pressure.. and even if they do, guess who won’t? That’s right, their mum. Should I allow them access to what’s damaging as detailed in the post cos Tom, Dick, Harry and their mums are okay with it?

Fair enough, but surely that's exactly what they have been told to expect a scammer would say?
Like if you're aware of the existence of scammers, you also know that's what they will say?!

And like I said, don't you dare fucking sit there and act like you're not hurting victims by preaching to them about the language they use. Now beat it.

Delete history and delete messages - you can check all your like but doesn't mean jack shit,just makes kids better at hiding their trail. I'm not saying they should have unlimited access but definitely don't be so smug as to think your kids could never do anything.

sorry can't help much because i don't really have much knowledge of the legalities or anything and i don't send pictures like that and never have but the only thing i can say is (i know it's obviously too late now) i would tell him it's best not to send nudes to anyone least of all strangers but if he really must then no face no identifying factors and always digitally add a tattoo or something (if he does those 3 things he can say the pics aren't of him)

I think you're doing a good job of handling this, but please make sure that you discuss this again very soon. You say he's learned his lesson, and I truly hope that's the case. But there's more to this. I have read several recent news reports and articles on this particular scam and on cyber-bullying in general. I was shocked to learn that there are multiple cases of teens being bullied to kill themselves and actually going through with it. It's not always about money, it's power or gaining followers.

It's terribly depressing what the internet is turning into. Says a lot about the way some people are changing, I think.

Firstly, not all kids are like this and genuinely don’t think mine are. If I saw deleted messages that would prompt a serious conversation.
Secondly, even if they were, this still doesn’t mean I would allow them social media and to not check messages, or allow them to have access to their phones alone past 8pm.
I know I’m doing my to protect them from the dangers of social media.How many of you can say the same?

They use a script. This is an industry. Just bank phishing scams are. Young men are trained and have a book with a script they use for sextortion and romance scams

How would you see deleted messages?

You're coming across as so smug with " How many of you are doing the same?"

Are you saying people should be able to comment on others' language, or that they shouldn't? Because it looks like you're doing that (calling a request "preaching" and "policing") while telling others not to.

Poor lad.
fwiw OP this happened to my friend, who was a 36 year old pilot at the time - very successful intelligent man. Please do feel free to show your son.
He was chatting with a ‘woman’ on the dating app ‘feeld’ for a couple of days and things heated up, before he knew it he ended up exchanging pictures, he was then was hit with screenshots of his linkedin, and they attempted to blackmail him for £20000 - or they would send to his very well known employers social media accounts.
No it’s not ideal to send photos, and of course him being a child makes this even more criminal but he mustn’t feel alone in this, because men triple his age fall for it too.
Its a hell of a lesson to learn ❤️

Should add- pilot friend is fine, he blocked them everywhere and didn’t send any money. He doesn’t have social media of any kind, and got really into ‘real life’ ie took up hiking, sailing, gym hobbies etc. try and get your boy outdoors and in clubs exercising if you can.
the more time away from phone and phone signal the better

I didn’t accuse you of being smug. I accused you of being naively judgemental.

Kids lie, they hide things, and most importantly, they and their friends are significantly more tech savvy than our generation. I’m pretty tech savvy myself and my best friend has a computer engineering degree, but our kids have managed to get plenty past us over the years. When they were pre-teens, there was about 6 months where we couldn’t for the life of us work out how our kids were bypassing the restrictions we had put on their devices. In fact, they had to own up to it eventually and tell us as we couldn’t figure it out ourselves.

I have a very open relationship with my kids. I have very few rules or restrictions on their lives and I think they tell me pretty much everything, certainly far more than I actually want to know!

But not even I’m foolish enough to believe that they don’t keep things from me. That they haven’t broken some of my few rules behind my back and had their friends cover for them. That they haven’t done something incredibly stupid and dangerous and hope I don’t find out. It’s part of being a teenager.

Hi OP - I haven’t read the full thread.

However, if it’s any consolation- I did something MUCH worse than your son in my 30s when I should’ve known better and when it potentially could’ve ruined my life more and made it more difficult for me to recover from.

The good news is I got through it - I developed increased self confidence and getting through it was down to ‘owning’ it and not trying to hide it. After this ‘incident’ which was much worse than anything your son did and much much later - 30! In life when I should’ve known better - I ended up having the best and happiest years of my life!

So I know things are difficult in the present OP, but things really will get much better than this and your son can easily recover from this in the medium - long term, put this behind him and go on to live a happy, blessed life!

You’re still missing the points.

1. Just because you and your friends children lie to you both, despite your open relationship, doesn’t mean all children do / will. Please don’t project onto me.
2. Regardless of point 1, it’s still not a reason to allow them to knowingly access social media as a child / young teen.

It wouldn’t come across as smug if you were a) doing the same b) were not triggered because you’re not….

😕

You didn't answer my question.

What makes you think we didn't do the same as you? We did ,we were super strict with phones and social media BUT I would never lecture other people and presume I was getting it right because it can SO easily go wrong and you'd have no clue. Like I said how would you know messages had been deleted?

Ffs get over it then.

If you allegedly did the same, what’s your problem?

And even if I didn’t see some deleted messages… you can bet I would have seen my son transferring money out of his account to a stranger 😂

I also would not let the worry of my kids possibly deleting messages stop me not allowing them to have social media before age 16!

My point is - I do my best with the knowledge I have. I don’t think everyone is… the end.

Why are you still posting? You’ve had absolutely nothing supportive or constructive to add. All you want to do is go on about how great you are as a parent and how your children would never be so silly. I’m very sure that some point, maybe not yet but one day, you will be in for a rude awakening and when that happens think back to your attitude on this thread.

Ds bank is monitored that’s how we found out about the money. He does have tabs kept on him but this time something slipped through the net and we are all dealing with the fallout from that as best we can as a family, without blame and accusations.

If all you want to do is preach about how your way is so much superior to others while snidely sticking the boot in every so often, I’d seriously have a long look at your character and how that might be affecting your dc upbringing. There is no need for you to be on here when you are just derailing and being unpleasant.

Get over what,you being so judgemental and smug ? Pride comes before a fall, you would do well to remember that.