My daughter is selling photos of herself

[WorriedMumJo]

Please can anyone help? I believe my 18 year old daughter is selling photos of herself online. She suffers from social anxiety and struggles to go out .. so uses the internet a lot. She opened a PayPal account 10 days ago and has received several payments from men .. up to £20 each. Some payments have messages attached saying thanks for video and pics ... thanks sexy .. etc. I can also see that she has signed up for Myfreecams ... when I looked at the website I was absolutely horrified. I have no idea what to do as I can't approach her about it. I've tried to find the pictures on the internet but don't really know where to look. As background, she is studying for A levels and is predicted to get A grades so is intelligent. Has anyone else had this problem? I'm scared to tell her Dad .. he would be so upset and I think would want to confront her so I am feeling very alone and scared.

Slut shaming? Oh come on. She's 18 and she's doing something very foolish that she will come to regret. She's making a bad decision and sometimes young people need to be protected from making bad decisions that will seriously impact their future. This has nothing to do with slut shaming!

Restricting or disabling her internet access through your WiFi will only serve one purpose and that will be to alienate her and make her feel she is being treated like a child. She can go out and buy a Pay as You go dongle and have her own internet access that you will not be able to control.

She is 18, and adult, and I think you need to treat her like one.

As her parent though you HAVE to talk to her.
Apologise for snooping, you don't really say how you have come accross this activity but apologise.
Then you need to have the Mother Daughter chat that you are dreading. Do you research first so you know what your talking about. I.e the Apps and Sites she is using.
At the end of the day you can't and shouldn't stop her. It's her decision (ok a bad one) but you can warn her of the possible consequences of this.
-Pictures getting into the wrong hands
-Potential employers finding out
-Potential partners finding out, etc, etc

And once you have cleared the air with your DD you need to inform her Dad :)

Tough times ahead, good luck with whatever you decide to do but you can't just leave this.

I think Andy has sensible advice. It's important that she knows that this is not ok for many reasons, but it's important to keep communication open - what if she tries yo meet up with one of these saddoes?

As for reinforcing patriarchal standards of sexuality by criticising her decision - frankly accepting money in return fir pictures of your vag isn't challenging patriarchal standards of sexuality it's reinforcing them. But more importantly you wonder about how she sees her self worth if driven to do this sort if thing, and how she vies sexual relationships.

It's all very well if you are an extrovert 29-something exploring your sexuality or whatever it's called but if you are 18 with little experience of relationships then it is quite right her mother steps in to warn her.

She needs to w aware that the technology exists already and will eventually become accessible and available to everyone, but one day, everyone will be able to see everything you have ever said or done online, including private messages. If she is aware of this and wants to continue she is 18 and should not have to live with her parents checking what she does online! A lot of 18 year olds are out doing a lot worse, a large number of us have probably done stupid things when we were growing up and have learned from our mistakes, and we can be thankful we didn't all have the internet to make these mistakes on otherwise our parents may have been more aware of what we were up to.

Thank you for all your comments. Some have been very useful ..
I'm pretty certain my daughter does not realise these pics .. whatever they are .. will be accessible to others on the internet .. we've had the discussion before about different things. And she thinks she can judge a person's trustworthiness .. but of course in an online chat situation that's almost impossible. That's one of the reasons I'm so worried .. that she may have been talked into doing this by someone she's spoken to on Whisper. All I actually know is that she has been sent money for Videos / Pics, called sexy and one person gave a phone number and asked if she would meet for a drink. Not too worried about that as she doesn't go out .. but does it mean he knows where she lives? Will these people know her name? Two of them used her Christian name and what sort of photo would somebody pay £20 for? If they want that sort of thing why don't they go and buy a magazine off the top shelf.

Sunflower49 You say these people only get access to the photos .. do you know how these sites work? Would my daughter have given them the pics to sell? Do they organise the charging, meaning the buyers wouldn't have my daughter's email or PayPal details? I feel very naïve .. honestly had no idea this kind of thing went on.

I'm a camgirl.

Although I'm no way infallible and haven't worked on each and every site, I know a fair bit.

If she's been selling actual digital photos-then yes those people 'own' those photos and can do anything they like with them, If she's selling them via a website, they won't . It sounds as if she's doing both though from what you've said.

IF you sell via a camsite such as MFC, they won't have any contact details or email or anything like that, the sites have these details but they won't put them anywhere 'customers' can see. In fact a lot of these sites will ban a girl from working, if they find out she's doing that.

They harbour a certain amount of responsibility so they try their best to protect-It's part of what you pay for as a camgirl (they take a percentage of your earnings).

If she's selling directly, through her own email address and using paypal, she doesn't have this sort of protection.

As I said, if you could find a way to report her paypal account anonymously, this would put a stop to this with minimal invasion-IF after having the 'talk' with her she still goes ahead with it it may be something to think about.

Using her real name isn't a great thing either-obviously it has the potential to expose identity if these people do have her email address or other contact details.

PM me if you have any further questions related to what she's doing.

Good luck xx

do we have and update?

*a

Strongly disagree with all this stuff about not invading her privacy because she's an adult. Children don't mature drastically overnight on reaching 18. She is clearly a very vulnerable young person and it is a good thing that her mother is looking out for her like this and trying to help.