The social normalisation of dating sites, where adults chat with strangers to determine if they wish to meet up and perhaps date them has become part of our social lexicon. For adults, this is generally fine. Adults are expected to have better judgement than children, and possess the skills to weigh risk. WE should know how to manage our privacy and security, and determine what to reveal and what not to, therefore making such online interactions just that much safer.

For the young people that is not often the case, and it is troubling to see the numbers of incidences recently where children have been found both communicating with strangers who have obscured/lied about their names and identities, interacting with grown adults on live streaming sites – and essentially using any app that features tags lines like “Meet strangers online”

Do a quick Google search, to see the vast range of options that are currently available.

When looking up such apps, many of the articles and lists lead in with an appeal to the loneliness and isolation many teens feel. Many of the articles available to read, do not address any of the risks that might be faced by a younger user – which is quite a shocking oversight when considering the majority have age rating that sit at around 12+, or no solid age verification systems.

One excellent (sarcasm) article includes these wise words of wisdom.

"Normal chatting and dating apps can get quite annoying because the person you’re talking has some information about you before you start speaking to each other. With anonymous chatting apps, the person knows nothing about you before they speak to you. Some of the apps on this list randomly matches you with someone to speak to so that you’re both strangers to each other. (and Safe on Social would like to add – some of the apps on this list randomly link your WEBCAM with anyone, anywhere, anytime.)"

Even more concerning is the number of these stranger chat apps that use your location, invade your privacy, require log-ins from other social media sites, require multiple images or use live webcam streaming and many have little to no parental controls, or valid age verification systems.

This is beyond risky, when the webcam features come into play. Consider the situation when the live streaming features are used one is wearing one’s school uniform. Or is streamed from a bedroom with loads of identifying info hanging on the walls or out the window.

When a pre-teen ends up being “ matched “ to a 40 year old man when said man has pretended to be much, much younger or the child has pretended to be way older (that happens as well). Be concerned. It’s not a recent phenomenon, having to address the risks of online strangers with our children. But it’s a risk we are becoming complacent about. Teens know there are predators online, they know there are paedophiles around. Pre-teen and children may have issues actually grasping the concept that the nice person they are chatting to anonymously is gradually leading them to reveal more and more information about themselves. Grooming them, in the stalker lexicon. And then of course there’s the bullying. Which becomes so much simpler when things are anonymous. Many times, there is no way to trace back any of these comments to their original authors. The anonymity allows people to be even nastier, more relentless and has seen some tragic results (Dolly Everett, to name one public example- who took her own life after a campaign of cyber bullying was waged against her via anonymous chat app Sarahah in January, 2108).

Some reasons why your child may befriend and eventually come to trust an internet stranger.

Their friends are doing it.

Socially awkward or shy children may find it easier to communicate online rather than face to face.

Some children ignore the threats of predators, stalkers et al due to a lack of experience and ability to weigh risk.

Low self-esteem.

Kids are curious by nature and always looking for excitement.

Using these apps can be cheaper than SMS texting.

And a couple of additional risks, that a child will not contemplate.

Improper encryption – running theses apps on public Wi-Fi provides a higher level of risk for data compromise, and the information is shared within these apps using a lower than normal encryption level. They are not secure in this setting. Hacks– are very common and a user’s information being channelled against them. It’s a minefield. Below, Safe on Social has compiled a list of the worst. These ones arguably pose the most risk to your teens and children.

Talk to strangers

With the sterling rating of 2.4 on the app store – the other important feature of note is the recommended age of 17+. That’s quite a bold rating from the App Store and you can certainly assume that the content is therefore not something your child should be viewing, and nor is the app safe designed for or safe for children.

It describes itself as - “Talk to Strangers 2.0 is a social experiment. What happens when anonymous strangers can chat about anything?”

Talk about disingenuous – what do you think happens? And we’re pretty sure you don’t want your pre-teens participating in this kind of social experiment.

Chatroulette

This one is not an app, but is worthy of a search through a teens browsing history to ensure it is not being used on a regular basis. It has also been around for quite a few years, surfacing out of Russia in 2010. Again, we see the tag line “connect to new people”, but this time webcams are definitely involved.

Described succinctly by Lifewire as a “pornographic playground for exhibitionists rather than a community conducive to meeting new people”, this is complete nightmare of a site creeping into popular usage. Theoretically, the site makes murmurs about nudity and explicit content being a no-no, and there is the scope to report these occurrences - but the moderators appear to do…nothing. And the software deployed that the creators insist will filter out the more inappropriate images, claims to use image recognition software, doesn’t function nearly as well as the creators claim.

This site in increasingly becoming a place on the internet dedicated to those purposely looking for sexual interaction. As a small plus, most individuals who mistakenly believe this is a site for meeting and talking to new friends – quickly move on – but NOT before seeing several things a younger user should not be viewing.

Tellonym – Toolkit subscribers there is a full cheat sheet on this in the dropbox.

Omegle - Toolkit subscribers there is a full cheat sheet on this in the dropbox.

Holla

Seven billion users worldwide. That equals a large number of strangers one may meet online anonymously but with a webcam involved. If a predator designed their fantasy app this is what it looks like. This is bad news for any child and should be deleted straight away.

Holla has two primary features.

“Live Random Video Chat” that will let you conduct exactly that, on your phone or your laptop.

“Nearby Chat Mode”– to use your phone’s location trackers to “randomly” link you to users close by.

Users are actively encouraged to include as much information about themselves as possible – places of employment, schools and photos. This information becomes available to the members who pay for a premium subscription.

Let’s be honest here, the people with the funds to set up permanent direct debits for this type of thing – are not going to be teenagers or children – yet it is those two age groups most likely to provide the most personal information.

To sign up – either a phone number or a Facebook account is necessary (nothing like a bit of data mining on your contacts) and Holla INSISTS on accessing the camera and microphone of your device. Leaving the app open on your computer can lead to some potential horror shows - given that using the webcam can mean that you are connected to literally, anyone, doing literally anythingwhen the connection is established.

That’s really not good for any children who has ventured into this app.

Holla asks for names, ages, faces, personal information, invades privacy, and asks for your location. It has NO parental controls or methods of age verification. And it keeps the right of ownership over ALL content posted.

It’s terms and conditions hover around a 13+ age rating, with its app store rating sitting at 17+ in both Google Play and Apple.

This is NOT appropriate for anyone under the age of 18. AT ALL.

Whisper

“Express yourself honestly and openly”

A community of 30 million, with the purpose of a confessional. The objective is to share one’s innermost, intimate secrets, overlaid with images and share to strangers. The secrets are linked not by profile but by subject matters, and as could be expected often veer into sexual territory.

It does possess slighter tighter controls than most of the anonymous apps, requiring identity verifications, but this one has a clanger hidden in its terms and service.

It promises absolute privacy, and swore blindly it did not collect any user information and that there was NO WAY another user could discovery your identity.

BUT.

All the users of the app were and ARE being surveilled by a back-end system within the app. Including folk who had turned off the location data feature. This was exposed by the Guardian newspaper in 2018, resulting in Whisper altering its terms and conditions to ALLOW it to use the location information even when users had switched off this feature. It does this by using the IP data on your phone/device. It didn’t stop watching. It just authorised itself to do so in the fine print.

Whispers surveillance of its users has been requested and used by law enforcement and that included the information posted. It is storing all user information indefinitely, without names and phone numbers but with IP addresses and locations of all message posted, and precise times.

The confessional app, with its extreme focus on privacy is a Trojan horse.

Anyone with an eye on their future data footprint, should be very careful about using this app, and that is especially relevant for teens.

Kik

One of the elder statesmen of the anonymous chat, Kik targets the tween, teenage market directly.

This app does not require a phone number to create an account, and an email and a password is sufficient to join up. It has maintained popularity through cleverly using a similar system to SMS texting but allowing users to not rack up the phone charges.

Acquire a username and you are away really. There’s emoji’s, notifications, photo’s , cute filters , everything that appeals to the younger end of the teen market – and it’s very private – appealing to the older teens too.

It’s free, simple, anonymous and ...because of the ease of access it provided to minors got called “ the de-facto app for grooming children online” Point and Forbes Investigative media in 2017.

It took a beating after Point and Forbes revealed its investigations with concrete evidence of child exploitation on the app, with young teenage females being regularly bombarded with messages from males users within hours of joining up. These messages included numerous dick pics. There was evidence of grooming, sextortion, encouragement of meet-ups…it was a disaster for the creators.

It has tried to pick itself up. It wants no trouble. It does want to help, and has installed 24/7 availability for any emergency disclosure requests. When requested it will preserve data for up to 90 days, but its response times remain slow.

It has released an extensive set of parental guidelines which are worth reading if your child uses this app. See below link.

https://help.kik.com/hc/en-us/sections/204000008-For-Parents-

But the same challenges remain.

There is still no technical way to enforce the 13+ age rating, no guarantee that false profiles are not created. Parents have no way to access their child’s account without specific usernames and addresses. And predators still know the app’s target market, and how to exploit it.

Summary

Safe on Social can review these as they pop up directly in our work with parents and schools. But these apps are different animals to the major social media platforms. They are numerous, poorly controlled, poorly moderated and risky for all the obvious reasons.

And new ones are being released all the time, and old ones are experiencing a resurgence.

This is a trend, and it isn’t going away.

We can draw your attention to them one by one as they become a problem, but familiarise yourself with the icons of the mostly highly rated in the app store and look for them on your child’s phone. Do this regularly, and don’t forget that some of the worst are browsers based, not apps.