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Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

bloomberg.com

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Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#151

Post by bloomingeek »

touisteur wrote: post #120
DoreenMichele wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more about our legal system and general culture needing to keep up with the times. I homeschooled my kids, so school-based sex education doesn't really make my radar.

I think the people calling sex education "grooming" are the same preventing the legal system to evolve in the way you described. You're very lucky that you could home-school your kids and teach them all this. It's all very alien to me how teaching safe practice of something that has a huge probability of happening can still be seen as encouraging it, "grooming". Education should be a bare minimum here: here's how you…

Since grooming has become politicized, the hypocrisy is monumental and finally exposed. So called puritanism is the wrong direction, because as you pointed out, teens will do stupid things.

What about the toxic masculinity culture taught by the right and the church? The right says, "keep these women under control." The church says,"women MUST obey their husbands no matter what." If that's not grooming, I don't know what is.

We home schooled our children. We made sure our kids knew what could happen in life because we are all flawed and sometimes make decisions that could be life altering in unintended ways. We knew that we couldn't educate them enough about the variables of life, but we tried.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#152

Post by neal_jones »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #146
hannofcart wrote: post #24

While my heart goes out to all the victims' families, what are platforms like Facebook supposed to do here? Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping. The sad fact is that desperate people exist. And these desperate people are willing to do despicable things to make a buck.

You can easily inform the end user, so the conversation is transparent and the victim is giving implicit, informed consent. "NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. The User's hometown and usual IP is XXX , USA. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts" But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

Agreed on this being a basic first step, although any scammer of any value would just get a VPN.

Another user noted that OnlyFans is analyzing text and bans anyone saying anything approaching blackmail.

Odd (but maybe not odd at all) to think that OnlyFans might be the leader on this.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#153

Post by thfuran »

timeon wrote: post #88
thfuran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting down all the roads because criminals use them doesn't really make sense. Does the internet equivalent?

Roads are not the topic in here. Analogies are not arguments.

Neither are complaints.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#154

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

neal_jones wrote: post #152
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily inform the end user, so the conversation is transparent and the victim is giving implicit, informed consent. "NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. The User's hometown and usual IP is XXX , USA. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts" But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

Agreed on this being a basic first step, although any scammer of any value would just get a VPN. Another user noted that OnlyFans is analyzing text and bans anyone saying anything approaching blackmail. Odd (but maybe not odd at all) to think that OnlyFans might be the leader on this.

I agree. Yet, I assume professionals (with VPN) would definitely attract more law enforcement action due to size of transfers.

But if you can prevent script kiddies, why not? The current barrier to entry is so damn low. Paying VPN is indeed a barrier to entry.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#155

Post by jpsouth »

marci wrote: post #150
jpsouth wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite confused how forwarding a naked picture of an underage person to literally anyone, except a dedicated law enforcement team, wouldn't have already been distributing it. >Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, report…

> No, nothing will change my mind that forwarding nude pictures of minors to literally anyone other than a law enforcement case handler is acceptable. Who made the case it was acceptable?

Fair point, it doesn’t seem like anyone did actually say as much.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#156

Post by thfuran »

ben_w wrote: post #56
thfuran wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is the end of the internet.

They're describing a border. When I was a teen in the late 90s, the internet without borders was cool (until I wandered into trolls I didn't have the resilience to deal with), but very obviously not compatible with national sovereignty on what counted as "illegal". Now? Does any country today block zero domains? There's nearly 200 nations so I've never bothered to check, but my guess is all block something .

Not just a border, a closed border. That's not common except in times of war or extreme authoritarianism.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#157

Post by pkaeding »

jpsouth wrote: post #100
marci wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents? By accident? The teacher and the and the other teen have the same first or last name, or the next one in the contact list, or the autofill rearranged just before clicking, or just one missclick... there are so many ways it could have happened.

Then report it to the police, don’t forward a naked image of someone’s child to them? Not only is it likely distribution of CP, it’s also an insane thing to do. As Doreen said, she doesn’t want to see her lads nudes. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to see my knob either, who in their right mind would forward that to anywhere but law enforcement? Not to mention your absolute stretch of a scenario. Do kids typic…

The teacher is absolutely going to be reporting it to the police, no matter what else they do. Teachers are mandatory repirters-- if they see anything that could indicate a child is being abused they must report it.

The police and social services, along with school district policy, will advise the next steps, including how parents are informed.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#158

Post by pkaeding »

OJFord wrote: post #109
atq2119 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's insane for a teacher to forward evidence of problematic stuff happening with a kid to the kid's parents. After all, many parents think their kids are angels who can do no wrong. Granted, in this case I agree that it's better judgment not to forward the picture for all the reasons you've mentioned - but calling it insane is a bit much.

If I was a teacher and inadvertently ended up with it somehow, I think I would be worried about the accusation so absolutely wouldn't go to the parents before taking some kind of advice or at least telling my superiors/union/law enforcement just to protect myself.

If you were a teacher, you would also have received mandatory-reporter training, so there would be even less gray area as to what to do next.

But your intuition is pretty much spot-on with the training I have received.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#159

Post by mrmetanoia »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta was correct. "Exigent circumstances" to the 4th amendment warrant requirement did not apply, because there was no known potential victim at risk. So the cops needed to have a judge sign a warrant. Didn't take long.

Legally correct maybe, but morally?

Yes, absolutely morally. Respecting this process is part of maintaining important boundaries for everyone.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#160

Post by marci »

jpsouth wrote: post #147
marci wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grand-parent ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40061547 ) : > It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn. I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were mak…

I'm quite confused how forwarding a naked picture of an underage person to literally anyone, except a dedicated law enforcement team, wouldn't have already been distributing it. >Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, report…

> It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, reports etc. Yeah, you could upload .pngs and .jpgs but it's hardly 'the next contact in the list' or 'maybe they had the same first or last name' in those scenarios, you upload the work for specific classes/courses. Obviously that's a single system, I don't know the full scope of what schools use these days.

As you (unintentionally) point out, there's money to be made/data to be acquired in Education. A few years ago, before Covid, one of my siblings had to use a cloud offering because of school. I forgot which, Microsoft Team for Education maybe, or Facebook Education Groups. I just remember being disapointed. People are use to their interface, and they have the money to lobby and ads, easier to sell something "free" with easy onboarding to schools administrators.

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