[Delphiza]

No.

My daughter (now 12) played a lot of Roblox, and mostly it was fine. She seemed able to avoid the shadier parts and, as a parent, you trust the child-friendly features.

However, controls are subverted (for example, by using special characters to get through language filters), and my daughter fell victim to exploitation that moved from Roblox innocence, to instagram, porn, and one-on-one calls. Fortunately we caught it (in time?). Police traced it back to international gangs that prey on the innocent. The trail, at least for us, went cold as there is a request to police in a country (we were not told which) by ours (UK), that is unlikely to be followed up.

Roblox was a big thing for her, and the events that started there were traumatic for the whole family.

Roblox is extremely popular and a really good platform. I'm not going to go on a crusade to try and chance peoples' minds, but Roblox is not as kid-friendly as one would think. It suffers, as all digital social platforms do, with uncontrollable, mis-understood, and untraceable actions by bad actors, that are used for nefarious purposes.

[soulofmischief]

There is only so much you can do as a parent and it's not easy knowing the right answer without hindsight, but personally as a child who broke every firewall used to control my browsing habits, who engaged routinely with people 10+ years older, I have experienced more creeps in real life than online and most small communities I've been a part of would shut that stuff down immediately.

It's definitely a problem with scale as far as community moderation, however even when creeps made attempts at me online I knew to report, block and move on. I think our fear over exposing our children to topics of sexuality prevent them the chance to develop the appropriate sensibilities to avoid being targeted.

There's not an easy solution, but I hope that being open with my children about the kind of vile people in this world and the tactics they use to trick and manipulate others will instill enough common sense that I don't have to hover over their Roblox sessions. I'm curious if in hindsight you could have educated her better, or if you think it just didn't stick.

[exolymph]

Assuming you're male... it's not that there are zero predators seeking male children, but the threat does seem to be asymmetric. (I may be wrong about this! It a supposition based on my experiences and what I've heard from others.)

> as a child who broke every firewall used to control my browsing habits, who engaged routinely with people 10+ years older, I have experienced more creeps in real life than online and most small communities I've been a part of would shut that stuff down immediately.

Same situation and I was groomed repeatedly (luckily mostly, though not entirely, ineptly). Perhaps not a coincidence that I'm a girl...

> I knew to report, block and move on.

Or that girls are often sexually precocious and may _want_ pseudo-romantic attention from older men, while being too naive to see the risks to them. That was certainly my case.

Overall I don't think it's as simple or easy as you're making it out to be.

[soulofmischief]

I didn't mean to oversimplify, just didn't want to get too longwinded. I agree with the points you make. That's why I think it's a difficult problem, because I realize not everyone thinks the way I do and I want to learn how to distill that knowledge into others.

Assuming that sexual precociousness is a natural feeling, which as a male I certainly felt in my youth, is there a way you think you could have safely satisfied or otherwise dealt with those feelings appropriately, or did it come down to a misunderstanding of power dynamic or that you were being manipulated? Did it stem from a lack of closeness with the existing male figures in your life?

Clearly we both found that prohibition does little to stop the fortuitous, so instead of trying to control and track my children's internet habits I hope I can just address these issues directly and just raise them to be sensible.

[ALittleLight]

It seems to me like there's a lot I can do as a parent. I control the endpoints. I can use certificate pinning and a proxy to read https traffic on the network. I can get passwords and accounts and monitor contacts.

Whether I should do that is more of a question. But I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that children will be able to escape digital surveillance.

[soulofmischief]

My point is that I can't track my childrens' every moves, MITM them, while simultaneously teaching them about the dangers of the surveillance state and the value of cryptography. So I have to rely on the same means we used before the internet, which I feel is something of a dying body of knowledge.

[stevenicr]

Sadly I believe these kinds of things happen and are increasing in frequency on all apps/games/sites that allow for user generated profiles / messaging.

I have seen an increase in the use of these methods the last 5 -6 years or so especially.

We had an influx of these types of social engineering / personal data collection with later demands of money or nude pics (and often times both) - some years ago.

Looking into negative link attacks to disrupt google search results found some sites teaching people how to use chat systems for ill gotten gains - from selling fake pics to blackmail, begging for money for sickness - all sorts of things - posted right on public forums and with links to dozens of sites in which these methods could be used quickly.

As to where I think there is less of this on fbook for some reasons - fbook is sometimes employed as part of the scams.

long stories short - I think roblox is not necessarily more dangerous for teens than discord / snap / IG / etc.

I've had several talks with kids about safety in using internet connected things - about how sending a pic can give up your location, and sharing articles from the news about sextortion and such. These got very detailed when questioned, and I don't think it should be a 'one time "the talk" either.

Explaining how some simple social engineering can take two seemingly innocent data points and locate someone for kidnapping or whatever - like casually throwing in 'what school do you go to' - and 'parents aren't home till Xpm' can lead to bad things - and one might not notice those inquiries / data sharing while in the middle of game.

technology evolves, the attack surfaces do too.

I've had the opposite happen with similar results - a kid extorting adults, that led to international request for police help - even with data proving ip and the ISP coordinating data - no resolve - and that kid keeps coming back and ruining stuff for others thanks to wealthy parents and unlimited VPNs, very hard to block.

In short I think roblox is no less safe than other portals aside from fbook. If 99% of [app/game] people are nice - and one percent are looking to leverage your honesty for ill gotten gains - the apps with the most people will yield extortion opportunities that are worth the time to exploit it seems. Especially from places where $20 goes a long way for some reason.

[jatsign]

Thanks. My eldest daughter is 11 and that's exactly the stuff I worry about.

[ineedasername]

You can turn off all ability to chat & lock it behind a pin # you choose so they can't turn it back on.

[ALittleLight]

What's a good way to detect this early? Just from the pattern you shared it sounds like a good idea to check who they're talking to on instagram to catch any new contacts and review them.

I'm personally trying to decide whether I want a digital panopticon for my children where I won't be surprised by anything like this, and being more laissez faire. I enjoyed unrestricted and unmonitored internet traffic growing up and quite enjoyed it. On the other hand, my wife did too but had a significant negative experience.

[toyg]

I’ve forbidden Instagram on my daughter’s phone. It condenses everything that is terrible about modern society: the incessant pursuit of (largely fake) outward success and related promotion of idiotic and unhealthy role models. I don’t know how long this will last (she’s 11) and there is only so much one can do (does she use filters to make tons of pics trying to look “cute”? Sadly, yes), but I’ll do what I can.

Obviously she’s also had all the spiel, both from parents and teachers) about not trusting anyone online who they’ve not met beforehand, about not sharing pics of private parts for any reason, and I’ve started pointing out that “the internet does not forget”, and that innocent-looking material passed to trusted parties might well be used against her later on.

In a way, it’s horrible: as a kid I was free to do anything I wanted, worst that could happen was prank-pwnage on the worst IRC channels; and I met a few interesting characters I may have not encountered otherwise. It’s the digital equivalence of letting 6-year-olds roam free outside, something that was natural 40 years ago and sadly could be very dangerous today. “This is why we cannot have nice things.”

[ALittleLight]

I agree that instagram is too much for young people. Probably too much for some older people too. I also agree that there are some horrible implications from this technology - even though I'm generally more techno-optimist, it's harder when trying to think through how my children will interact with the internet.

One tip I've read regarding the spiel your daughter has heard from both parents and teachers, is that it's also important to let your child know she can come to you if she does make a mistake in this regard. Apparently some predators will, if they can get naked pictures or something like it in the first place, use that as leverage to exploit the child further. It's good to let your child know not to share naked pictures, but I think it also needs to be clear that if they do they can still get help from their parents.

[blackrock]

This is terrible. But being 12 years old, she’s in the 6th grade. By next year, she’ll be in junior high school, and once you get her an iPhone, then there’s no more holding back the floodgates.

Porn is just a keyword search away.

How do you plan on sheltering her from that?