The Bay County Sheriff’s Office issued an alert warning the public about a new online scam specifically targeting kids.
Basically, the scam works like this: the child receives a message from an unknown person on social media. The unknown person begins communicating with the child, and a “friend” relationship is formed. Eventually, images are sent back and forth. Most of the time, these images aren’t the kind you’d want family or friends to see.
Shortly after the scammer receives the images of the child, they begin to send messages to the child demanding money via an online payment application in exchange for not sending the pictures to the child’s friends or family on social media. Often the images are still sent to friends and family just for embarrassment purposes, even when money is sent.
There are a couple of things that can be done to prevent this from happening to your child.
Tell them not to communicate with people they don’t know online.
Tell them not to take or send pictures of themselves they wouldn’t want their family to see.
If you believe you’ve been the victim of this, or any other type of scam, please call the sheriff’s office or your local law enforcement agency. Also, please talk to your children about their safety on the internet, as well as the danger people they don’t know can pose, even online. Stranger danger is still a real threat, especially with strangers online.
Unfortunately, these scams are becoming more prevalent in our area, and more and more kids are being victimized by them and ultimately dealing with the embarrassing aftereffects of being a part of this type of online activity.
