According to The press release of the Australian police dated January 28, parents and guardians should strive to more actively monitor the online active of their children, especially what they do in online games. The police report that adults with deviations in mental and sexual behavior often use the functions of online chat to communicate with minors. That is why parents should carefully look after their children on the Internet.
Hilda Sirek, the acting assistant to the police commissar, said that many parents actually do not understand how criminals can use intra -game chats to establish a conversation with their offspring.
“Often criminals themselves can pretend to be children in order to quickly gain the confidence of the victim. In some cases, the offender invites children to start communication on another platform, which allows you to exchange images and videos. There the offender usually takes up a sexual correspondence,” Sirek said .
If the initial contact was successful, the maniac can then use coercion or even motivation with the game currency to force children to provide him with frank materials or arrange a personal meeting.
Australian police also emphasized that it does not matter in what kind of games the children spend time. Since any game or application with Internet access and online chat function can be used.
Parents are recommended to always check whether there are in the game that their children play, the functions of voice or text chat. And if they believe that the chat is not needed, it is recommended to turn it off for good.
In some applications or games, there are also confidentiality settings that can be changed to limit other players access to the child. Police representatives urge to activate such settings where it is possible. Of course, the child can easily turn them off, so parents should regularly check the confidentiality of their children.
Online games are very popular in recent years, and children are massively involved in them. Already in 2018, Esafety, an independent online security regulator, said in its report that according to statistics, 6 out of 10 teenagers aged 8 to 17 years play multiplayer online games. And this is a report on Australia. In our country, according to the Kaspersky laboratory study of 2019, 83% of children have already spending free time in computer games. Perhaps now, in 2023, the numbers are even more.
According to Esafety, 17% of multiplayer players faced bullying online games. In a friend of the report