Ok, this is quite a long story. I hope it makes sense. **Real names have not been used**
On the weekend, my daughter came to me and said "Mum, theres something odd going on with some of my friends that i want to talk to you about cause im a bit worried"
She tells me that 3 of her friends (lets call them Tom, Jim and Sue) have made friends on facebook with a boy (lets call him John) they dont know who lives in Newcastle. Tom, Jim and Sue live in Adelaide.
Tom became friends with John first by receiving an out of the blue friend request from him.
John claims to be a 16 year old boy. His facebook page has lots of photos of him with heaps of friends. He's quite a good looking kid.
Tom think John is so cool and, via facebook, introduces him to Jim and Sue.
John strikes up quite a friendship with Sue and last week asked her to be his girlfriend. Sue is completely infatuated with John.
John has now said that his dad is going to bring him to Adelaide in a couple of weeks to meet Tom, Jim and Sue.
He has even said that a great place for them to all meet up would be the local swimming pool.
None of this sits right with me. Why a kid in Newcastle (a popular, good looking one according to his facebook page) would need to make friends with strangers in Adelaide. Would want one of them to be his girlfriend and then get his dad to bring him all the way over here to meet them.
Im not sure if you are all aware of the of the Carly Ryan story, but it is making me quite nervous about whats going on.
Carly Ryan- http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/lifestyle/article/-/7013312/internet-predators/
I know Jim's mother quite well and am going to talk to her about it all tomorrow. I know she has no idea who Jim talks to on facebook.
Im wondering, should i go to the police? They could at least investigate if John is real. I thought about going to the school, but all they would do is give a talk about internet predators and the kids would ignore it.
Over the weekend, my daughter tried to talk to Tom and Jim about the risks but they just didnt get it. They think John is so cool.
The whole "better to be safe than sorry" phrase keeps popping in my head.
Oh, and by the way, John's last name on facebook in Smith
John is a name i have used on here, but the boys last name , according to his fb account is Smith.
He claims to be from Newcastle.
No matter what, i will be talking to the school about maybe organising a seminar to educate not only the kids but also parents about online safety and predators.
Lakeland- i think i will leave it up to the police to do that kind of investigating.
If you read the Carly Ryan story, you will see that not only Carly, but also her Mum were conned by the predator.
http://www.carlyryanfoundation.com/carlys_story
I agree about calling the police, but ... maybe you could do a bit more investigation first?
Have you seen Smith's FaceBook page? Yes
Have you checked out the photos to see if they prove he lives in Newcastle? They dont prove anything
Have you checked the photos by seeing if you can look at Properties? ??
Are they all of the same person? Yes
Is he wearing different clothes and in different places or were all the photos taken on the same day? He is wearing different clothes
Has he given his phone number or email addie to people? Not that im aware
Thing is, what the predators do is find a kids facebook account that is not set to private (not hard to do) .They then access the kids page and take the photos and then set up their own facebook account using the stolen photos and a fake name. The photos are real. They are of a young boy. But that doesnt mean that the facebook account is of that young boy.
