So here’s a story for you. I was uncertain whether to share but I’m recounting it as a way to impress the absolute uncertainty and potential dangers of the online world.
Yesterday, my 16 year old’s laptop was hacked.
Someone (unknown, location as Turkey in a password reset notification) in an online and anonymous chat system (Discord - often used to message while gaming) asked my son to check their game server was working properly.
So he did. He clicked into it, and then he realised something was wrong.
They had gained access to his laptop.
In order to ‘prove’ to him that they had this access, they not only emailed him from his own email address (because they now have all the passwords) but they uploaded to the chat a photo which he had saved on his laptop. A photo of him and my younger child.
The fact that someone, somewhere has access to that makes me feel physically sick. My teen was shaking with upset when he came and told me, and he hasn’t even got the thoughts of ‘what might some absolute sicko do with the images of my children’s faces’ like I do.
He is ‘just’ scared that they’ve said they will ‘sell all his data’ in three days if he doesn’t pay them.
He is ‘just’ hugely stressed and upset and facing his first GCSE exam today with this cloud over him.
We blocked the laptop and his Xbox from the wifi.
We removed my PayPal from his Microsoft account and unlinked his bank from his.
They are asking for money so I phoned the police.
My son is usually very sensible. He is bright, and he is responsible. But too quick to want to help someone. And that has got him into this situation.
Thankfully, having asked him three separate times, I’m certain that there’s nothing on his laptop or stored online that he would be really afraid of being ‘out there’ or sent to all his contacts (photos of his young sibling aside).
This is being done by someone on pure chance that he would click the link.
What can be done with data which is already out there? What can be done with images which are readily shared?
He and I have spoken many, many times about internet safety. So many times.
School talk about it regularly.
He is starting computer science at A Level in September along with maths and physics.
He is not stupid. He was foolish and unlucky.
But here’s the thing. Why would anyone, ever, share their children like these influencers do?
The only thing worse than selling your child is giving them away for free.
she’s onto her second family home and has 2 kids with a heterosexual (well debatable) partner by her mid 30s, why does she always think she’s taken such an alternative path in life?!
Katie Price Era
