Category Archives: Sexting
Facebook App May Be ‘Sexting Friendly’
As reported in The Age newspaper by Jessica Guynn on 24 December 2012, a new IPhone messaging App allows users to ‘Poke’ their friends and is known as ‘Facebook Poke’ which sends texts, photos and videos to friends that self destruct within 10 seconds.
Allegedly the Facebook Poke App works similar to the increasingly popular Snapchat which according to the article also allows such messages to be transmitted and have its settings set for messages to ‘self destruct’ in a matter of seconds.
The ‘Poke’ App allows the user to set when a message should ‘expire’ whether it be one, three, five or ten seconds.
It is here that communication with your children is paramount and that they should be made aware of the ramifications of ‘sexting‘ both now and how it can affect their reputations in the future and how it is deemed illegal if they are images of persons under the age of 18.
The real concern is how you build that open communication channel up in that your child may appreciate it is illegal but feel that they cannot approach you if they receive an unsolicited image from someone. It is here you need to consider giving them a lesson on how to best retain such evidence so that you can decide on the proper action.
As the message will most likely ‘self destruct’ it is imperative that the image is captured immediately with a screen shot taken by the recipient and shown to you directly. (Instruct them not to on forward the message to friends or even yourself as this can be deemed as an offence if the image is of a person under the age of 18 years of age.
Once your child has captured the image it is strongly recommended that you contact your local law enforcement agency and discuss with them what action can be taken.
If your local law enforcement agency does not appear interested in the incident, feel free to contact us here at Cyber Guardians Online and we can discuss what avenues may be available for you to pursue to ensure that the person sending inappropriate images or messages is dealt with in your jurisdiction. (Sometimes your initial contact with a local law enforcement official is hampered by their lack of understanding of the issues relating to ‘sexting’ and cyber bullying.’)
Once again this really reinforces on how important open and frequent communication takes place with regards to social media activity and how they are very selective on who they ‘friend’ in social media.
Image via CrunchBase
Will Lawsuits Be A Weapon Against Sexting?
Sexting, the practice where a person shares with one or more other person(s) explicit sexual photographs or video of themselves with the general intention that the image(s) will be privately seen by the intended person(s) with little or no thoughts given to where the image(s) may finally end up.
The exchange of such images was once predominantly limited to texts being sent with explicit images attached, however, with the increase in popularity and functionality of social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and even Facebook messaging, sexting is becoming increasingly commonplace amongst not only our children but also adults alike.
We have all read where sports stars, celebrities (even impressionable Disney stars) have all been caught out with the images falling into unscrupulous persons hands and sold off to the highest bidder. Worst still school aged children are sexting at alarming rates and such activity opens up a whole new can of worms that is outside the scope of this blog post. Basically, such conduct can be seen as distributing child pornography whereby the parties can be charged and ultimately found guilty of distribution of child pornography where they may even be recorded as to being a sex offender and find themselves on the sex offenders registry.
An article in The Age on December 10 2012, by Jane Lee reported on a recent inquiry held in Australia where the Victorian Privacy Commissioner Dr Anthony Bendall has called for a ‘tort of privacy‘ which would create a statutory cause of action for privacy violations.
The article went on further to report that the Australian Federal Government has recently passed the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill in November 2012, which consolidated Australia’s privacy principles.
It will be interesting to follow the developments in this area and see of the law of tort can help eradicate this activity.
TEDxBKK – Sexting (Photo credit: isriya)
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/lawsuits-a-weapon-against-sexting-20121210-2b4yr.html
Social Media Monitoring Service For Parents, Schools, Sporting Teams & or Employers
in 2013, Cyber Guardians Online will be offering a Social Media Monitoring Service that will protect school children, sporting teams and employees/employers reputations.
Cyber Guardians Online (CGOL) will automatically monitor the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube pages of students, team members and employees for careless posts.
CGOL does not require access to, or use of, the persons username/password or friending of anyone to monitor their accounts. Instead, CGOL uses apps for each person, working within the Terms of Service established by each social network. By having a student, team member and or employee adopt a social media policy in place and from installing the apps, these persons grant CGOL access, consistent with their schools, teams or employers social media policy. The app acceptance process is an established protocol used by every social network app from popular games to media outlets.
Protects Reputations
CGOL provides parents, schools, sporting teams and employers with the ability to efficiently, effectively and continuously monitor the persons social network posts for careless social network posts that can lead to damaging and embarrassing media coverage and major blows to students, team members or employees reputations.
CGOL Social Media Monitoring Service
CGOL performs the social network monitoring task more efficiently and effectively than an army of in-house social media monitors by providing 24/7/365 coverage.
Trial By Social Media
It has been well documented lately that uploading compromising pictures can have lifelong consequences. Images depicting drunken behaviour, explicit sexual activity to attending sporting events or social activities whilst on ‘sick leave‘ can all have lifelong consequences.
Lord Leveson of the United Kingdom recently spoke at a privacy seminar in Sydney recently and given he led the inquiry into the British phone hacking scandal he is well qualified to remind us of ‘trial by social media‘ and its consequences.
The following article in the The Age Newspaper clearly identifies this digital age phenomena that is gripping our society and ruining the lives of school children, adolescents and adults alike.
Awareness, education and communication are paramount tools in the fight against the surge in ‘trial by social media’ and the more aware we all are of the ramifications of inappropriate social media activity the less damage will be incurred by all.
English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Truth About Teen Sexting
A recent set of statistics from Uknowkids.com that highlights that teen‘sexting’ is becoming prevalent among our children.
Bradley W. Deacon
