What do online criminals want from our children?

You may wonder why anyone would go to extreme lengths to target your child online. Why would international cybercrime syndicates create elaborate email, gaming, and chat scams just to get information from your child?

Crimes against children fall under these primary categories:

• Sexual abuse and exploitation.
• They are soliciting and distributing child pornography.
• Human trafficking.
• Cyberbullying.
• Access to personal information.

Children are the most vulnerable members of society because they are more trusting than adults and are very eager to help when asked. Michael Bruemmer, the Vice President of Consumer Protection at Experian, has this to say about why predators approach their young victims online. “Preying on young children playing video games has become the perfect storm around three trends: the lack of awareness of the children, the exploding world of downloads and apps kids have access to without proper adult supervision and the unblemished identities of children. Threat actors steal the identities of young children to pose as adults and set up fraudulent credit cards and bank accounts.” Not all criminals are only after your children. Some scammers will befriend your children to get information that they can use to defraud you. Children are trusting (as are many adults) and don’t always think before they share personal information with strangers online. These strangers could use this information to access your bank accounts, email addresses or almost anything else. This behaviour is known as identity theft, and it happens to millions of people every day.