Child Protection Centre Shares Warning for Parents on Dating Apps
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has shared a warning to parents on dating apps, urging them to be cautious around uploading photos of their children. ‘Over-advertising’ parenthood can make these dating app users easy targets for predators.
In a recent interview with Global News, Signy Arnason, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, emphasised that single parents must exercise caution when sharing online that they have children.
Arnason explained that in dark web forums and child sex abuse forums, bad actors will discuss how to identify vulnerable single mothers on dating apps, thus gaining access to her children
Arnsason recognises that single parents will inevitably have to disclose that information at some stage. However when photos and information is shared in the early stages of dating, this is something that predators will look for, she highlighted.
Red flags to be aware of are when a new match will quickly ask a single parent for photos of their children, or focus their attention on the children immediately, she added.
“If you’ve got someone really interested in your children right out of the gate, that is just something to pay attention to,” Arnason told Global News.
These warnings from the Canadian organisation were raised after a study from the Australian Institute of Criminology which found that 1 in 10 respondents had met someone on a dating app or website who asked them to share images of their children or children they knew.
