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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Adults who work with Young People News

21 March 2019

Instagram is teeming with these conspiracy theories, viral misinformation, and extremist memes, all daisy-chained together via a network of accounts with incredible algorithmic reach and millions of collective followers—many of whom, are very young. These accounts intersperse TikTok videos and nostalgia memes with anti-vaccination rhetoric, conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Clinton family, and jokes about killing women, Jews, Muslims, and liberals.

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26 February 2019

It's disappointing to see people and organisations who should know better, sharing alarmist misinformation about Momo - again. I thought we'd dealt with this last time it appeared in our timelines on socialmedia.

 

However, if you believe a child is vulnerable, could easily be pursuaded by strangers to take their own life, and does not receive ongoing guidance and support from a parent or carer, then seek professional help for that child immediately.

 

The following article provides a clear overview of the Momo issue.

 

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...And a flyer for parents by National Online Safety is  here

 

26 January 2019

A study from researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide found that access to as few as eight of our contacts is enough to enable predictive or machine learning technologies to achieve up to 95% accuracy in guessing what a person will post.

From an abstract of the study, titled “Information flow reveals prediction limits in online social activity” and published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour on Monday:

Information is so strongly embedded in a social network that, in principle, one can profile an individual from their available social ties even when the individual forgoes the platform completely.

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22 December 2018

Children as young as 14 are making thousands of pounds a week as part of a global hacking network built around the popular video game Fortnite.

About 20 hackers told the BBC they were stealing the private gaming accounts of players and reselling them online.

"The email said that my password had been changed and two-factor authentication had been added by someone else. It felt horrible," he recalled.

Two-factor authentication meant his account could only be accessed by entering a code sent to an email address or app registered by the perpetrator.

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You can learn how to use two factor authentication for Fortnite here