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Parents warned over prevalence of disturbing elsagate content targeting kids on YouTube
news.com.au
NOVEMBER 28, 2017 8:56am
CYBER safety expert and former undercover online detective Brett Lee has seen the worst there is to see on the internet.
But even he has been left confounded by a new and disturbing trend of online content which profits by targeting young kids with videos featuring popular childrens characters in sexual and violent scenarios.
As a detective, I used to pretend to be a child on the internet. Back in the early days of these sorts of investigations I would assume the identity of different children online. I did that for about five years and arrested a lot of child sex offenders, he told news.com.au.
So I have a very good understanding, in some ways, of how it feels to be a young person on the internet.
Back then he was primarily hanging out on sites like MySpace and MSN Messenger, but the internet is a different place these days, and so is the experience on offer to young kids.
Mr Lee now works to educate parents and teachers about the dangers posed to young children who are left unsupervised on the web. Lately he has been warning about a disturbing trend of content known as elsagate.
The name refers to the princess character from popular childrens movie Frozen who often appears in the bizarre content, either in cartoon form or a person dressed as the character.
We just came across this and thought it was really interesting, he said. Ive started talking to parents at schools about it over the past week, no parents Ive spoken to are aware of it.
While many parents would likely be shocked to see the so-called elsagate videos, awareness of the perverted content has grown this year and YouTube where most of it resides has vowed to try harder to police the clips which at first glance look harmless but contain very disturbing themes.
Im not a tech expert, Im a detective. But it appears this is slipping under the algorithms whereby its thinking that it is content suitable for children but there is some very disturbing content there, Mr Lee said.
Read more at:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...e/news-story/8d5c8b211781e7c5f8599b52f8078260
news.com.au
NOVEMBER 28, 2017 8:56am
CYBER safety expert and former undercover online detective Brett Lee has seen the worst there is to see on the internet.
But even he has been left confounded by a new and disturbing trend of online content which profits by targeting young kids with videos featuring popular childrens characters in sexual and violent scenarios.
As a detective, I used to pretend to be a child on the internet. Back in the early days of these sorts of investigations I would assume the identity of different children online. I did that for about five years and arrested a lot of child sex offenders, he told news.com.au.
So I have a very good understanding, in some ways, of how it feels to be a young person on the internet.
Back then he was primarily hanging out on sites like MySpace and MSN Messenger, but the internet is a different place these days, and so is the experience on offer to young kids.
Mr Lee now works to educate parents and teachers about the dangers posed to young children who are left unsupervised on the web. Lately he has been warning about a disturbing trend of content known as elsagate.
The name refers to the princess character from popular childrens movie Frozen who often appears in the bizarre content, either in cartoon form or a person dressed as the character.
We just came across this and thought it was really interesting, he said. Ive started talking to parents at schools about it over the past week, no parents Ive spoken to are aware of it.
While many parents would likely be shocked to see the so-called elsagate videos, awareness of the perverted content has grown this year and YouTube where most of it resides has vowed to try harder to police the clips which at first glance look harmless but contain very disturbing themes.
Im not a tech expert, Im a detective. But it appears this is slipping under the algorithms whereby its thinking that it is content suitable for children but there is some very disturbing content there, Mr Lee said.
Read more at:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...e/news-story/8d5c8b211781e7c5f8599b52f8078260
