TRANSCRIPT
Dating apps are now the most common way to meet a partner in Australia, but new light has been shed on how predators are using them to target parents.
Survey results have revealed one in eight parents have received requests to generate child sexual exploitation.
Rick Brown is the Deputy Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology.
“There will be that degree of wanting to get to know an individual and no doubt whether someone has children will be maybe early in that discussion. So that’s problematic in the sense that’s the very thing that perpetrators are looking for. That's probably why dating apps are particularly prone for this kind of facilitation just because you're bringing together individuals who are vulnerable with perpetrators looking to extract something from them."
Of the 10,000 people surveyed, 12.4 per cent received at least one of these requests: photos of their children or children they have access to.
It includes pressure to provide sexual images of those children, requests to meet children before it was appropriate, sexual information about the children or offers to pay for photos or videos.
And some parents are targeted more than others.
Research has found younger parents, First Nations parents, people whose first language isn't English, and those with a disability or long-term illness are all at higher risk.
While Dr Brown says men and women are targeted equally.
"The bottom line is, we’re not really sure what it is about these particular groups that make them more vulnerable. We know separate to this, the more individuals use dating apps the more likely they are to receive these requests and similarly if they link their social media profile to dating apps that has an impact too. Those are independent of these facts so there's something about these demographics that we don't really understand fully."
Some of the biggest dating apps have made efforts to improve safety with better reporting mechanisms.
The federal government has put dating apps notice with new codes of practice coming into effect in June.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has told SBS the Government has made clear to the dating industry if the code does not sufficiently improve safety for users of online dating services, it will consider legislative options.
Lyria Bennett Moses is a Professor of Technology, Law and Innovation at the University of New South Wales.
"I think there's always a challenge in whether government is better off coming in with hard and fast rules telling dating apps what to do- that can have advantages but it can also have significant disadvantages - government doesn't often understand all that well how these systems work. What kinds of tools these companies have and what can be done, what the counter risks might be of doing certain things because we don't want corporations messing with individual privacy where that's not necessary."
Law and policy experts say better protecting children is possible when individuals are better informed, apps act more proactively, and government reacts quickly to a changing cyber environment.
Ms Moses says parents should be cautious - and not be afraid to contact authorities depending on the situation.
"If a mother on the app is asked, oh, do you have a family photo? The appropriate thing to do would be to block the person making that request, particularly if it's in any kind of suspicious circumstances and move on. But if the request is more explicit, if for example, there is a request to access that child, to obtain a naked photo of that child, in that kind of context where there is a, not just a request for a photo, but a request ultimately for child sexual abuse material, then I would argue that should be reported to the police."
