How to Keep Children Safe Online and Protect Them from The Darknet?

Children are spending more and more time online where they can be exposed to various threats, including the Darknet. The Darknet is a hidden part of the Internet where criminals offer illegal goods and services and distribute potentially harmful content to children. It is therefore important to keep children safe in the online environment and protect them from potential risks.

What Technologies Criminals Use to Recruit Children?

Anonymous Networks and VPNs. The use of anonymous networks, such as Tor, and VPN services allows attackers to hide their identity and location, making it difficult to trace and identify them. These technologies make communications almost invisible for ordinary users and police.

Phishing and Social Engineering. Through phishing attacks and social engineering techniques, attackers gain access to teens' personal information and use it to manipulate them. They may send fake messages on behalf of their friends or well-known services to gain access to sensitive information.

Use of Bots and Fake Accounts. Creating fake accounts and bots allows recruiters to act en masse without revealing their own personal information. Bots can automate communication and information dissemination processes, making recruitment more effective.

What Psychological Methods Attackers Use to Recruit in Online Games?

Creating The Illusion of Friendship and Trust: In games, recruiters may act as "friends" or "mentors," helping teens while playing and gradually gaining their trust. These relationships may seem sincere and friendly, what makes them particularly dangerous.

Use Game Plots and Quests. Malicious users may use game plots and quests to lure teens into illegal activities. For example, they may offer to complete a task related to real-life crimes under the guise of a game mission.

Psychological Pressure through Game Dynamics. In some games, youth may feel psychological pressure from other individual players or entire communities pushing them to participate in unlawful actions. Recruiters may use techniques such as public humiliation or exclusion from the team to make the youth do certain actions.

Financial Incentives for Youth. Another serious method used by foreign recruiters to influence children is financial incentives – when some amount of real money or special game currency is paid to the kid, either as a "gift" or as a "salary". Currently, the so-called “official job” hiring method is actively developed in game chats. For example, recruiters may contact a potential teenage victim under the pretext of searching for employees to moderate servers or administer communities.

In this case, recruiters often drag the victim in using a step-by-step approach, which envisages some kind of primary selection and key points of involvement in future extremist and other illegal activities.

For example, at the first stage, teenagers may be offered a "part-time job" as administrators of a gaming community. In this community, they are asked to post various photos and videos expressing hostility towards certain things: the country, law enforcement agencies or state power structures. If teenagers do not find such actions repulsive, recruiters begin to involve them in real crimes of varying degrees of severity.

It is important to remember that each age has its own threats. For example, children between the ages of 6 and 12 often fall prey to fraudsters who ask to borrow their parents' phone or bank card and under various pretexts lure out money or access to a personal account in a banking application. So, children become the key to adults' wallets. Various tactics are used, starting with a simple "Your dad asked me to help him, he wants us to give some money to the guy who is coming over. You know where the money is, don’t you?", or "Take your mom's credit card and take a picture of it", "Take your dad's phone and tell me the code from the SMS", to multi-step schemes that involve many consecutive actions on the way to the desired goal.

Children aged 12-17 are often involved in virtual criminal communities through thematic Telegram channels that promise easy money - a significant percentage of so-called "workers" involved in fraud on marketplaces are minors. In this case, attackers emphasize not only the possibility of earning money, but also that it is “cool” - because you can feel like a real hacker or a member of a criminal syndicate. Unfortunately, teenagers do not realize that this can turn into a real criminal case.

Continuing the theme of easy money, it is worth mentioning the recruitment of pawnbrokers. This type of advertisement is common in Telegram and Darknet. Pawnbrokers are offered good money, but nobody mentions to them that as soon as they have "accepted the offer" their free life will rarely last longer than 1 or 2 months. A minor may have a bank card, which means that he may be offered to become a money mule. This is a slang name for a person who has agreed to become an accomplice to money laundering for a small fee. The Darknet is full of such ads. And often minors do not realize that they are participating in something illegal: it’s not a big deal if someone has transferred 10 000 RUB to your card, and you have transferred 9 000 RUB to the account they sent, and kept a thousand for yourself.

Another threat is sextortion - sexual extortion. Attackers may pose as employees of modeling agencies, or they may simply flirt online, pretending to be teenagers as well. After receiving intimate photos or videos, they begin to extort either money or new photos and videos from the victim. In this case, the danger lies in the fact that it is extremely difficult for teenagers to bear such a situation: fearing that intimate photos will be made public, they are ready to do literally anything as long as their relatives or classmates do not know "about the shame".

The two main characteristics of children that make them easy prey for scammers are lack of real-life experience and gullibility on the one hand, and excessive self-confidence on the other. Taking advantage of these two qualities, a criminal can force a child to do whatever he wants. Situations where children and adults use the same computer or mobile devices can lead to particularly serious consequences. If such a device is compromised as a result of a child's actions, the parent's confidential data stored on the device, including payment information, email accounts, social networking and messenger accounts, will be at risk.

So How to Protect Children from The Darknet?

The first step is awareness. Parents and teachers should talk to children about the dangers of the Internet, how to behave online, and how to protect their personal information. It is also important to set rules for Internet use and to monitor children's online activities.

In addition, special programs and filters can help keep children safe online. Parents can install Internet access control programs to monitor children's online activity and block unwanted content, while special filters can help protect children from accessing sites with adult or illegal content.

It is also important to teach children the basics of cybersecurity: do not give out personal information, do not open suspicious links, do not download files from unreliable sources. Another way to protect yourself is to use digital communication devices (computers, smartphones, tablets, etc.) separately from your child.

However, the most effective measure parents can take to protect their children from the Darknet, and other dangers is to be actively involved in their lives. Regular conversations about what children are doing online, what sites they are visiting, and who they are communicating with will help parents anticipate problems that may arise and take timely action.

These measures will be effective only if they are applied together, and not separately. Keeping children safe online is a complex task that requires a comprehensive approach and the joint efforts of parents, teachers, government and society.