During the wait for improved online safety laws, tens of thousands of grooming crimes have been recorded. The Online Safety Bill, which is meant to become law this autumn, has encountered numerous delays and changes since it become a proposed legislation. As a result, the children’s charity NSPCC has called on MPs and tech giants to support the Bill, especially since 34,000 online grooming crimes had been recorded by UK police forces over the last six years, since first calling for more robust safety regulations in 2017. Based on data from 42 UK police forces, the NSPCC said that last year, 6,350 offences related to the sexual communication with a child were recorded. Some 5,500 took place against primary school-aged children, and 73% of the crimes were related to Meta-linked platforms or Snapchat. NSPCC chief executive Sir Peter Wanless said: “The number of offences must serve as a reminder of why the Online Safety Bill is so important and why the ground-breaking protections it will give children are desperately needed. “We’re pleased the government has listened and strengthened the legislation so companies must tackle how their sites contribute to child sexual abuse in a tough but proportionate way, including in private messaging.” Here are some of the red flags parents should be on the look out for. Being secretive about how they are spending their time On their website, Childline define grooming as someone building a child’s trust to make a connection in order to do something sexual or illegal. “Studies show parental supervision typically declines as children get older, however online abuse does not,” said Mark Bentley, safeguarding and cyber security lead at charity The National Grid for Learning (LGfL). From being secretive to omitting relevant information, changes in behaviour can vary from child to child. But it’s something for all parents to be mindful of when their child starts using social media more. “Unfortunately, as in many areas of child protection, indicators of abuse can often mirror natural markers of growing up,” said Bentley. “As children and adolescents develop, they seek independence from parents, engage in risk taking and have changes in mood and friendship group. “Nonetheless, these markers remain vital to watch out for, even if it is just to support your growing child. Those who are being groomed online are much more likely to be defensive and secretive about phone usage and loathed to be separated from their device.” Having unexplained gifts, big or small Buying gifts for children, whether big or small, can be another grooming technique used to flatter children and their families. “Some groomers have been known to provide alternative phones just to contact them, and this is always a red flag if you suspect your child may have a secondary device,” said Bentley. They are spending too much time onlineSocial media may promote negative experiences if no boundaries have been established.“Of course, some of these [red] flags can also be a sign of the child going through adolescence but it’s important to discuss any unusual behaviour with them as soon as possible,” said Simon Newman, member of International Cyber Expo’s advisory council and of the Cyber Resilience Centre for London.“The way groomers target children varies, but is often done through social media sites, text messages and apps, emails or online forums – particularly gaming sites.”They develop friendships with a much older person Children and young people can be groomed by a stranger or by someone they know – such as a family member, friend or professional, according to NSPCC. But the age gap between a child and their groomer can also be relatively small. The groomer may also work towards building a relationship with the family to gain trust, so they can be left alone with the child. “There are various models of the stages of grooming, but at heart it revolves around building up trust and making a child feel understood and listened to in a way they do not feel elsewhere, and then breaking down the links of trust to family, school, friends and other adults,” said Bentley. “Any parent thinking that this might be happening should definitely reach out for help.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Rumer Willis says she is ‘grateful’ to her body following birth of daughter Sugary cereals and yoghurts must remove child-friendly packaging – health group Clever kitchen storage solutions to clear the clutter

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MrBeast, besides being the most followed creator on YouTube, has now added a further accolade to his social media resume by becoming the most followed person on Threads in a staggeringly quick time as well as taking a swipe at Elon Musk in the process. Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson, quickly amassed more than one million followers (2.8 million at the time of writing) on the new social media app created by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, which was launched late on July 5th. Donaldson actually has more followers than Zuckerberg who still has an impressive 2 million followers to his name. However, Donaldson was the first person on the platform to reach one million therefore the record will always stand with him. Much of this record will be down to how easy it is for Instagram users to sign up for Threads which also allows users to easily follow everyone that they already followed on Instagram. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter MrBeast, for instance, has 38.6 million followers on Instagram so expect his Threads followers total to grow and grow in the next few days. His first Thread on the platform read: "Sooooo, how long until we're also addicted to this app? Lol." He did though appear to take a thinly veiled dig at Twitter owner Elon Musk. In one post the 25-year-old wrote: "To celebrate Threads launching, I'm gonna give this Tesla to a random follower in 48 hours. Rethread so people are aware." Donaldson then posted a picture of himself next to the Tesla in question which had a huge Threads logo on the bonnet. For those that aren't aware, Elon Musk also owns Tesla and might not be too happy about seeing a rivals logo on one of his cars. There doesn't appear to be any bad blood between Musk and Donaldson as the two have previously teased a collaboration on Twitter. However, the YouTuber has also teased working with Amazon owner Jeff Bezos so he's clearly keeping the billionaires of the world close to him. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Steve Harvey has responded to a viral burger that looks like him, and he's taking it all in good humour. The burger, which did the rounds on social media, had big slices of onion under a patty and people joked the slices looked like the American TV host's smile. The user who posted it, Sagittarius Groove, wrote: “Why they give me these big onion slices, my burger look like Steve Harvey." She then begged her followers not to harass Harvey with her post, writing, “Pls don’t tag Steve, I don’t want to offend anyone. I was eating dinner and thought 3 of my mutuals would see this.” But it quickly made its way to the Family Feud host, as is often the case on social media, but at least he seemed to see the funny side. "Stop sending me this $!&#," he said accompanied with a laughing crying face. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter After he tweeted the picture, the post went viral and people on Twitter praised him for his ability to take a joke and who can blame them? After all, there are worse things to look like than a burger, in our opinion at least. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Google will now alert people when their personal information appears online – and make it easier to get it removed. The new tools are aimed at giving people more control over the information and images of them that appear online, the company said. New rules on personal explicit images mean that users will be able to request that explicit images of themselves are taken down from search results. That extends to situations where someone has willingly uploaded explicit content themselves and then later wants it to be removed from search results. The same policy applies to personal information generally. That too will not only appear in Google’s tools but will also be easier to have removed. Google has long had policies that are intended to help people have non-consensual explicit imagery removed from search results. But the changes mean that people can have that content removed even when it was uploaded consensually at the time. In its update, Google stressed that it was only able to remove content from Google search, and that doing so would not affect its availability on other websites or search engines. But removing any unwanted images from search results should make them much more difficult to find. The new features are part of an expansion of Google’s “Results about you” tool, which it first made available last year. When it was launched, it was intended to make it easier for people to request the removal of search results that contain personal information, such as phone numbers or home addresses. Now it has been improved so that it is proactive in finding search results that include that information. Users will be able to access the dashboard and see any web results that include that contact information. Users will then be able to access an improved form to ask to have those taken down. The dashboard is available only in the US and in English for now. Google said it was “working to bring it to new languages and locations soon”. Read More Google Assistant will be ‘supercharged’ with AI like ChatGPT and Bard Google warns Gmail users they could be about to lose their account Apple gives update on its plans for AI – and says it is coming to every product

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