Police Warn About Perverts Making Fake Harry Styles And Justin Bieber Accounts To Con Kids Into Sending Nude Photos

Police have warned parents about online perverts using fake celebrity social media profiles to trick kids into sending them nude photos.

Police have said that there are social media accounts pretending to be pop stars, Justin Bieber and Harry Styles, and ask children to take pornographic images of themselves.

Inspector Jon Rouse, who runs a specialist branch responsible for tackling online child exploitation in Queensland, Australia told BBC how dangerous these fake accounts are to young people.

“The fact that so many children across the world could believe that they were talking to Justin Bieber, and that Justin Bieber would make them do the things that they did, is really quite concerning.

“I think a re-evaluation of the way we educate children about safe online behaviour is really needed,” he said.

The Twitter account, @PrvtHarryStyles, claiming to belong to the One Direction star had more than 10,000 followers, but the account has now been suspended.

Several people had already posted about inappropriate behaviour from the account, but these accusations were never verified.

Harry Style’s sister, Gemma Styles, wrote on Twitter, sparking a probe into fake accounts that preyed on vulnerable girls.

“For people asking @PrvtHarryStyles is NOT a real account. Do not send pictures of anything else. Stay sharp, stay suspicious, stay safe,” she wrote.

Aside from social media accounts, Inspector Rouse also warned about the dangers of another popular social platform which launched in 2014 called Muscial.ly.

“Lots of child sex offenders are utilising Musical.ly to groom children. That’s a very well-known international fact, believe it or not,” he said.

Musical.ly is an app that allows users to make 15-second video clips along with their favourite songs and share them online. Most children use the app to film themselves lip-syncing to chart hits.

Melbourne mum Alicia Bellette was left horrified when a stranger calling himself ‘the real Justin Bieber’ asked her eight-year-old daughter, Charlie to send him nude photos on Musical.ly.

Alicia said that the first message was an invitation to enter a competition to win a conversation with a celebrity. Then the second message that came up stated: “All you need to do is send me a photo of you naked or of your vagina,” and the next message said, “Don’t worry about it. All the girls are sending me these photos. Just do it. It’ll be our secret.”

Musical.ly told MailOnline: “We take the safety of our users very seriously and we have zero tolerance for inappropriate, illegal, or predatory behaviour on our apps. We urge our users to report any inappropriate activity to us.”

Recently, Inspector Rouse led an investigation on a man with more than 900 child sex offences, identified as Gordon Douglas Chalmers, 42, who had been charged with three counts of rape, who posed as Justin Bieber.

He allegedly used Facebook and Skype to impersonate the pop star and convince fans to send him explicit images.

Sharon Girling, a safeguarding consultant at the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre told the BBC that parents need to guide their children, who may get fooled easily into believing the fake celebrity accounts were real.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk