Online Safety

As a parent or carer, you can play a key role in helping your child to stay safe online.  

• The UK Safer Internet Centre provides online safety tips, advice and resources to help children and young people stay safe online.
• This website from CEOP runs an education programme which provides training, resources and information for children and young people aged 4 - 18, their families and professionals who work with them.  They provide advice if you have concerns about your child, how to report an incident and further information about keeping your child safe.

Sextortion or online blackmail

involves people being forced into paying money or meeting another financial demand, after an offender has threatened to release nude or semi-nude photos of them. This could be a real photo taken by the victim, or a fake image created of them by the offender.  The advice is...

• Don’t pay, do stop contact and block: you may be tempted to pay, but there is no guarantee that this will stop the threats. As the offender’s motive is to get money, once you have shown you can pay, they will likely ask for more and blackmail may continue. If you have paid, don’t panic but don’t pay anything more. Help your child to stop all communication with the offender and block them on any accounts that they have been contacted on.
• Avoid deleting anything: try not to delete anything that could be used as evidence such as messages, images, telephone numbers, and bank account details.
• Report to the police or CEOP: call 101 or 999 if there is an immediate risk of harm to your child. Or you can use the CEOP Safety Centre to report any online blackmail attempts.

You can support young people in getting their images removed using Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation’s Report Remove tool, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s Take It Down tool, and reporting to the platform or app it has been shared on. Further information for parents and carers on how they can support their child can be found in the CEOP Education’s online blackmail article.

• Talking to your child about online sexual harassment: A guide for parents from the Children's Commissioner The things I wish my parents had known
• Childnet is a UK-based charity who empower children, young people, and those who support them in their online lives.

• More information for young people is available here