A predator pretending to be Justin Bieber on music app Music.ly has been uncovered by a Melbourne mother after they asked her eight year-old to send nudes.
As Fairfax reports, Alicia allowed her daughter Charlie to download music app Music.ly, a social media platform which allows users to make music videos and share them with friends, but it quickly went sour.
Just days after downloading the app, Charlie was contacted by ‘the real Justin Bieber’ who was asking her for nude photos in exchange for a five minute conversation with the popstar.
“All you need to do is send me a photo of you naked, or of your vagina,” the message said.
“Lots of girls send me these pics all the time I will never tell anyone.”
Alicia saw the messages pop up on the iPad and immediately took it to the police, however, there was little they could do to track down the offender.
“When you went into the profile, there was no way you could track them down. They said he could be in Russia, or Thailand, or America, anywhere,” she said.
She further blocked the user, reported it to the app and sent the creators an email.
It’s not the first time Bieber’s name has been used to lure children online. This month, an Australian man was charged with over 900 child sex offences after pretending to be the popstar on social media.
His main motive was to order to solicit explicit images from children, much like the account Alicia described.
Music.ly has also been known to expose users to explicit material. Late last year, it was reported that thousands of Australian kids and teenagers were accessing pornographic videos and, in some cases, child porn on Music.ly.
The New Daily downloaded the app and said that within 30 minutes they were confronted by, “dozens of videos depicting explicit sexual activity and several instances clearly depicting underage full-frontal and partial nudity”.
