Dad’s warning to parents after his daughter, 8, is ‘groomed’ by pervert through new song video app musical.ly
Police are now investigating after the dad alerted them to the chilling messages
A DAD has issued a warning about a popular music video app after a a pervert allegedly attempted to groom his eight-year-old daughter.
The dad, who the Sun Online is not naming, made the chilling discovery that people are using kids' lip syncing app musical.ly to prey on youngsters.
He said a pervert directly messaged his young daughter using the app in a sinister bid to "groom" her.
Police are now investigating after the dad made a complaint.
The messages were apparently posted by an eight-year-old boy and chillingly said: "You're way too pretty to be single, I like your body too. It's perfect, I wish I was your brother".
Other disturbing messages included one saying "you've got me feeling naughty lol", and another mentioned the girl "under covers".
His ex spotted the sinister messages on her daughter’s account over Christmas.
The dad - based in the UK - said: "I'm writing this post as a stark warning to all parents with children that have access to the internet.
"To anyone that doesn't know I have an eight year old daughter who is very tech savvy, a couple of weeks ago she installed an app called musical.ly which lets her lip sync to songs and save the resulting videos, it also posts these videos online.
"What I wasn't aware of until this morning is that this app allows its users to directly message each other in the same way that Facebook messenger does.
"And here come the disturbing part, it seems like someone has been messaging my daughter trying to groom her."
"My ex found some rather worrying messages from a supposedly 8-year-old, things like:‘You're way too pretty to be single, I like your body too. It's perfect. I wish I was your brother’."
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musical.ly lets kids create music videos and share them with friends online and is one of the most downloaded games on the app store.
But several parents have warned that creeps are targeting their kids through the app and asking for naked photos.
An investigation into the website in November found that some creeps had called children "cutie" in messages.
One parent said their 12-year-old son had received ten messages from strangers asking him to "follow" their account.
There have even been reports of strangers asking young users to send pictures of themselves naked.
The app has been downloaded more than 60 million times across the world and allows users to make their accounts private – meaning only people you approve of can see your videos.
However, many children choose to share their videos publicly in order to gain more followers and there is nothing to stop strangers making regular requests to follow private accounts.
musical.ly is advertised as being appropriate for those aged 13 and older but there is no restriction on who can download the app.
Police in the UK are known to have investigated claims about inappropriate messages being sent to children on the app.
One incident involved a message sent to an eight-year-old that cops traced to a server in the US which prevented the identification of the user.
musical.ly have been contacted for comment.
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