39-year-old James L. Williams of Charleston, Illinois was recently arrested on child porn charges. Investigators say that between January 2017 and November 2019, Williams extorted several minors into sending him explicit pictures of themselves.
Williams would allegedly pose as an underage girl on Snapchat and Facebook to gain his victims’ confidence before asking for explicit images of them. He is then said to have threatened his victims with sharing the images publicly if they didn’t keep sending more images to him.
Williams reported has victims not only in Illinois but other states as well with at least one victim being as young as 10-years-old.
Posing as a child is a common tactic among online predators. So even if your kid has someone on their friends list that is allegedly their age, they could still potentially be a predator.
Also, you’d think I wouldn’t have to say this anymore yet here we are. 10-year-olds have no business being on Snapchat. While Snapchat’s terms of service state that a user has to be at least 13-years-old to use their platform, I still wouldn’t allow a minor to use the app unmonitored. You can also check their privacy settings on Snapchat to make sure your kids’ profiles aren’t set to public. If it is, their profiles can be seen by anyone.
Snapchat is essentially the more modern equivalent to MySpace back in the day as Snapchat has the same predator problem that MySpace had during its heyday.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 