28-year-old George Karagiannis of Honesdale, Pennsylvania has been charged in the rape of two girls ages 12 and 13. Karagiannis allegedly posed as an 18-year-old named ‘John M’ on the webcam chat site Omegle.
Once again for those in the back row. Omegle is a website whose tagline is “Talk to strangers!” as you can see by the above graphic. Omegle lets people engage in video chats with random people. There are no age checks on Omegle that are actually effective.
Omegle is not an app. There is nothing that needs to be installed on any internet-enabled device to use Omegle. There are no app icons to look for on your kid’s device. Omegle is used strictly in the device’s web browser.
After meeting his victims on Omegle, Karagiannis arranged a meeting with them at a local park. He is said to have raped both victims in his truck. If it’s not a park, it’s a fast-food joint where these creeps meet their victims at.
Omegle is often used by online predators to groom children. Omegle says that its chats are monitored, but that hasn’t stopped predators from using their website.
No child under the age of 18 should ever be on Omegle for any reason. If you want to know if your kids are using Omegle you need to check their web browser history on all their devices. Or you can think about how may devices with cameras your kids have that could just be windows for predators.
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