Child protection group warns parents about luring, explicit chat on game site Roblox

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection is warning parents and young gamers to be cautious after multiple reports of luring attempts and explicit messages sent to children under the age of 12 on the game site Roblox.

Earlier this week, the child protection group issued a public alert through its Cybertip website about the multiplayer gaming site, which encourages children to play games and connect with friends using an avatar. The site claims to have more than 44 million users worldwide and includes a chat feature.

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The Centre said it has received reports about requests to meet in person and sexually suggestive chat messages being sent to children within Roblox using the site's chat feature.

Signy Arnason, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said reports have come in from across Canada.

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"As soon as we see some risks facing kids in certain spaces then we're reaching out just to notify parents on it and put them on alert that they need to be paying attention to this," Arnason said.

"We're also saying that basically any application where your kids have the ability to connect over some type of messaging or chat feature increases the ability for someone to be coming in and possibly attempting to sexually exploit them."

Safety a top priority: Roblox

Roblox spokesman Brian Reinert told The Canadian Press in an email the site has instituted chat-filtering software created specifically to find offensive language and flag it.

"The safety of our community is a top priority and we're constantly assessing and improving our trust and safety measures," Roblox wrote in the email.

"All accounts for users that are under the age of 13 are set to only communicate with friends," he added.

Reinert said the company has a moderator network to "review every image, audio, and video file" that is uploaded to the Roblox site or into any of its games.

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Arnason said the centre is reminding parents to explore online games themselves before their children start playing. If there's a chat component, parents should know, and find whether it can be turned off or if there are other featuresto improve safety.

"Also, you want to be looking to see how seriously the game takes these types of issues, so is there a very obvious and easy way to report inappropriate activity?" Arnason said.

"That often demonstrates at least a level of commitment to safety and safety measures tied to kids."

Safety reminders from Cybertip

The Cybertip alert reminded parents they should be teaching their children to:

• Check with you before using new apps/games or sharing any information online. For children under 12, online interactions should always be supervised by a parent or safe adult.
• Not respond or click on messages or links from someone they don't know.
• Tell you if they come across something or someone while playing an online game that makes them feel uncomfortable and that they can tell you without fear of getting in trouble.
• Ask your permission before ever accepting a request from another gamer to move over to a video chatting site or other chat platform.
• Share this important information with other parents and encourage others to sign-up for Cybertip.ca Alerts.