The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) He launched nine recommendations to parents, to prevent their children from being victims of the call groominga practice through which an adult gains the trust of minors, in order to obtain images or videos with sexual connotation or activity.
The autonomous body indicated, as a first measure, that parents be attentive to warning signs such as your daughter or son spending more time than usual on their phone and not allowing others to use it.
He also recommended monitoring whether your children have new friends that you don’t know or don’t trustas well as monitoring the children’s behavior to detect something out of the ordinary, such as keep your activities secret.
The institution chaired by Commissioner Adrián Alcalá Méndez also suggested, “See if you receive gifts from people you only interact with through your social networksand “carry out respectful monitoring of the habits of girls, boys and adolescents on the Internet.”
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“Get informed and learn more about social networks, games and Internet pages you frequent; as well as who they communicate with, in addition to alerting girls, boys and adolescents about the risks of sharing their personal data such as name, address and image, with people who interact in the digital environment”, are two other recommendations from the INAI.
The organization also asked parents configure parental controls on televisions, cables and platforms to limit the content and prevent girls, boys and adolescents from accessing sites where they may run risks and “create a circle of trust between the fathers, mothers, guardians and teaching staff of the girls, boys and adolescents.”
The institution stressed that the images or videos obtained through grooming They usually fall into the hands of pedophiles either distributed in networks of sexual abuse and child prostitutioncompromising the physical and emotional safety of girls, boys and adolescents, generating disorders such as depression and anxiety and even future revictimization.
“During the holiday season, girls, boys and adolescents tend to spend more time on the Internet, which increases the risk that they become an easy target for criminals of all kinds,” he explained.
The people who carry out grooming practices, added the INAI, “deceive minors through frequent conversations that they create the idea of a close relationship in which there is nothing to fearto obtain personal information such as photos or videos, in which, in general, there is a high exposure of your body.”
“Thus, the aggressors manage to obtain the information they want and can agree to a face-to-face meeting with them by threatening to show the material to their family or social group,” he mentioned.
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The INAI emphasized that the victims of grooming They tend to hide the situation out of feelings of shame or guilt, they may also think that the relationship they have with the aggressor is real, and not be aware that they are being or have been victims of abuse.