Facebook Messenger uses AI to spot suspected paedos – and will warn your child if they send a text
FACEBOOK is using computer systems to spot suspected paedos – and warn underage users who may be being preyed upon.
The new system is being rolled out as part of an update to Facebook's hugely popular Messenger chat app.
More than 2.6billion people log on to Facebook once a month, and many of the app's users are children.
Child abusers have used this popularity to target youngsters – attempting to groom minors via private chats.
Now Facebook is using an AI machine learning system to spot potential abusers in advance.
The system will scan for suspicious behavioural signals.
This includes an adult sending a large number of friend or message requests to people aged under 18.
When this happens, users under the age of 18 will be alerted, with a warning urging caution.
Safety notices will pop up in a chat and provide tips to help users spot suspicious activity.
And users will be warned to avoid interacting with adults, and to block or ignore dodgy users.
If these machine learning systems detect very sinister behaviour, Facebook moderators can go on to delete the account.
Who is on Facebook's Safety Advisory Board?
Here's the official list...
- Centre for Social Research (CSR)
- Childnet International
- Connect Safely
- The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI)
- Insight SA
- iWIN
- National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV)
- Net Family News
- Netsafe
- PROJECT ROCKIT
- SaferNet Brazil
"These features show a great integration of the technical tools that will help curb bad behaviour on the platform," said Stephen Balkam, chief of the Family Online Safety Institute.
"While also reminding people of their own control over their account.
"It's important to use language that empowers people to make wise decisions, and think more critically about who they're interacting with online.
"We're especially glad to see this reflected in the thoughtful approach around safety considerations for younger users."
The new Messenger update also adds new info into the app on how to avoid scammers and imposters.
None of the new features interfere with Messenger's encryption technology.
That means that every message you send is jumbled up in transit, and can only be read by the sender and recipient.
In fact, even Facebook is unable to read your Messenger messages – because end-to-end encryption shuts out everyone outside of the conversation.
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