A client approached us with screen-shots of their daughter’s movements and conversations on a smartphone / tablet app called “Movie Star Planet”. The conversations between their 12-year-old daughter and what she believed was an 11-year-old girl from a different school in the area were developing into content of a highly questionable and suspect nature.

The first thing we did was educate ourselves on the app itself, what its purpose was for users and what restrictions were in place to prevent those it wasn’t designed for (i.e. adults) from accessing it for nefarious purposes with its target base (i.e. children).

Even just a cursory internet search on the background of the product itself showed that it had been exposed to problems around ‘grooming’ in the past. Assurances had been given by the app’s makers that restrictions and protections were now in place after an incident – first reported in The Daily Mail – involving an adult and a child in 2014.

We ran a ‘stress test’ on the app’s “protections” and were shocked to find that in under less that 15 minutes we were able to register as a user on the app and begin to engage with other underage users – with no verification of our actual age or intent at all.

If you have young children using this app (“Movie Star Planet”) on their phones and tablets please be aware of the rise in reports like the one our client brought to us of of it being a paedophile ‘nesting ground’ and of inappropriate contact being made to children.

After it was reported in 2014 that a child was unwittingly approached in a sexually inappropriate manner by an adult pretending to be a child, the app’s developers said safeguards were to be put in place to prevent this from happening in future.

Recent investigations following a spike in grooming via the app show little to no such safeguards have been implemented.

Raise awareness of this problem with your children by talking to them about it!