Misattributed letter warns of the dangers of children’s app Roblox

A letter – apparently sent from Kent police to parents of children at a school – warns of the dangers of using an app called Roblox.

The letter claims that many children reported to have many contact in the app who were actually strangers, and their parents were not aware of the content being sent to them via the app. The letter reads as follows –

We are putting out this post following our visit to a school yesterday. As most people know we are concerned about the popular app ROBLOX which is by far the most popular game played by children from 5 to 10 years of age.
We were talking to a very large group of year 1 students and we were shocked when over half of them said they were playing ROBLOX. When we spoke to Year 2 at least 70 percent of them were playing the game.
Most of these children then disclosed that they had online friends in ROBLOX that their parents didn’t know about. It got worse when many of the children stated they had received many in game messages from ‘strangers’ and that they hadn’t told their parents. All of the children then stated that they had seen ‘naked’ characters walking around the game and that the characters were doing very adult things.
The inappropriate content has been disclosed to us thousands of times by young children but we were previously unaware that the children were being sent numerous messages. When talking to Year 3 students they suggested that a lot of the messages are inappropriate. In all cases the children aren’t telling their parents.
Most of the young children we spoke to yesterday appear to have been talking to strangers in the game by using a headset to speak. The headset is usually just a normal set of ear pods that you would get bundled with an Apple device as opposed to a specific gaming accessory.
We would advise every parent to check their child’s ROBLOX account and look to see if they have friends that they do not know. Many of the children we spoke to yesterday said their accounts were ‘maxed out’ meaning they have 200 online friends.
We would also ask parents to check the child’s in game message inbox to check if they have been receiving inappropriate messages. We have included the most up to date app icon to make it easier for people to spot.
As people will know we have previously posted about this app and spoke of very concerning incidents.
PLEASE CAN EVERYONE SHARE THIS POST SO THAT PARENTS KNOW TO CHECK THEIR CHILDS ACCOUNT

Firstly it is important to clear up some confusion; the above letter – that is also circulating via photos of the letter – wasn’t penned by Kent Police. In fact it was copied and pasted from an October 2017 dated Facebook post by an Essex based company named EST E-Safety that specialises in providing information and training to help keep children safe on the Internet. We contacted Kent Police who told us –

Bredhurst Church of England School has not received advice from Kent Police regarding the ROBLOX on-line app.

(Several easily-led tabloid papers in the UK, including The Sun have falsely reported the letter was written by Kent Police. One reason of many why we don’t recommend reading UK tabloid publications.)
 
According to the EST E-Safety post, the company had discovered that many pupils had reported encountering inappropriate content after using the Roblox app including “naked characters”. The company appended a disclaimer on their Facebook post that reads –

*Please note, we do not claim technical expertise on this app and the purpose of this post is to raise awareness of what children have told us and enable parents to check that their children haven’t been messaged or friended by paedophiles.

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As for the app itself, Roblox has been around for a number of years now and bills itself as an immersive 3D world where children can meet up and play together, as well as create their own content and experiences on the site. As with any website or app that relies on such user-generated content, Roblox is susceptible to misuse. This means that the platform – like any similar platform – could potentially be used by those with a malicious intent, or could expose children to content that is not suitable for their age.

As such, the advice given in the misattributed letter is certainly worth heeding. While it doesn’t appear at this stage if police have investigated the specific claims made in the letter, we do know that a whole host of unsavoury characters often prowl social media apps, and as such parents need to learn how to keep their children safe if they choose to let them use such apps (or provide them with devices capable of downloading such apps.)

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For their part, Roblox do claim to make an effort to keep their app safe from dangers –

The safety of the community is a priority for us. We want all users to be safe on Roblox, and I assure you that we will continue to invest in the safety of the platform so it remains a positive, productive, fun, and protected space.
Our work is never done when it comes to community safety. We use a combination of chat filters, both human and software moderation, for removing inappropriate content, and optional friend filtering.

Roblox also employs robust parental restrictions and account restrictions for users under the age of 13. These include the utilisation of a parental PIN code, limiting the chat feature to accepted friends only as well as the ability to switch off the chat feature entirely. Of course, parental controls only work if parents hold up their end of the deal too, which is why parents of children using such apps are strongly advised to set up such controls, as well as follow safety advice that includes –

– Educating themselves about any social apps their children use, how they work and what features they include.
– Regularly review any online messages sent to and from their children if the app includes such a feature, as suggested in the letter above.
– Promote open communication between the parent and child, and let the child know that they must inform their parents immediately if they come across content that is inappropriate or if they are contacted by strangers.

So no, the letter wasn’t from Kent Police, but yes you should heed the advice concerning speaking to your children and reviewing their messages and contacts – advice that is relevant for any app of Roblox’s ilk.