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I'm a minor who is dealing with pedos on a chat website they keep trying to friend me and give me badges I tried to report them but the moderation team won't do anything how can I stop them? Also, I can ignore them but they still keep doing other things like liking my profile.

Rory Alsop
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Robin
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  • Is there any reason you can't just leave that web site and move to another? – Paul Johnson Jun 09 '21 at 17:02
  • I have friends I cant leave cuz they're my only friends – Robin Jun 09 '21 at 17:02
  • Could you get a new account that doesn't show you as a child, and then send those friends a PM to let them know? – Paul Johnson Jun 09 '21 at 17:03
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    I’m voting to close this question because this is not about parenting. – anongoodnurse Jun 09 '21 at 17:14
  • what website is it? – A.bakker Jun 09 '21 at 17:22
  • I put the link in my question – Robin Jun 09 '21 at 17:24
  • I need parents who have dealed with pedophilia to help me that's why I put it here – Robin Jun 09 '21 at 18:02
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    Umm. forgive me for having to ask this, but why do you presume they are pedophiles? just because they are older, or are they actually doing or saying anything offensive or making offensive requests of you? I don't do social media, but I've played MMOs where I've invited and grouped up with minors plenty of times without any intent to molest them after all. They may not even realize you are a minor when friending you, my previous experiences with social media (one of the reasons I mostly avoid it) show that plenty of people will friend any random stranger without thought. – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 15:36
  • No there is literally a thing where you can see if that person is underage you literally cannot register on this website without your age they aways see your age – Robin Jun 11 '21 at 18:19
  • Like most websites, both Stackexchange and wireclub.com have policies against children under 13 registering accounts. There's a reason for this. – barbecue Jun 12 '21 at 23:53
  • The other person is literally harassing all of the people I know and MORE and the moderation team isn't doing anything about it or even giving him warnings – Robin Jun 13 '21 at 02:21

2 Answers2

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Since you asked for parental advice, from that perspective the best advice is: get off the website.

Reasoning: if this is a website where a preteen can sign up with real info, and yet be browsed and found by complete strangers; where minors space a space with adults without restriction; and where moderators do nothing about such reports — then it is not a website I'd recommend to a child.

You say you have friends there who are your only friends. Have you ever met them? The majority are probably legitimate, but it's hard to be sure that any given online-only friend isn't also someone with a false name and picture. If you don't know them in real life and they're not willing to leave wireclub, it's a good idea to be skeptical. If you do know them in real life, ask them to meet somewhere more trustworthy and private.

If you know them in real life and they still refuse to talk anywhere other than on wireclub, perhaps the two sets of parents could help you work it out. But if a parent can't meet or talk to their child's friends or friends' parents, they will rightly feel uneasy.

There are other places to make friends and friends who will follow you where you need to go. That's a larger topic for another question, but please don't feel like all your eggs have to be in one basket. No website should be your only lifeline to social connections.

Another perspective would be that of an Internet-savvy preteen. When I was your age, I was on various sites interacting with random strangers. Some of them were good friends and I actually still keep in contact with them in my adult years. Because I wasn't willing to give up all the sites, my approach was different: use an alias.

If you were to do so, you should first ask your parents' permission. Then, make an account using an email address you create just for this purpose (also known to your parents). Do not enter your real name, age, gender, location, or photo at any stage. Make something up. Heck, it can be a chance for you to be creative. (Just make sure it doesn't attract the same attention you're getting now.)

Then you can invite your friends to connect with the alias account, and abandon the previous one (at least till you're older). Make a rule of continuing to ignore any strangers' requests.

Because we're on Parenting Stack Exchange, I recommend the first option. Even if you do consider the second option, please don't do so without your parents' permission, assuming you have a trusting relationship with them.

Luke Sawczak
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  • Most of my friends have shared their photos and I know the real cuz I can't find them on Google or Pinterest some don't want to because of pedophiles I do ignore the strangers request and if I don't know who they are there's a huge chance my friends know who they are since not many people use this site if I were to create a new account my new account would be immediately banned and so would my old account – Robin Jun 09 '21 at 19:47
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    @AkasukiSuzuki How would they know it was your new account? IP address? If so they'd ban siblings, couples, etc who share a household. Also, not being able to find a photo on Google is zero guarantee that it's real. People can edit photos, take photos of relatives or strangers in public, copy photos from places that aren't listed on Google (e.g. a friend's phone), or even generate them with AI: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com. And just to be sure, you're saying it's these real friends who are connecting you with other potential friends/pedophiles?... Would make a parent very, very uneasy. – Luke Sawczak Jun 09 '21 at 20:12
  • I can agree with aliases, but I hate the first half of this answer. The odds that any of the OP friends is secretly a pedophile using a sock puppet is so absurdly low as to be nearly impossible. That claim fears like fearmongering, there is no reason to scare the OP with something completely unlikely to happen. Similarly I don't agree with the implication that just because you presume OP hasn't meant friends online they aren't real friends. A friend is someone who is supportive and you like hanging out, rather that is in person or online. How you interact with them doesn't matter. – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 15:43
  • @dsollen If I weren't aware of the possibility of only-online friends being real and safe, I wouldn't have added the second section or shared my own experience of that very thing. But that doesn't negate the alternative possibility, which is far from absurdly low, especially if friends are connected via friends as OP implied — more degrees of separation. With at least 5% sock puppets on other social media, I think the probability that everyone is who they say they are is the lower one. – Luke Sawczak Jun 11 '21 at 16:03
  • @dsollen N.B. I've also edited it to be less fear-mongery. – Luke Sawczak Jun 11 '21 at 16:09
  • @LukeSawczak Oh sock puppets are real, but their mostly used for creating false consensus and liking or resharing things generated on the primary account of the sock puppet owner, or direct harassing's of someone the owner dislikes. My problem was implying a fake account exists solely to hide a pedophile looking to friend victims, OP's friends being a closet 40 year old pedophile is highly unlikely. Honestly if OP enjoys talking to them and friends aren't doing anything negative would it even matter if they were using a fake name, is that any different then your suggestion of an alias? – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 16:15
  • Also if any of my friends are pedophiles so they tried to get me to send nudes images which none of them have we literally just joke around in a public chat room – Robin Jun 11 '21 at 18:16
  • @dsollen (recommenting b/c of poor editing of my previous one; can ignore, just OCD about this sort of thing). Imo, the odds times the stakes of their having ill intentions yields enough risk that the possibility should be on any child's radar when online. It is not so unlikely given how common it is even to do it out in the open — I'm a teacher and my professional magazine's quarterly case disclosures make me reject the idea that the probability is too low to be worth considering. – Luke Sawczak Jun 11 '21 at 21:15
  • The other difference lies in the disclosure of the alias. The teens I've talked to about online presence are indeed good at sharing each other's aliases and understanding that this random profile is actually their friend Alice or Sanjay protecting themselves — but the key is that they have some other channel (e.g. real life) where they know Alice and Sanjay. – Luke Sawczak Jun 11 '21 at 21:16
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What makes you so confident that they are pedophiles?

I'm going to resist ranting on this too much, as a man that volunteers with kids and has to handle people regularly presuming I'm a pedophile just because I have a penis and am within 10 feet of a child it's kind of a pet peeve of mine. The whole concept of online predator's is a highly exaggerated risk as the result of the spotlight fallacy, the news makes a huge deal over the absurdly rare cases of this happening, without covering the absurdly more common safe and healthy interactions that happen online, which lead to people assuming the risk is much higher then it is since the news keeps wanting to talk about it. The actual odds that you have run into not one but multiple pedophiles contacting you on social media is so low that I have to wondering if perhaps you are leaping to conclusions that they are pedophiles, and/or have malicious intentions, when they are just every day social media users friending other people, as is common with social media. It's entirely possible most of them haven't even checked your profile to realize your age.

Of course if you have actual negative behaviors, sexualized communications, sending or requesting inappropriate pictures, pressuring you to do anything your uncomfortable with etc, that is different. If that is happening you should report it to moderation and if they really wouldn't do anything even in presence of such clear evidence you probably should contact the police to report it.

Tell them you only want to talk to other pre-teens

Since I suspect most contacts are regular folks without malicious intent, who may not realize you don't wish to speak with adults, you can simply respond by saying you are only interested in talking to others close to your age and respectfully request they leave you alone. In most cases that will be all you need.

You may also consider adding to your profile information an explicit request along the lines of "Only interested in talking to individuals close to my age (or between some age range), please don't contact me if you are not within this age range"

If a specific individual keeps contacting you after requesting they leave you alone that is harassments, record the pattern, if, after a few polite attempts to request they leave you alone they persist inform them you will be reporting the behavior if it continues, and report it to the moderators if necessary.

Change your privacy settings

I'm not familiar with wireclub.com but I did some very quick searching on it. It looks like you can limit your photos to only be viewed by friends and prevent contacts by non friends here: https://www.wireclub.com/settings/privacy If you truly only want to talk to your existing friends then just set it so only friends can contact you and your done. At minimum you likely want to set your profile picture to only viewed by friends.

Block persistent offenders

If a specific user keeps contacting you after you informed them you only wish to talk to other's your age you can simply block them here: https://www.wireclub.com/settings/blocked

Don't share private information online

I assume, and hope, you already know this, but just to be safe let's reiterate it anyways. You shouldn't share private information online, regardless of your age or the age of the receiver, without a very good reason. Don't give out your address or phone number. If you meet someone online for the first time do it in a crowded public space and make sure other's are aware of the meeting. Try not to give details that can help people to locate you, such as what school you go to etc, until you know them somewhat well etc. That's really just internetting 101 stuff really.

Find a better website

As a computer geek I can't help but say that website seems...rather limiting. It's security and privacy settings in particular are not as comprehensive as they could be. Frankly the geek in me took 5 minutes playing with the site and ruled it out as pretty bad design so I'd be inclined to use a better site regardless of your concerns about older individuals contacting you. If you find another chat site with better features you likely can convince many of your friends to consider joining it as well.

Try not to dox people online...

This isn't related to your question, but it's a major internet no no so I have to point it out. You just publicly linked the profile information of a man on a post about pedophiles. It is very possible for people to infer that you are implying this man is a pedophile! Unless you have very conclusive evidence that he is that is a VERY bad idea.

Most people are sane and reasonable, in person or online, but there are always a few crazies everywhere. It's unlikely, but sadly not impossible, that someone could see your post and go hunting down the person in the picture to harass them for 'being a pedophile'. This sort of accusation can destroy someone if a crazy enough person makes it their mission to 'stop the pedophile'. Sure this site isn't public enough and odds are not enough will see your post so it's unlikely a crazy person will see it and overreact, but still if you are going to be regularly utilizing social media you need to understand the risks and proper behavior for utilizing it, and making public accusations, or even just implications, of terrible behaviors of individuals without strong evidence to back it up is a terrible idea you should learn to avoid doing in general! I'd recommend you remove the picture from your original post.

dsollen
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    I'm not saying that you are a pedophile or anything it's just the fact that they don't know me at all it's very hard to not find creeps on this website and they should know better to not friend people that are under age that they don't know – Robin Jun 11 '21 at 18:17
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    @AkasukiSuzuki you really shouldn't be providing us with links to other profiles of your own that can allow others to associate your account, I had a whole bullet point about not sharing private data in my post ;). As a random example what if someone thought the picture, which you have now removed, was unfair and contacted the person in the photo and informed them about it before you removed it. If that person then came to this site to complain he would now have your profile name and might lash out at you on wireclub for implying he was a pedophile. – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 18:34
  • I needed proof to show you guys and plus you could literally find that person if you tried so I'm not really doing anything bad that person who's using that person's photo is it's not even a stock image – Robin Jun 11 '21 at 20:20
  • Also, I can share my profile if I want to you have to be one of my friends to comment on my page too – Robin Jun 11 '21 at 20:21
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    Good note about doxxing. It's certainly true (and I should have said in my answer) that the probability of a real danger, which we disagree about, does NOT mean that Akasuki is likely right about barrages of strangers all having ill intentions. @Akasuki, in general, at your age you should not share your profile with strangers on the Internet. And though anyone could find the person you shared, the problem is when you create a specific link between them and an allegation. You can keep yourself safe and also be careful about what you put out there that can have serious consequences for others. – Luke Sawczak Jun 11 '21 at 21:14
  • @AkasukiSuzuki you can share your profile, or any information you choose, online sure. but you need to think carefully about it. Everything you do online stays online to view forever. What may seem trivial to share now may be a real issue when it allows someone to infer more information about yourself then you want. It's just a general good idea to not be so quick to share details with strangers. And yes it's hypocritical of me to say since I actively try to make it easy to learn details about myself online, but that was a conscious decision made after through consideration of risk. – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 22:39
  • @AkasukiSuzuki Let me give you a real life example. There is this person, we will call Joe, who is a litteral sociopath and terrible person. I've warned people to protect them about Joe and as such have made him an enemy of myself (I knew that would happen, deemed it worth it to protect people). He used the fact that I made it easy to research me to try to learn more about me. He contacted my parents using a fake alias to scare them. He read through messages on this site trying to quote me out of context etc. Harmless posts of mine were used to try to attack me! – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 22:42
  • @AkasukiSuzuki In my case I choose to put myself in that position knowing I would be harrassed, both by antagonizing a sociopath and intentionally making it easier to research me online (I needed people I was trying to help online to have a means to vet & trust me). So yes I think one can eventually make a decision to reveal this stuff. but at the same time you shouldn't reveal information that you may eventually regret later lightly when you don't have to, and while still young it's particularly a good idea to err on the side of caution while you learn to judge the risk of sharing better. – dsollen Jun 11 '21 at 23:10