PHOENIX - An 8-year-old girl was nearly coerced into taking her clothes off by pedophiles on an app called Live.me. The girl's mother Bethany, who asked that we do not reveal her last name, found the video saved on her tablet a week after it was livestreamed.
"The men were saying 'Change your clothes. I'll give you more likes.' and the women that were on there, thank goodness for them, were like, 'No, no, no, don't do that. Don't change your clothes. These guys are creepers. Where's your mom?'" Bethany said referring to the comments on her daughter's video.
Live.me explicitly says the site should not be used by anybody under the age of 13 and prohibits sexual or violent content. However, within minutes of downloading the app with a fake age, 12 News witnessed several videos of women dancing in a sexual way.
Watching the clips just long enough for research purposes, we saw at least 10 videos clearly using sex as a way to gain follows and likes.
"I think our kids kind of fall into a false sense of security thinking, 'Well I'm at home and nobody hurt me,' not knowing that these creepy people have ways of finding them," Bethany says.
Experts warn parents of the dangers these types of apps can present, especially the livestreaming apps with location services that tell viewers where the person is located. There are dozens of apps which allow livestreaming, but none of them can be downloaded without a password. Setting that password as a parent may be the best way to prevent these services from reaching your child's tablet or phone.