Preventing “online kidnapping”: Don’t let... “disconnect” between parents and children

Most recently, the 13-year-old daughter of Ms. Nguyen Thuy Duong ( Hanoi ) left home and took a bus to the South following the instructions of a bad guy. Fortunately, thanks to the calmness and intelligence of the family, the cooperation of the authorities and the sharing of the online community, the girl was found and picked up before being taken to the border.

Before that, there was a young girl, almost 18 years old, who was lured by bad guys to lock herself in a hotel, let them film/take nude photos of her and then blackmail her parents. The girl was rescued by the police in time, but it may take a long time to get out of the panic.

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After finding her child, Ms. Nguyen Thuy Duong (Hanoi) shared about her child's case, especially the sophisticated tricks of the online scammer/kidnapper that even adults could not have imagined. As in the case of Trang - Ms. Duong's child, the subject had nurtured a relationship with the child for a long time (more than 1 year) to create trust; they took care of the child extremely "devotedly": "chatting, talking, calling, investing in game top-ups, or even sending money for the child to buy things without the family knowing at all. When the opportunity is ripe or the child is bored, has problems with the family or school, they will lure and entice the child to leave the family, to a place called "the love of the two" or go here and there to "have a more comfortable life".

It is worth noting that the subjects used real information, not virtual information, which according to Ms. Duong was "so real that we cannot believe it. They can use real images, real names, real zalo, real citizen identification, real phone numbers... making even those who are usually vigilant surprised, even thinking that they were wrongly suspecting good people"! And the fact that they did not demand ransom made her mistakenly believe that they were not bad people, until she read the text messages that clearly showed that the subjects had instructed the child on how to go, and even taught the child to lie about the route. Because of such sophisticated and clever tricks, even though her family had paid attention to reminding and warning the child to be vigilant; controlling the child's use of phones and technological devices, the child still believed and was led by bad subjects.

Obviously, from the above cases, it shows that with the development of technology, the face of the bad guys has changed continuously, their tricks are also constantly "created", even thoroughly researching the psychology and reactions of the victims and their families in each case to build a sophisticated fraud scenario that even the "prey" hardly suspects.

According to recommendations from cybersecurity experts and authorities, to protect children, parents, teachers and schools need to regularly monitor and grasp fraudulent situations to teach children skills to identify fraud as well as raise vigilance; set rules when letting children use phones and computers and, if possible, install software that can control the content and access time of websites that children often visit...

In particular, what is easily seen in the above cases is that the victims seem to have “lost connection” with their families. They do not confide or tell their parents about the things they are interested in, enjoy, fear, or worry about. Therefore, when the incident occurs, parents do not know what their children have done, where they have gone, or who they have made friends with. Therefore, the most important thing is that parents need to regularly accompany, become friends with their children, and talk openly to help their children feel comfortable and always be ready to share the problems they encounter.

An important message from the victim's family is that when an incident occurs, families need to stay calm, coordinate closely with the authorities, and be ready to share all information about their child's case to ask the online community to help find their child.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/xa-hoi/202508/phong-tranh-bat-coc-online-dung-de-mat-ket-noi-giua-cha-me-va-con-tre-cd0138c/