Boys use free messaging apps to swindle men

Youngsters are increasingly using mobile applications to communicate with their friends but are at risk of being exploited by parties looking to earn money or for entertainment, according to a survey.
A new trend is making waves on cloud chat applications where boys sign up as girls to deceive older men for money.
Mohammed Ahmed, who pretended to be a girl, deleted the application after a mere two hours of the experiment in response to the barrage of insistent and inappropriate messages from anonymous men. He said that men are ready to pay sums of money and gift women just for chatting with them.
Mohammed Al-Suleiman, an active user of various chat applications said: “Foul activities have increased on such applications where boys entertain men by pretending to be girls. Sometimes they are paid for sharing random pictures of a girl’s body parts or for chatting intimately.”
He added that as girls normally do not indulge in such activities, the field is wide open for boys who pretend to be women and acquire quite a large following on these applications.
According to the survey, around 25 percent of the profiles on the chat applications are false. A young Saudi boy who wishes to remain anonymous admitted that he once duped a middle-aged man into chatting with him for several days just to get him to pay his mobile balance.
“It was just for fun. There are many men who are willing to pay anything for chatting with them. The majority of the boys download a random picture of a girl through the Internet and set up a profile to deceive the men into giving them money or gifts,” he said.
Huda A. Hameed, sociologist and researcher at a university, said that these uncouth activities have gained popularity owing to technological advancement. According to her, girls also indulge in such obscene activities.
“Genuine conversation has been driven out by superficial and irrelevant communication,” she said, adding that men who look for pleasure through chatting are encouraging indecent behavior through gifting iPads and mobiles which are valuable and tempting accessories for boys.
Moreover, these apps are allowing students to “verbally abuse” other students, staff and faculty. Most principals have asked parents to remove the app from their children’s phones and make sure they don’t reinstall it because there is no way to trace the source of the content which can be widely disseminated in a few seconds.
Psychologist Humera Malik said: “Today’s youth is very mobile savvy and dependent on its technology for entertainment and to stay connected with the world. As such it is hard to brush off such inappropriate behavior and it is imperative that we develop measures to protect them from the dangers posed by this digital world.”
She added that it was very important for parents to monitor their children and educate them about the dangers lurking on mobile phones.
Several campaigns have been planned by schools and universities to spread awareness about the digital risks and promote safe, responsible and inspiring communications among the youth.