Digital Kidnapping

What digital kidnapping is, who it affects, and what a child should learn — a free entry from the Digital Guardians Threat Dictionary.

Target age range: All Ages (with different focus for each). Parents of infants and young children need awareness, since even babies’ photos can be stolen online. School-age children and teens also need to understand how their identity or images could be misused. In short, this topic is for entire families – from new parents who share baby pictures to teens managing their own social media – with guidance tailored appropriately to each.

Learning objective: Recognize what digital kidnapping is and why oversharing a child’s images or identity online can be dangerous. Parents will learn safe social media practices (sometimes called “sharenting” guidelines) to protect their child’s digital identity. Children and teens will learn to safeguard their own photos and personal information. The objective is to prevent strangers from “stealing” a child’s online identity, and to know how to respond if it happens. This module emphasizes privacy, consent, and healthy skepticism about where images of children end up on the internet.

Threat definition

Digital kidnapping is a form of online identity theft where someone takes a minor’s photos or personal data from the internet and pretends the child is their own – or even assumes the child’s identity. In practical terms, a stranger might download a child’s pictures (commonly from parents’ public social media posts) and then repost them on their own profile as if that child were part of their life. Some perpetrators engage in a creepy social media “roleplay,” inventing new names and stories for the stolen photos, basking in the likes and comments as though the child were really theirs. Others might use a child’s identity to create fake accounts, sometimes to gather followers, or in worst cases to facilitate inappropriate activities (like sharing manipulated images or luring other children). Another variant of digital kidnapping involves hackers hijacking a family’s social media account and holding it ransom, or using stolen info to pose as a parent or child for scams. In all cases, it’s a violation of privacy and trust.

HOW MUCH WE SHARE

The risk is magnified by how much we share: studies show parents share hundreds of photos of their kids online – one study found an average of 116 photos posted by parents per year – and by age 2, about 90% of children have some presence on social media via pictures posted by caregivers.

This means almost every child’s likeness could be accessible to strangers if privacy settings aren’t strict. Digital kidnapping may not be as overtly dangerous as physical kidnapping, but it can cause real harm: stolen photos can end up in the hands of predators or be used to bully the child later on. It also strips the child of control over their own image and story.

In essence, digital kidnapping is about taking over a child’s digital identity without consent, and it’s a growing concern in the age of social sharing.

The full chapter is in Pillar 2: Social Pressure, Lures & Exploitation Prevention and the Complete Edition.