Snapchat is, as soon as once more, beefing up its to make it tougher for strangers to contact teenagers within the app. The corporate is including new warnings about “suspicious” contacts and preemptively blocking good friend requests from accounts which may be linked to scams.
It’s not the primary time Snap has tried teen customers from connecting with strangers within the app. The corporate says the newest warnings go a step additional in that the alerts depend on “new and superior indicators” that point out an account could also be tied to a scammer. Likewise, Snap says it is going to block good friend requests despatched by customers who lack mutual buddies with the requestee, and “a historical past of accessing Snapchat in places typically related to scamming exercise.” The app’s block function can be getting an improve in order that customers who block somebody may even mechanically block new accounts made on the identical machine.
These updates, in accordance with the corporate, will assist tackle sextortion scams that usually goal teenagers throughout social media platforms, in addition to different security and privateness issues. Snap, like lots of its social media friends, has come from lawmakers over teen issues of safety, together with sextortion scams and the convenience with which drug sellers have been capable of contact teenagers within the app. The most recent replace additionally simply occurs to come back shortly after Rolling Stone revealed an into how Snapchat “helped gas a teen-overdose epidemic throughout the nation.”
The article cited particular options like Snapchat’s Snap Map, which permits customers to share their present location with buddies, and “fast add” solutions, which surfaced good friend suggestions. (The corporate started limiting “fast add” solutions between teen and grownup accounts .) And whereas teenagers can nonetheless opt-in to the Snap Map location sharing, the corporate says it’s simplifying these settings in order that they’re simpler to vary and surfacing extra “frequent reminders” about how they’re sharing their whereabouts within the app.
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