Lowvelder Investigates: Child-porn scandal over leaked sexts
Pornographic images were handed over to the police.
MBOMBELA – The shocking details of a child-porn scandal that surfaced at one of the high schools in the Lowveld this week have exposed the dangers of an app which can be downloaded for free to hack into other unsuspecting WhatsApp accounts.
The details and pornographic photographs were handed over to the police on Tuesday after a concerned whistle-blower approached Lowvelder last week with the information.
Further investigations by the newspaper revealed that this was not an isolated case, with schoolchildren from other schools also using the cellphone application to access WhatsApp accounts of other phones, for sexting and sharing explicit pornographic material.
Most disturbing is that the application, WhatScan, empowers cellphone predators to hack a victim’s WhatsApp account and, not only see what is written in the account and access its photo galleries, but also to write and send photographic material from the account.
According to the source, a friend who also attends this school told him he was very “giddy and excited”, about this new app.
“At that stage his cellphone was connected to that of one of his male friends in the hostel,” the source told Lowvelder. “My friend left his phone with me so that I could inspect the app a little bit more while he went to the bathroom for a shower.”
While he was examining the app, the source was “surprised” that it was actually working. He was monitoring a conversation of a boy in the school hostel who was flirting with a girl and asking her for pornographic photos.
“The girl sent multiple pictures, but I was only able to acquire two as at that moment my friend had exited the bathroom and came to me to discuss more about the app,” the source said.
“This kind of behaviour bothered me, because from what I could gather, the hostel boy is only in grade nine, meaning he is
15 years of age.”
According to an Internet website detailing how to hack into someone else’s WhatsApp account, the phrase “How to spy on WhatsApp” is one of the most searched on Google.
“The reason? Well, you can imagine the answer. Boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands are all categories of users that have their ‘good reason’ for wanting to read the messages of another person,” the website explained.
Lowvelder held meetings this week with the school’s headmaster and deputies, and properly briefed them on the information received from the source.
From the negotiations it was clear that the school viewed the problem of sexting and sharing of pornographic material at school in a very serious light, and handled the situation with the necessary sensitivity and compassion.
According to a police official who works very closely with the underbelly of vice in the province, children do not realise that they are manufacturing and distributing child pornography by sexting.
