Ask.fm, a social network allowing anonymous posts, has been linked to teen suicides including 14-year-old Hannah Smith. The site has 60 million users and half a million daily teen users but lacks moderation and parental controls. McAfee's Robert Siciliano and British PM David Cameron warn parents need to monitor their kids' activity on the platform.
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Tonight we are putting a spotlight on a troubling social media website called ask.fm.
That's right, we have a warning for parents and children tonight. We're looking at how cyberbullies are trolling for victims on a site, a site that looks like it's supposed to be for fun. Fox 5's Audrey Barnes joins us tonight with the latest. Audrey. Sean and Will, ask.fm is considered so dangerous, leaders around the world are speaking out against it. British Prime Minister David Cameron called it vile after it was linked to a young girl's suicide there. And when we investigated When we investigated the cyberbullying of a student at Annapolis High School, ask.fm came up again. So it's here, too. Ask.fm, a social networking site that allows users to post anonymous comments online. Kids as young as 13 are allowed on the site. Everyone can see all the posts, and no one monitors the content.
Like, anyone can say what they want, so they're not— like, people aren't really going to be nice most of the time.
Robert Siciliano, a McAfee cybersecurity expert, says ask.fm is the new favorite sparring site for cyberbullies who want to tear people down without showing their face.
There is no accountability with anonymity, uh, and the overall drama that takes place in social media exemplifies teen angst.
The website BuzzFeed says ask.fm has been linked to 19 suicides in the last year. People like 14-year-old Hannah Smith, found hanging by her little sister in August after anonymous bullies on ask.fm wrote things like, "Everyone will be happy if you died," "Drink bleach," "Go die." Teen suicides happen every day, unfortunately.
But the fact that certain amount of teens were found with this on their phones and/or their devices and that parents are equating it to that Uh, definitely raises eyebrows.
We had no trouble finding local kids who know about ask.fm, including these 12-year-olds whose parents gave us permission to talk with them about the site.
Some of my friends at school have it, and like sometimes people post mean comments on it, and they like call them mean or say they have no friends and stuff. I don't think it's okay for people to be bullied on the website because you don't know like what they're going through in life or how they can react to, um, their situation and how people say things about them.
Do you—
how bad do you think it can be? Like, if you read something that somebody said about you, you don't even know who said it, how would you react?
Well, I wouldn't— I wouldn't— I wouldn't feel disappointed because I would think the same thing about that person if they said that to me. Like, it wouldn't hurt me. But if you don't know—
Although ask.fm has been referenced in so many teen deaths lately, Siciliano says the site doesn't deserve all the blame. Parents have some responsibility too, to know what their kids are doing online.
If you're a parent that is into your kids' lives and you're taking them back and forth to school and soccer practice and you're involved in their homework and invested in their success, then you should also understand how their online lives work.
And we got this advice from the mouths of babes.
I don't have an account because I wouldn't want people bullying me on it. I don't think that's okay for them to be able to do that.
Ask.fm started as a website and now it's a free app too. And because it originates in Latvia, U.S. laws don't apply to it. And get this, half a million new users, most of them tweens, log onto it every day. And there are 60 million users worldwide. So check your child's phone to see if they are one of them. Will?
60 million users. Yes. Incredible, Audrey. Let me ask you this, Maryland's Attorney General speaking out about the site. What is he saying?
Doug Gansler is asking major advertisers to pull their ads off Ask.fm because he says it's putting children at risk. They don't screen for kids under 13 or offer any kind of parental controls, and he just feels it's dangerous.
And like you said, it is free and U.S. laws don't apply. Not a good combination there. Audrey Barnes, as always, thank you.
