Contact Risk

General orientation. Where there is a specific concern about a child, contact the police or a child protection service rather than handling it alone.

Contact risk means somebody reaching a child who should not. It is uncommon, it is serious, and almost nothing in a product catalogue addresses it.

Where it happens

Inside services rather than on devices: games with open chat, social platforms, messaging.

Through a feature that exists for a good reason — being able to meet people is what these platforms are for.

Frequently starting in a public space and moving to a private one, which is a pattern worth a child knowing about.

And overwhelmingly by someone the child comes to see as a friend, rather than by an obvious stranger.

What grooming looks like in practice

Attention, flattery and interest, sustained over time.

A shared secret, which makes telling harder.

Moving to a platform the parent does not know about.

Gifts, in-game currency, or something the child values.

And a gradual escalation in which each step is small relative to the last.

Which is why "don't talk to strangers" is inadequate: by the time it matters, the person is not a stranger to the child.

What actually helps

Platform settings: who can message, who can find them, whether voice chat with strangers is possible. This is the technical part and it is worth doing properly.

A child who knows the pattern, described in age-appropriate terms, which is far more protective than a prohibition.

And a household where telling an adult something uncomfortable carries no penalty, which is the measure that appears in every serious account of what went right.

What does not help

Filtering, which addresses content rather than people.

Reading messages covertly, which is covered in its own note and which does not reliably detect this while reliably damaging the disclosure that would.

Banning the platform, which moves the activity to a device you do not see.

And frightening the child, which makes them less likely to mention an approach in case it means losing the game.

What to say, by age

Younger: nothing personal — no school, no address, no photos — and tell me if anybody asks for them.

Middle: that people online are sometimes not who they say, that anybody asking them to keep a secret from parents is a reason to tell, and that they will not be in trouble.

Teenage: the pattern above, named, plus what to do about pressure for images, which has its own note.

In every case the sentence that matters is the same: you will not be in trouble for telling me.

If something is happening

Do not delete anything, which is evidence.

Do not confront the person.

Report to the platform and to the police or the relevant child protection service in your country.

And keep the child's account as it is until advised, because closing it can remove what investigators need.

Specialist help exists for this and should be used rather than improvised.

What to check

Can anybody currently message your child in any service they use?

Is voice chat with strangers possible in any game they play?

Do they know what a request to keep a secret from you means?

And would they tell you about an approach — which is the question everything else in this note is about.

What this changes

Setting who can contact the child, in each service, is the only technical measure that addresses this category.

It takes minutes per service and is almost never done.

The check

Go through each service your child uses and set who may contact them.

This is twenty minutes and it addresses the category parents fear most.

Worth knowing

Grooming is gradual and by somebody the child comes to see as a friend, which is why a warning about strangers does not reach it. Describing the pattern does.

One more thing

Voice chat with strangers in games is where the most serious contact risk sits, and it can usually be limited to friends or disabled at no real cost to a younger child.