BATAVIA, Ill. – A father is warning other parents about the dangers of a popular children's app that allows strangers to message kids.
The app in question is Musical.ly, used mostly by children to created lip dub duets with others.
WPVI reports Brad Summer was alarmed when his 7-year-old daughter began receiving messages through the Musical.ly app from strangers.
Summer's daughter, who does not have her own phone, was using her parents' phones.
In his warning posted to Facebook, Summer says the questions began with "How are you?" and "How old are you?," then advanced to asking his daughter to send nude photos.
The messager told Summer's daughter the nude pictures would be a secret between the two of them.
Summer alerted police who were able to locate the IP address of the person messaging his daughter and have submitted a subpoena to the app to freeze all of their records.
Summer admits naivete led to allowing his daughter to play on apps while unsupervised, but wants to use what happened to him and his family as a warning to others.
"I know many will blame us parents for this happening," Summer writes on Facebook. "But we never thought like predators and I guess we were naive in thinking that our daughter was safe on what we thought to be a kid friendly app. We have learned the hard way. I ask that you not judge us (many still will) but let our experience teach us all."
To our FB friends; Today we went through something that I feel needs to be shared. Our daughter has an app that she...
Posted by Brad Summer on Friday, August 11, 2017