‘MOVIE STAR PLANET’: AN UPSETTING UPDATE

In a July 2017 blog post last year we talked about our investigation into the children’s social media app, “Movie Star Planet”.

This came about when our client showed us screen-shots of their daughter’s movements and conversations on a smartphone / tablet app called “Movie Star Planet”. The conversations between their 12-year-old daughter and what she believed was an 11-year-old girl from a different school in the area were developing into content of a highly questionable and suspect nature.

The most basic of Google searches about the product itself showed that it had been exposed to problems around ‘grooming’ in the past. Assurances had been given by the app’s makers that restrictions and protections were now in place after an incident – first reported in The Daily Mail – involving an adult and a child in 2014.

Back in June last year we ran a series of ‘stress tests’ on the app’s “protections” and were shocked to find how easily (in under less that 15 minutes, actually) we were able to register as a user on the app and begin to engage with other underage users – with no verification of our actual age or intent at all.

After it was reported in 2014 that a child was approached in a sexually inappropriate manner by an adult pretending to be a child, the app’s developers said safeguards were to be put in place to prevent this from happening in future. Subsequent investigations following a spike in grooming via the app show little to no such safeguards were implemented.

As a follow-up investigation, we recently tried once more to sign up to the app and lie about our age, sex and whereabouts. Once again we were able to do so in a remarkably short amount of time and start engaging with youngsters.

As a result, we now strongly recommend parents mark ‘Movie Star Planet’ up as a vastly unprotected and potentially dangerous forum for young people to be using.

If you have young children using this app be aware of its continued allegations for being a paedophile ‘nesting ground’ and the high potential for inappropriate contact being made to children that its makers/developers continue to do nothing about.