Daily Safeguarding Update

Online Hackers Donating Stolen Money to Charity

A hacking group is donating stolen money to charity in what is seen as a mysterious first for cyber-crime that’s puzzling experts
The group calling themselves ‘Darkside hackers’ claim to have extorted millions of dollars from companies, but say they now want to “make the world a better place”
In a post on the dark web, the gang posted receipts for $10,000 in Bitcoin donations to two charities
One of them, Children International, says it will not be keeping the money.
The move is seen as a strange and troubling development, both morally and legally
In the blog post on 13 October, the hackers claim they only target large profitable companies with their ransomware attacks
The attacks hold organisation’s IT systems hostage until a ransom is paid

TikTok has been removing the accounts of users who share QAnon-related content on the platform as part of a policy the video-sharing platform says has been in effect since August
While TikTok initially focused on reducing the discoverability of such content, by banning QAnon-related hashtags, its policy now includes removing the content, banning accounts, and redirecting searches and hashtags to display its community guidelines
“Content and accounts that promote QAnon violate our disinformation policy and we remove them from our platform,” a spokesperson said in an email to The Verge
The company has taken steps to make QAnon-related content harder to find in searches, saying “we continually update our safeguards with misspellings and new phrases as we work to keep TikTok a safe and authentic place for our community.”

Facebook rejected 2.2 million ad submissions for targeting the US without completing its authorisation process
The social media giant has also removed 120,000 posts across Facebook and Instagram for violating its voter interference policies and placed warnings on 150 million posts debunked by fact-checkers
Facebook Vice President for global affairs Nick Clegg made the remarks in an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche, and said Facebook has used artificial intelligence that “made it possible to delete billions of posts and fake accounts, even before they are reported by users”
Facebook introduced the fact-checking programin the aftermath of the 2016 elections, and added it to Instagram last year
The program has since expanded to include Facebook groups, where misinformation is frequently shared.
The fact-checking program has had mixed results however, with early partners Snopes and ABC leaving the partnership

The Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield has warned that unaccompanied children who have crossed the Channel in small boats are being forced to wait for days in a holding unit without access to beds or showers before being placed in local authority car.
She warned that delays in moving youngsters out of the Kent Intake Unit – where asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel from France are processed before being moved on to other areas – was creating an “untenable” situation
Unaccompanied minors arriving on the UK coast previously went straight into local authority care in Kent, but Kent County Council announced in August that it had reached capacity and could not take in any more children
The Home Office said the underage arrivals would instead be kept at the Kent Intake Unit before being placed with social services
The Children’s Commissioner warned that the current system was for dispersing child asylum seekers to local councils nationally was “buckling” and in need of reform

A 15-year-old who was stabbed after he moved 100 miles to avoid drug-dealing “county lines” gangs was left “high and dry” by social workers, his mother has said
The boy was groomed by a gang before moving to the South East where he was attacked
His new local authority refused him a local social worker as he already had one, his mother has claimed
The Children’s Commissioner for England said children were “being failed” by not getting the protection needed
Anne Longfield told BBC South East Today it was “sadly a familiar story” that children involved in gangs and county lines were “lost as they moved around the country”
“Their cases aren’t picked up, information isn’t passed on, and those children just drop through the net and are exposed to serious danger.” she said
“It’s extremely worrying and it’s extremely urgent that this is something that is addressed by children’s services and the police both locally and nationally.”