A Dutch mother’s 8-year-old son ordered a gun online and had it delivered to their home, bypassing customs checks as it traveled through Poland and Bulgaria.
The boy didn’t just go online, click a few links, and place the order. He hacked his way though it, encouraged and shown how by international hackers he met playing games online.
“He started to spend a lot of time behind a computer and he started ordering things on the Internet without paying, Barbara Gemen told euronews. “First, like pizzas, but then also bigger things … It was quite difficult for me to understand what was going on.”
“I think he spent a month trying to figure out how to order the gun and to get it delivered to our home,” she said. “… He opened it and he was really, really excited that he managed to get a gun delivered to our home. I was completely shocked. I immediately decided to do things differently at home.”
Gemen called her son’s school and the police, who told her what her son did was “impossible” and accused her of exaggerating, she told the Wall Street Journal.
The break came when some of the people the boy was working with asked him to hack corporations and send them stolen information. He got scared, and eventually told his mother what was going on.
“He started to wake up at night to sit behind a computer and he was really stressed,” Gemen told euronews. And that’s when we find out he was working with a group of international hackers.”
She said she began educating herself about cybercrime, and she — and her now-20-year-old son — both volunteer for the Dutch national police Cyber Offender Prevention Squad (COPS), an offshoot of their renowned High Tech Crime unit. The group helps bring kids, who often don’t realize what they’re doing is criminal, away from the dangerous activities.
“It’s so easy these days because a lot of kids have laptops, mobile phones, and basically you can do a hack with a few clicks,” Gemen said. “It’s a quite big issue to prevent young people from hacking. They often don’t know what’s legal or what’s illegal.”
“If you wait for somebody to develop a complete cybercriminal career, society loses, the police loses, but also the person loses,” Floor Jansen, who founded COPS in 2020 and is now deputy head of the High Tech Crime unit, told the Wall Street Journal.
Units in several European countries now specifically work with kids — and their parents — to teach them about cybercrime and help steer them away from criminal activity.
“You can commit a crime only by clicking. It’s been made so easy. When you think about someone who is 10 years old, how do you prevent that from happening?” Viivi Lehtinen, project manager of the Cybercrime Exit program at the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, said.
Danish police have set up an “online patrol” focused on preventing cybercrime, rather than responding after the face, Niels Denny Sorenson, head of the Danish police’s department of digital investigation. And Portugal’s public prosecutor’s office has created a guide for pre-teens and teens about legal and illegal online behavior.
The Dutch COPS program remains at the head of the curve. After her son’s hacking experiences, Gemen has become a workshop leader, speaking to parents about what can and does happen online.
“They don’t know it can be their own son or daughter,” she said.
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[Featured image: Pixabay]
