Cyber flashing: Students using AirDrop feature to prank strangers

IN A WORLD where it’s the norm for youngsters to be whizzes with technology, school kids are using the AirDrop feature on their iOS devices to “Cyber-flash” strangers with pornographic images.

If you weren’t already aware of it, AirDrop is a feature on all Macs and iOS devices which allows people to wirelessly share photos and other files quickly, with minimal fuss. They need to be in reasonable proximity of each other and the receiving device needs to accept the file being sent for the transfer to succeed.

It’s extremely handy for work so like many other people, my AirDrop is usually switched on as a matter of convenience.

This isn’t something I would normally think twice about, however the other day, to my surprise, while checking my Twitter feed on the train commute home, my phone was bombarded for a solid five minutes with random dick pics.

Realising it wasn’t someone’s embarrassing mistake and thinking it might have been a friend who had seen me on the same train, I was in fact, the subject of a ‘Cyber-flash.’ I went into stealth mode and subtly scanned the carriage for a familiar face who might have thought it was a funny way to get my attention with pictures of penises (Because hahaha).

What surprised me is that sure enough, a couple of seats down, it was actually a group of schoolgirls in uniform, who were giggling as they sent the adult images to different phones in the carriage that had the AirDrop feature switched on. They were oblivious to the fact I could clearly see who they were and what they were doing.

The teens were about 13-years-old, so firstly you need to ask why they are accessing those types of images on their phones, secondly I wonder who else was receiving them in the carriage. I’m mature enough to ignore it, but what if other children were on the receiving end? What if an elderly person with a medical condition got hit in the face with an image like that?

Or worse, what if it was some dirty creep who received the barrage of images and like me, could pinpoint where they were coming from?

In this instance, we aren’t going to name and shame the school the students go to, but parents reading this should definitely talk with their kids about sending explicit images to stranger’s devices. Even if it’s the all too common act of a young person sending a naked selfie to their boyfriend or girlfriend, if you send explicit images of a minor (even if it’s yourself), especially to another minor, that is a sure fire way to end up on the Child Protection Registry. That in turn will give you a criminal record, possible jail time and you can forget future career prospects.

While in this instance, the images that were being “dropped” were adult and professionally photographed screenshots, sending unsolicited dick pics can be a criminal offence under Australian law. According to the Telecommunications Act 1997, it is an offence to use a carriage service to harass, offend or intimidate another person. If it’s dissemination of explicit images to a minor, whether it’s you or not, that is definitely against the law. If the images are of a minor, the sender can receive a maximum ten years in prison and the receiver can cop five years for possessing the material whether they asked for it or not. Of course this is on top of having your name on the Child Protection Registry and being known to police.

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