Instagram was the most commonly used app by offenders for sexual communication with a child in the past year, a UK children’s charity has revealed. Online grooming crimes recorded by UK police have jumped by nearly 70 percent since 2018, new figures from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) show. According to figures compiled by the charity from Freedom of Information requests to 42 police forces across England and Wales, 5,441 online grooming offences were recorded between April 2020 and March 2021, an increase of 69 percent from the 3,217 recorded in the same period in 2017–18. Facebook-owned apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, were used in almost half of the offences where the means of communication was known over the last 12 months. Among these, Instagram was the most commonly used, the figures show. Snapchat was also named in more than a quarter of …
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