Teaching kids to spot phishing and scams.

The scams children actually fall for

Scams aimed at children rarely look like the emails adults get. They arrive inside games and social feeds, they promise something a child badly wants, and they demand speed.

• —Free skins, Robux, V-Bucks, or coins in exchange for logging in on an outside site.
• —Fake login pages copying a game, school portal, or streaming service.
• —A hacked friend's account asking for a code, a login, or a favor.
• —Giveaway and follower-boost bait on social platforms, often with a countdown.
• —In-game trading scams: 'send yours first and I'll send mine back.'
• —Gift-card and payment-app requests, sometimes framed as helping a family member.
• —Fake job, modeling, or sponsorship offers targeting teenagers.
• —Sextortion: a stranger sends a photo, asks for one back, then threatens to share it.

Red flags any child can learn

Teach the pattern, not the list of scams — the platforms change every year, the pattern does not. Four cues cover most of it.

• —Urgency: a timer, a limited offer, or 'right now or you lose it.'
• —Secrecy: 'do not tell your parents' or 'let's move to another app.'
• —Free-but-first: a reward that requires a login, a code, or a payment.
• —Wrong address: a link or sender that is almost right but slightly misspelled.

A family scam-prevention checklist

Set these up once and revisit them each school year. Most account theft against children is stopped by two or three of these alone.

• —Turn on two-factor authentication for game, email, and school accounts.
• —Never enter a game or school password on a site reached from a chat message.
• —Codes are never shared — not with friends, not with support, not with anyone.
• —Purchases require an adult approval on every device and console.
• —Agree on a family rule: any request for money, gift cards, or photos gets shown to an adult before answering.
• —Practice together: open a real message and ask 'is this legitimate, and how can we tell?'

What to do after a child is scammed

Speed matters more than blame. A child who fears punishment waits, and waiting is what turns a small loss into a serious one.

• —Say thank you first. Disclosure is the win; keep it that way.
• —Change the password on the affected account and every account sharing that password, then enable two-factor authentication.
• —Report the account or message in the app, and contact the platform's support for account recovery.
• —If money moved, contact your bank or card issuer the same day and report the fraud to your national consumer-protection body.
• —If photos, threats, or sextortion are involved, do not pay and do not delete evidence: screenshot everything, block the account, and contact local law enforcement or your national reporting line immediately.

Catching scams in the moment

The gap in every scam-prevention lesson is timing: a child needs the lesson at the moment the message arrives, not weeks earlier in a classroom. Safe Robin recognizes scam and phishing patterns as they happen, pauses the moment, explains the specific red flag in the child's own language, and loops in a trusted adult when the situation escalates — so the lesson lands exactly when it counts.