A child using a mobile phone to play a prank has caused digital chaos for his family, with very serious legal and financial consequences.
Jennifer Watkins was accused of posting child pornography to her YouTube account after a prank by one of her seven-year-old twin boys, Benjamin and Flynn, went terribly wrong.
Ms Watkins did not diplomatically say which of the twins was responsible, but one of them posted a video of himself showing off his bottom for a challenge on their YouTube account, which is in their mother’s name.
The NSW woman was immediately banned from apps, email, documents and cloud storage of valuable family photos and videos by YouTube owner Google and threatened with police involvement for ‘child exploitation’.
‘I need a working with children voucher for my work, so I thought if anything turned up about that, I wouldn’t have a job. So I was very concerned,” said Ms Watkins, a nurse The project on Thursday.
Jennifer Watkins was accused of posting child pornography to her YouTube account after a prank by one of her seven-year-old twin boys, Benjamin and Flynn (pictured), went terribly wrong
‘I had no idea they had filmed anything.
‘It wasn’t until I got a message from YouTube saying they’d closed my account that I thought, “What have they done?”
“Then a few hours later I heard from Google that they had suspended my email account, and I was shocked. I had no idea what was going on, or why.”
Her husband Bruce works in IT, so project presenter Kellyn Morris asked him how this happened despite his computer background.
“My boys have quite a free hand and grew up with technology,” he said.
But Mr Watkins pointed out that his accounts were not affected, only those of his children and his wife.
“I was really glad it wasn’t my Google account. That would have been pretty devastating. My whole life is in there,” he said.
“The shocking thing is just the lack of ability to do anything about it. Google doesn’t want to talk to you. Everything is set up as automated as possible.
“It’s just the fact that we had a premium account that allowed us to even get someone to talk to — not that they could actually do anything to help us.”
Had Ms Watkins been reported to the police, her nursing career could have been destroyed.
Jennifer (pictured right) and Bruce (left) Watkins were shocked by the trouble a prank from one of their children caused
“They also made it very clear in the email that they would report me to the relevant authorities if they deemed it appropriate,” she said.
Google’s refusal to help meant Ms Watkins could no longer access her email, work schedule and bank statements, or even order food through Google Pay-enabled apps.
The company reported the video posted by Ms Watkins’ son to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US – which is standard procedure when nude videos of children are spotted by Google’s artificial intelligence.
It was then up to the NCMEC to decide whether or not to report Ms. Watkins to the police.
When the family failed to get the internet giant to believe their innocent statement, the Watkins contacted American media.
Ms Watkins had been digitally locked out for more than a month and despaired over the impact this would have on her career and the family’s finances.
But contacting a US newspaper helped turn things around and Google soon reinstated her accounts.
The company eventually acknowledged that Ms. Watkins had not uploaded any child exploitation material.
Ms Watkins was banned from apps, email, documents and cloud storage of valuable family photos and videos by YouTube owner Google and threatened with police involvement for ‘child exploitation’ (stock image)
“We do not want our platforms to be used to endanger or exploit children, and there is widespread demand that internet platforms take the strongest action to detect and prevent CSAM (child sexual abuse material),” according to Google.
“In this case, we understand that the infringing content was not maliciously uploaded.”
The family made their case public to provide a cautionary tale to other parents who could very easily find themselves in a similar situation.
“Our message should be: set up your children’s devices with a disposable bill,” Mr Watkins said.
“That way, if they do something wrong, they don’t include you as a victim.”
Mrs. Watkins had a simpler and more direct solution to the problem: she banned the twins from using the Internet.