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HSI demonstration shows how Instagram, Snapchat and games help predators find children — 'lock accounts, purge strangers, disable location,' agent says
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Summary
A Homeland Security Investigations special agent demonstrated during a livestream how easy it can be for a stranger to locate and contact minors through public social media posts, follower lists, Snap Map location data and gaming platforms, and urged parents to make accounts private and disable metadata.
Homeland Security Investigations used a public livestream to show parents how predators can cross-reference social media, online gaming and image metadata to identify and target children.
Special Agent Dennis Fetting demonstrated searching a location on Instagram, finding recent geolocated school photos and then following linked public accounts to reach individual teens. He warned that Snap Maps and other live-location features can reveal a child’s daily movements to anyone in their follower lists and urged parents to "unenroll" devices from location-sharing and change accounts from public to private.
"If it's locked and things are set to private, I would move on to the next child," Fetting said in describing how predators select softer targets. In a live demonstration shown to viewers, a texted photograph displayed embedded metadata (date/time and map link) that revealed the location where the image was taken; Fetting used that example to illustrate how a single texted photo can disclose a family's address if location services are enabled.
Fetting walked through the practical steps parents can take: set social media accounts to private, review and remove unknown followers, toggle Snapchat's Snap Map to ghost mode, and turn off camera access to location data in device privacy settings. He also urged parents who provide a device to retain password control and consider a "loan" or usage agreement that allows parents to inspect devices.
The livestream stressed that gaming platforms and associated chat apps (Discord, game consoles, VR environments and chat-focused third-party apps) function as modern meeting places where grooming often begins. The agent recommended keeping younger children on-platform with known peers rather than moving conversations to private social channels or personal phones.
John Rich, the livestream host, and the speakers repeatedly urged viewers to take immediate action and to save screenshots of the how-to slides and step lists for later reference.
The segment concluded with practical tips: remove strangers from follower lists, make accounts private, disable metadata and location services, and keep open lines of communication with children about online contacts.
