Father shares gut-wrenching messages sent to his 7-year-old daughter on a popular app

Updated

Brad Summer, a father from Batvia, Illinois, is sharing his daughter's shocking encounter on a popular app with the hope of protecting kids from online predators.

Summer revealed in a Facebook post that has since gone viral that his 7-year-old daughter, Madison, was using a popular lip-synching app called Musical.ly. The social network app allows users to create their own videos and share them on their profile.

"She used this app to connect with her cousins and make goofy duets of songs together. We have accepted friends of theirs and our daughter believed this was another one. I never thought of someone pretending to be 9 to gain access to my child," he wrote.

According to the shocking screenshots, a person posing as a 9-year-old girl named Jessy asked Madison how old she was. Moments later, the individual encouraged the second grader to send "pics without [a] t-shirt." And when Madison refused, Jessy told her to "make some new pics in bathroom ... without clothes" and that "it's a secret between only us."

Madison then smartly hands over the phone to her father, and he responded by telling the person on the other end that "we have documented your IP address and location."

Summer's post has been shared nearly 80,000 times, and the 39-year-old engineer also revealed that he's had numerous people reach out to him privately.

"Many more apps are susceptible to this types of abuse," he told Us Weekly.

The investigation is still ongoing, so Batavia Police Department detective Michelle Langston, can't share information about the case. However, she did share some valuable tips for keeping minors safe on the internet:

"Parental control is one of the most important things. You should know your kids' passwords and check up on their social media feeds regularly to make sure nothing inappropriate is going on. Definitely check their Internet history logs."

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