How is grooming different online?

• Online grooming can be faster. Many people mistakenly believe that they are anonymous online, and take greater and more frequent risks.  People online often come to trust an online acquaintance more quickly  than  they would a person they have met face-to-face (offline). In addition, as online technologies speed up communication (especially emailing and texting), groomers have many more opportunities to interact with their victims.

• Groomers can combine their efforts to gain more information about their victims with searches of online databases, such as online phone books, profile searchers etc. Often victims of online grooming do not realise that the groomer already knows a lot of personal information about them that they found elsewhere online.

• Groomers can use online technologies such as images (pics), videos, texts, email, voice transmission, viruses and Trojan programs to aid them in the grooming and abusing processes.

• It is very easy for an online groomer to mask their real identity, especially their age and gender. They can lie in what they type (or say) and also use pics of other people and say they are images of themselves.

• Online grooming is usually a private interaction between the groomer and their victims, and is usually very secretive and hidden from other people. For example, if the groomer has the victim’s mobile phone number they can easily communicate with the victim from a distance, with no one else ever seeing the victim and the groomer together. The groomer might even be in a different country to the victim.

• Online grooming does not have to adhere to the usual limitations of time and access. Victims can be groomed at all hours of the day and night, at home and at school. For lonely or isolated young people this perceived company/friendship might be very attractive.

• Online grooming allows groomers to be very specific and selective in the kind of person they want as a victim. For example, a groomer can select a victim by the way they look, or by their age, from a vast number of potential victims.

• Online groomers can groom a number of victims at the same time. In addition, if the victim rejects their advances, they can ‘disappear’, change their identity and reappear as ‘someone else’, and approach the same victim, but this time wiser to what that victim’s limits and preferences are.