If a fake nude of your child turns up online, platforms have 48 hours

Apps that turn an ordinary photo of a real person into a fake nude are cheap and easy to find. The FTC calls them nudify apps, and on 1 October it published a short piece on how to talk to children about them and what a parent can actually do.

The Take It Down Act requires covered platforms, meaning social media, messaging apps and photo or video sharing services, to give you a way to request the removal of an explicit photo or video of your child. Deepfakes count: images that were never real to begin with are covered the same way. Once you ask, the law gives the platform 48 hours to take the image down along with any identical copies it knows about. If a platform does not act, the FTC has set up takeitdown.ftc.gov to report it.

The advice for the conversation itself comes down to three sentences, and they land better said out loud than forwarded in an email. Do not share explicit images or deepfakes, not even as a joke, because possessing or sharing explicit images of children can be a serious crime. Say no to anyone who asks for an explicit picture or video. And tell a parent or another trusted adult if you see one of yourself or of someone you know.

The groundwork most families never get round to is knowing which accounts a child actually has and who can see what on each of them. Tendvane's privacy and accounts check handles the PC half of that, including which accounts are signed in on the machine where the photos are usually sitting.