'Vinted scammer reeled in my 15-year-old daughter'
StockRocketIt was only in the nick of time that mum Kerry was able to stop her teenage daughter falling victim to scammers lurking on the popular online marketplace Vinted.
Kerry, from Northwich in Cheshire, thought her 15-year-old was savvy enough to know what to look for when it came to online fraud, but after overhearing her talking about handing over bank details to a stranger, she realised the family needed to "reassess" their understanding of internet safety.
Kerry's daughter was not buying anything on Vinted, she was the seller, but scammers still almost managed to catch her out.
"I was a near miss and it was very much a learning experience and that's how we dealt with it at home," Kerry said.
Kerry's daughter, like thousands of other young people in the UK, was using Vinted to sell some clothes to raise extra pocket money over the summer holidays last year.
Within 30 minutes of posting a top on the buying and selling platform, an account sent her a message offering to pay the full £15 asking price, with none of the haggling that is often part of the bargain-hunting Vinted culture.
Kerry said although her school-aged daughter had bought items from Vinted before, this was her first attempt at using it to sell.
When she got a message containing a link to an external website unrelated to Vinted, she did not realise she was being targeted by a fraudster.
The link asked her to input her card details which she did.
A short time later the scammer messaged asking her how much money was in the account - and she told them it contained less than £20.
No doubt hoping for a bigger bounty, the scammer said she needed to add another card to the site linked to an account containing more than £250.
Before things took a disastrous turn, Kerry overheard her daughter talking about the request.
"I basically intervened and said hang on what's going on?" Kerry said.
"She'd asked us for another card to use, and immediately when she said that I said 'hang on this sounds extremely dodgy'.
"This doesn't sound like it's proper, and it doesn't sound like a legit Vinted transaction."
Vinted told the BBC the safety of its members was a "top priority" and said its help centre offered safe-trading advice including not having conversations off the platform.
It also said its guidelines state members should be 18 when setting up an account.
Vinted said accounts could implement security measures such as blocking duplicate accounts being created, adding phone verification and identity checks for suspicious behaviour.
VintedKerry immediately blocked her daughter's card and told her to delete the Vinted account.
"To be perfectly honest I was very angry," she said.
"I was angry that she had fallen for it, but I put that down to inexperience and naivety.
"I was extremely angry that people could prey on others and to be perfectly honest I was relieved that actually I was around so I could stop anything further from happening."
'Anybody can fall for it'
For Kerry, the attempt to target her daughter has made her realise young teenagers are not as tech-savvy as she initially thought.
Kerry said: "She had reached an age where we thought we didn't have to keep banging on about things, and re-iterating things to her all the time.
"But obviously scammers are out there, anybody can fall for it and it was just a shame that somebody had tried to scam her at that point."
Kerry said her daughter was "grounded from selling for a while" and while she felt embarrassed the experience had "opened her eyes".
"I think when they're younger, when they're at primary school, you bang on about internet safety and they know about not talking to strangers online and all the things that go with it," she said.
"But I think some teenagers - they're 15 or 16 - when they start to emerge as young adults and they're given that little bit of extra freedom I think sometimes they can forget."
According to research gathered by the mobile network and broadband provider Virgin Media O2 ahead of Safer Internet Day this week - more than four in 10 of 1,000 teenagers surveyed said they had clicked on a link in a scam text that downloaded harmful software onto their devices.
The research was conducted as part of a campaign called Find the Right Words, aimed at encouraging parents to have conversations with their kids about online safety.
Online safety body Internet Matters said parents should have regular conversations with their teenagers about avoiding scams.
Ghislaine Bombusa, content & digital director at the non-profit body, said: "Simple actions such as verifying the source of messages and encouraging teens to 'Stop! Think Fraud' can make a world of difference.
"But we can't emphasise the importance of having regular conversations with children about their online activities enough."
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.