In early August 2025, the South Simcoe Police Service received a complaint from a concerned parent about their child using a social media application known as Likee. Likee is a free, short-video creation and sharing app that allows a user to live stream. Likee has approximately 100 million users worldwide and is available for iOS and Android devices. Likee does not allow a user to mark their account as private, so anyone can view content posted by a user at any time. Furthermore, a profile is not required to access and browse content posted to Likee, and an individual does not need to enter their date of birth before browsing content.
South Simcoe Police determined through their investigation that a young girl had communicated with an unknown individual through the Likee application. Unfortunately, the unknown individual convinced the young person to record themselves engaging in sexual activity and send the videos to them. Once the unknown individual received several videos, a demand was made for more videos to be sent. The unknown individual threatened the young person and told them that if they did not comply with the request for additional videos to be sent, the videos of the young person engaging in sexual activity would be sent to family, friends, and the school that they attend.
Likee is a based out of Singapore, as such the organization and parent company will not comply or action Canadian court orders which drastically reduces the likelihood of investigations being successful.
The South Simcoe Police Service is committed to ensuring that both parents and children are aware of the potential risks associated with social media applications that do not offer adequate privacy settings or data protection.
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Here is what you can do:
- If families share a family plan for cell phone services, a parent can set up a notification system that will alert
them if their child is trying to download an application. Once the notification is received, only a parent can
review and approve the request. - Access to home-based Wi-Fi can be limited to certain times of the day by the users. For example, Wi-Fi can
be disabled during the overnight hours to ensure that children are not online at a time when adult supervision
would not be available. - Ensure that a child meets the suggested age requirements for social media applications.
- Parents should retain the passwords for social media accounts used by their children and if necessary, check
the nature of the content that is being posted or viewed by their children. - Have frank and open discussions with children about online safety and the importance of not communicating
with unknown individuals. - If there are issues that should be reported to the police, ensure that they are reported promptly to avoid
evidence being lost.
Additional information and tips for online safety can be found at www.cybertip.ca.
