How scammers target children online and practical steps to help young people recognise and avoid fraud.
Scams is deceptive schemes designed to trick children into handing over money, personal details, or account access, often through games, free offers, or fake giveaways.
Children and teenagers are increasingly targeted by scams, including fake giveaways, phishing messages, fraudulent online shops, and social media impersonation. Young people may lack the experience to recognise these tactics and can inadvertently share personal or financial information.
Scammers reach children through social media adverts, direct messages, fake websites, and in-game offers. Common tactics include fake celebrity giveaways, 'too good to be true' deals, phishing links disguised as account verification emails, and offers of free in-game currency. The goal is typically to steal personal information, payment details, or money.
In your child's behaviour
On their device
Teach the 'too good to be true' rule
Explain that if an offer seems unbelievably generous — free V-Bucks, a celebrity giveaway, a prize they did not enter — it is almost certainly a scam.
Practise identifying phishing
Show your child real examples of phishing messages and discuss the telltale signs: urgency, spelling errors, unfamiliar links, and requests for personal information.
Keep payment methods separate
Never store your main bank card on your child's device or accounts. Use prepaid cards or dedicated child accounts with spending limits for any online purchases.
In immediate danger: call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.
Concerned about a child but it's not an emergency? NSPCC helpline 0808 800 5000. Childline for young people 0800 1111.
This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.
Myth: Scammers go after adults with money — children aren't worth targeting.
Fact: Children are targeted constantly, just for different things: game accounts and skins, gift cards, parents' saved card details, and their bank accounts for money laundering. A child's account is often the easiest door into a family's money.
Myth: My child is good with technology, so they'd spot a scam.
Fact: Being confident with devices is not the same as being scam-aware. Scams work on emotion — excitement about a free offer, fear of missing out, urgency — and young people fall for well-made fakes just as adults do.
Myth: Scams are easy to spot because of bad spelling and dodgy-looking links.
Fact: Modern scams use polished websites, AI-written messages and hijacked accounts belonging to real friends, so the old tells are unreliable. Teach the underlying patterns instead: unexpected contact, pressure to act fast, and requests for details or payment.
The big one at this age is free-stuff bait: offers of free game currency, skins or unlocks that harvest passwords or card details. Agree a simple rule — nothing gets entered, clicked or downloaded off the back of an offer without showing you first.
Talk about phishing links arriving in group chats and DMs, and that a message from a friend's account isn't proof it's really them. Turn on two-step verification on their game and social accounts together.
Cover money muling directly: 'easy money' offers on social media that involve letting someone use their bank account are money laundering, and can wreck their access to banking. Add fake sellers of tickets, trainers and vapes to the conversation.
Focus on the scams aimed at their new independence — fake rental listings and deposits, job offers that ask for money up front, investment and crypto pitches, and romance scams. Reinforce that it's never naive to check with you first, and never to move money for someone else.
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