Study title

In order to identify relevant cases of sharenting leading to minors’ victimisation, the content aggregator Nexis was used to collect newspapers, magazines and journals, blogs, or other types of web-based publications published in English over the last ten years (1.1.2011 to 31.12.2021). The following syntax (as refined by the researchers after tentative keyword searches to minimise false negatives) was applied: ‘(minor OR child!) AND (parent OR mother OR father OR grandparent OR grandmother OR uncle OR aunt OR teacher) AND ((sharenting OR oversharing) OR (exposure near/5 information)) AND (crim! OR harm! OR danger!)’.Especially over the past 15 years, the creation of new "online identities" (the social identity that we acquire in cyberspace) and the expansion of the usability of our "digital identity" (the digital storage of our attributed, biographical or even biological identities) have entailed, alongside many advantages, also new and emerging risks and crime vulnerabilities, as identity information can be misused in many ways and create severe harms. Existing research in this context has so far focused on the illegal access to personal information (e.g. through hacking or social engineering techniques) but has overlooked the risky behaviours of individuals willingly sharing identifying (and potentially sensitive) information online. In this context, an area of particular interest that has been particularly overlooked is the one connected to the sharing of identifying and sensitive information of minors, who are often overexposed online in good-faith by parents and guardians in so called "sharenting" practices. Beyond risks due to negative psychological repercussions in ignoring children's desire to having (or not) an online identity, there are concerns regarding the potential for grooming and child abuse, and the potential for identity crimes (such as identity fraud and identity theft), especially keeping in mind that today's children, in a few years, will be...