A MUM has told of her horror after finding out sick perverts had been sexually grooming her 11-year-old daughter on Spotify.
Rachel, not her real name, was shocked and disgusted to discover her child had received dirty messages and was coerced into uploading explicit photos onto the music streaming app.
She found at least nine explicitly sexual photographs saved as the artwork on personal playlists after paedophiles gave instructions on what to do.
But it is thought there could have been up to 23 in total over the six months she was being targeted.
Rachel, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, told The Sun: “It felt like the bottom of the world fell out from underneath me.”
Millions blocked from iconic iPhone app forever after 10 years in major shutdown
One adult repeatedly pressured the Year Seven pupil to upload a photo of herself again and again and again until she eventually did.
This immediately caused her to get a load more followers from people sending lots of requests for explicit content. She ended up with 327 followers in total, the majority of whom are thought to be perverts.
Another man even managed to get the email address linked to the account, which the 11-year-old does not have access to, and messaged it to demand disgusting explicit videos.
Teacher Rachel, who is strict on her two childrens’ internet usage, said more awareness needs to be made around Spotify because people only consider social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram as breeding grounds for grooming.
Her daughter is also very aware of online safety and heartbreakingly said to her: “Mummy, I followed all the rules. I didn’t tell them my name or where I lived.”
Spotify was the only app that Rachel allowed her daughter to use, and it was set up with an email her daughter had no access to. It was also connected to Alexa so they always knew what was being played.
Shockingly, Spotify banned access to the account when it became aware of the explicit images but kept the photos and the playlists up.
Rachel had to individually go through and report each of the nine playlists still available in order to get them removed from the platform.
Spotify’s “secret porn community” operates by exploiting personal playlists. Two people with access to the same playlist can ‘message’ each other by changing its title and description, despite there being no official chat function on the app.
And the explicit photographs can be shared by uploading them to be the playlist’s artwork photo. There are no checks in place to control this.
Google running a secret test for YouTube users – but only some people can see it
Some paedophiles have been using the names of the playlists to instruct young children how to do this and then how to make it private so others cannot discover it, Rachel found.
One of Rachel’s daughters’ playlists was titled “I have Covid so can’t post for a while”. But Rachel, who said her daughter has never had the illness, said: “I wonder whether she was trying to find a way out.”
It is thought they hunt out children by tracking which accounts are liking or following content that is typically enjoyed by younger audiences.
Rachel’s daughter had someone then put her username as a playlist title to make it known they wanted to communicate with her.
Several user-generated playlists still show adult pornographic images when smutty terms are searched for.
Last year the New York Post revealed the hidden porn community on the music app but it was unknown that predators were using it to target children.
Other playlists or profiles found by The Sun show people changing the names of profiles or playlists to a different account's username alongside a message like "trade nudes".
Some also put their own email address as the title and tell other users to send explicit content there.
Rachel, a teacher, and her husband were in the front room during the Christmas holidays when their daughter revealed what had been happening.
It came out when her account had been banned and they couldn’t originally work out why for days. After checking forums, Rachel thought she may have uploaded copyright images as the artwork.
But her daughter insisted she had never done that. Eventually she told Rachel: “I do know what it might be. You can get a new account, it doesn’t matter.”
Rachel said: “I said ‘I need to be able to trust you’. She said ‘it’s fine, it’s fine, you can trust me. I will just make a new one, it will be OK’.
“I then saw an email from a man I didn’t recognise. No one emails her usually - she knows the address but knows she cannot access it so doesn’t give it out.
“I said ‘who’s this?’ She said it’s a friend from Spotify. But you can’t really have friends on Spotify - you can have followers, so I couldn’t understand how he got her email address."
She then opened the email and saw the request for “a very explicit video”. She said: “‘I asked have you been putting up inappropriate photos?’ She nodded and burst into tears.
“What do you do? I said ‘come and have a hug. Please don't worry. Mummy and daddy aren’t cross’. I think she was terrified we were going to be really angry with her.
“She said it’s her fault because she uploaded them. But I think we’ve got the message across that it isn’t her fault.
“I kept telling her it’s not your fault, you are a child. She’s the victim.
“After she went to bed, I looked at her profile and saw the photos. I turned to my husband and said ‘you don’t need to look. You need to know it’s not good but you don’t need to look’.
“It was that horrible feeling that her innocence has gone. She’s 11 years old. She shouldn’t know that this is a thing that people want to do.
“Even some of the language - she shouldn't know these terms for body parts. She’s 11.
“I don’t think me or my husband slept at all the first night. It was constantly running through my head and thinking ‘where do we go from here?’.”
They told the police and NSPCC, who both said they had never come across anything like it before. MP Andrew Gwynne has also raised the issue in parliament.
Rachel’s daughter is also now in therapy and working with the school counsellors, and they sought out help from professional child safety experts.
Safeguarding trainer Gabriella Russo told The Sun: “Anyone who is slightly aware of internet safety with kids knows there’s a certain amount of things to be aware of. People know to look out for Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, but Spotify is not it. We want people to be aware of it.
“We need to start education young. If a kid has access to anything they need to be aware about it.
“Spotify was the only app Rachel allowed her daughter to use, and it was with an email her daughter didn’t have access to. They did everything right.
“Without a shadow of a doubt groomers will exploit anything and any platform. They are everywhere. They hide in plain sight left right and centre.”
And she said it is important for children not only to understand what is dangerous online, but also to understand what healthy online use looks like so they can sense when something feels off.
Rachel’s daughter has struggled to talk about her experiences so far and her mum expects it to be some time until she does, or for the full effects of the ordeal to be known.
But she said she has been noticeably “lighter” since it came out, adding that it is like “a weight has been lifted”.
Rachel's MP for Denton and Reddish Andrew Gwynne said: "What this young girl and her family have been through is absolutely horrific.
"I'm very grateful to my constituent for speaking out and raising awareness of this issue among other parents and guardians.
"I will be meeting with Spotify to seek a full and frank explanation of how this was allowed to happen, and what processes are in place to ensure it never happens again.
"This story reinforces the need for tougher legislation to tackle online harms, and groomers who manipulate digital platforms to commit their appalling crimes."
A Spotify spokesman said: "Spotify takes the safety of minors on our platform extremely seriously, and we do not allow content that promotes, solicits, or facilitates child sexual abuse or exploitation.
“We have processes and technology in place that allow us to detect and remove any such exploitative material. In this case, we found the imagery in question, terminated the user, and removed the content within 24 hours."
