How does Securly handle the Momo challenge?

As a Student Safety Company, we recognize that dangerous individuals lurk behind the internet and can lure students into life-threatening situations. Securly's Student Safety and On-Call teams are vigilant in ensuring that we foil the efforts of such individuals by adding appropriate keywords, phrases, sites, and sentiments to our AI engines. Securly is similarly handling the recent Momo challenge to help you protect your students.

What is the Momo Challenge?

The "Momo Challenge" is a hoax about a non-existent internet challenge spread by users on Facebook and other media outlets. Children and adolescents were said to be encouraged by a user named Momo to perform a series of dangerous tasks, including violent attacks and suicide. While some believe it has become a worldwide phenomenon, no statistics support that claim. There are no reported police complaints that confirm that anyone was harmed as a direct result of the hoax. YouTube has also been unable to find any actual Momo videos, and they have demonetized any videos discussing Momo to stop the hoax spread.

Securly’s safety mechanism

As mentioned earlier, Securly’s Student Safety and On-Call teams are constantly looking for new dangers and adding relevant keywords, phrases, and sites to our AI engines. This ensures that any activity associated with it is flagged by our engines and reported to you. So whenever a student searches for keywords associated with the Momo challenge, we flag that search. We have chosen to flag this content due to the self-harm nature related to this challenge. Our vigilance during the peak of the Momo challenge scare resulted in double the number of items to review for our On-Call team, but it was achieved with less processing time than usual.

As an admin, you can also add relevant keywords and sites to your Allow/Block list to tackle the Momo challenge. For example, you can add something as simple as a wildcard to your Global Deny List in the format of *momo*. Learn more about adding custom keywords here.

You can also delegate the management of such flagged activities for Guidance Counselors/Teachers/Faculty via our faculty group feature. This allows you to have such assigned staff members receive alerts the moment something such as this is flagged by us. Here are some articles to help you get started with that.