How does Securly handle the Momo challenge?

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

What is the Momo Challenge?

The "Momo Challenge" is a hoax about a non-existent internet challenge that was 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 that it has become a worldwide phenomenon, there are no statistics to 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 not been able to find any actual Momo videos and they have demonetized any videos discussing Momo in an effort to stop the spread of the hoax.

Securly’s safety mechanism

As mentioned earlier, Securly’s student safety and on call teams are constantly on the lookout for any new dangers and add 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. In fact, 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.