Dad warns of message feature in popular music app

ILLINOIS -- A concerned dad in Illinois is using social media to alert parents everywhere about a feature hidden in an app that's pretty popular with young kids.

Brad Summer's 7-year-old daughter loves an app called Musical.ly, which he says she uses to create goofy lip dub duets with her cousins.

But apparently, the app has a messaging component and his family found out the hard way when his daughter started getting some messages from strangers.

So he took to Facebook to share his situation and warn others of this hidden danger.

Brad says the stranger started off by asking, "How are you?" and "How old are you?" But then started asking for photos, and his daughter even sent a few, assuming this was someone her age.

That's when the messager repeatedly started asking her for pictures with no shirt on and asking her for nude photos, saying it will be a secret between them.

Brad says he's proud that his little girl became wise to what was happening and alerted him.

He adds that he messaged back the stranger, saying he's a police officer and that they have documented his IP address and location - and that's exactly what they did.

He wants people to know that his little girl does not have her own phone. She uses one of theirs when they are around and is closely monitored. Musical.ly is not a social networking site and yet she was preyed upon.

His message is for everyone to work together to give our children their safety back. He wrote: "Doing nothing, accomplishes nothing. Doing something, at a minimum gives us hope."

Finally, Brad tells Action News that he used his daughter's pictures in his social media post with the troubling messages because they wanted to put a face to the story and get the message out.