Last week, a hacking group announced that they had infiltrated the networks of a major nursery chain in the United Kingdom. The group claimed that they had access to information and photos of dozens of children, and if the nursery chain didn’t pay up, they were going to leak it all.

However, when they announced the attack, the reaction they got was probably not the one they expected. Rather than having a bunch of parents saying, “Oh no! Please, save my child!,” they basically got a flurry of messages like, “Really? You’re going to do this to kids? C’mon, don’t do this. Be normal.”

Amazingly, that response worked.

In a statement to the BBC, the hacking group, Radiant, said that they were “sorry for hurting kids.” As such, they said they deleted everything that they took, including private details and pictures of around 8,000 children as well as parental contact information, and that they would no longer be pursuing the nursery chain.

“All child data is now being deleted. No more remains, and this can comfort parents,” one of the hackers told the BBC.

Note to any potential criminals: If you want public support, you can’t target a group as sympathetic as children.