The British Government eyes Bebo
Teenage networking websites face anti-paedophile investigation:
It’s not just the U.S. and MySpace that are worried about pedophiles …
Networking websites that have attracted millions of young users are to come under scrutiny from anti-paedophile investigators amid growing concerns that children are unwittingly providing material for potential abusers.
The government-backed watchdog the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will say today it has begun an inquiry into the sites after concern from teachers and parents.
They have become alarmed at how children are using the sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and now bebo to display personal details and, in some cases, intimate photographs of themselves. It is estimated that 61% of UK children aged 13 to 17 have a personal profile on a networking site, which enable a user to create their own homepage, exhibit photographs and socialise online.
Networking websites that have attracted millions of young users are to come under scrutiny from anti-paedophile investigators amid growing concerns that children are unwittingly providing material for potential abusers.
The government-backed watchdog the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will say today it has begun an inquiry into the sites after concern from teachers and parents.They have become alarmed at how children are using the sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and now bebo to display personal details and, in some cases, intimate photographs of themselves. It is estimated that 61% of UK children aged 13 to 17 have a personal profile on a networking site, which enable a user to create their own homepage, exhibit photographs and socialise online.
Of the 8 million children in the UK with access to the internet, one in 12 says they have gone on to meet someone whom they initially encountered online. Police say more than 50,000 sexual predators are thought to be online at any one time.
The latest site to come under scrutiny - bebo.com - organises networks around school or college communities, and has attracted 25 million members since its launch 18 months ago. A minority of children, some as young as 13, have begun showing pictures of themselves in sexual poses, semi-naked or wearing lingerie. One headteacher has called in police after discovering more than 700 of her students had signed up with bebo, and that some were displaying images she considered to be indecent. Linda Wybar, headteacher of Tunbridge Wells girls’ grammar, also banned the site from her school and wrote to every parent about her concerns.
“Most girls who have registered have included a potentially dangerous amount of personal detail, including full names, forms, names of friends and, perhaps most worryingly, a photograph. Some of these photographs could only be described as soft pornography, when viewed by the wrong people,” she wrote in a letter. “We feel this lays the girls open to potential paedophiles.”
The Guardian accessed the “schools” section of bebo in less than a minute, and found several indecent images of children under 16. Some girls who have posted their details have also devised a system of adding links to the registered usernames of men who have approached them.
In a statement, the company said: “Bebo has taken the issues of privacy and safety very seriously since its inception and was one of the first social networking sites to partner with organisations like wiredsafety.org to create safety tips on issues such as cyberbullying and online safety. We prominently post links to these safety tips for parents and Beboers on our homepage and all profiles have a ‘report abuse’ link where members can report other members for inappropriate content or behaviour.”
Two weeks ago a 21-year-old media student from Surrey became the first person to be convicted of child grooming offences after one of his victims reported his online advances to an internet policing unit, the Virtual Global Taskforce.
Lee Costi was arrested after arranging to meet a 14-year-old at a railway station for sex. By the time police intervened he had already enticed and had sex with two other girls, aged 13 and 14. He had met his victims in the chatroom of the website teenspot.com.
There is also an edited transcript of a disturbing chat.
The problems with social network and parenting are not just American ones.
Technorati Tags: Bebo, parenting, paedophiles.
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