Tuesday 23 October 2007

When online friends spell danger

Full Story:
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0454.htm
Jasmine was horrified to discover her nine-year-old daughter had been messaging strangers. A quick check revealed a trail of messages which stretched back months. "They were telling her she was beautiful, although they didn't have a photo of her. They said she should come to their house. "They said they lived at a place where the school was soon going on a residential trip and that she should visit them," she said. "It is chilling, but thank goodness we have found all this out now and have had the chance to educate our children more about the dangers of going online and the need to keep personal details off the internet." Jasmine's daughter had also filled in a "questionnaire" sent by one of a few suspect e-mailers. It asked for all sorts of personal details - which she had given - including her home address and phone number, as well as asking fun things such as her favourite games, TV programmes and characters. Jasmine's daughter is one of the many children getting online at a younger and younger age. Computer use is widespread. Four in 10 children aged between eight and 11 regularly use the internet according to Ofcom and even very young children have PCs or laptops in their bedrooms (not something recommended by child protection experts). Jasmine is not sure how the suspect people first made contact. Some her daughter had mistakenly believed were friends of friends. They were in her daughter's contacts on her instant messaging site but they mainly communicated by e-mail - typical offending behaviour, say the experts. 'Trusting and naive' According to the UK police organisation, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), offenders will typically make contact in a chat area and then try to get a child into an e-mail or other one-on-one arena.

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