By Lisa Burroughes, 15 March 2001 16:45
NEWS The report - which isn't due to be published until next week - calls for the creation of a kitemarking programme for chatrooms by the end of this year, as well as a major marketing campaign to educate parents and children of the dangers of using online discussion rooms. It also calls for sites to develop reporting tools such as panic buttons. The report from the Internet Crime Forum draws together expertise from the internet industry, child protection specialists and police officers. It quotes statistics from a US study that one in five children are approached in chatrooms and asked questions of a sexually explicit nature. Roland Perry, director of public policy at the London Internet Exchange (Linx) and a member of the report's steering committee, questioned the reliability of the statistics used. He claimed they are "unreliable" and overestimated because they are all drawn from one study in New Hampshire. "There have only been a handful of incidents in the UK," he said. Perry added that this underlines the real problem in the UK - that there is no procedure for police to register whether a crime is internet-related. "Not having adequate statistics can then be a stumbling block when it comes to getting funding to fight cyber crime," he said. The kitemarking programme could include having a mediator watching over chatrooms, as well as establishing the parameters that would make a service child-friendly. And ISPs will be encouraged to take a more active role in monitoring which sites, hosted on their networks, are the target of inappropriate behaviour. In addition Lord Bassam, Home Office minister, told the BBC that the Home Office was "actively considering a review" on whether police officers should be able to prosecute an adult for luring a child with the intention of sexually exploiting them. A spokeswoman for Child Line, the telephone helpline for children, welcomed the report. She said: "The Children's Charity Coalition for Internet Safety has long called for moderation of internet chatrooms." However, she declined to comment on the specifics of the report until it is published next week.
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1. anonymous
I would like to know how to report an individual that request's child porn and solicits child porn in msn chat rooms,this individual asked me if i had any nude or sexual pictures of my daughters, who are all under the age of 11. he is also doing the same in yahoo chat rooms.