Child protection campaigners claim hollow victory over Facebook

All well and good...

...but in my opinion what use is it without parental supervision and education to actually tell the little darlings what is wrong and right. While i'm all for stopping deviants "grooming" kids and stuff like that, maybe if parents actually parented kids would be safer anyway? Of course there are parents out there who look out for their kids and monitor what they do and give advice on "dont talk to strangers" etc but many just let the kids go on the computer and do what they want. Like AC said, if this was a serious effort, add an add in to a browser. Or even better, ban kids from using the internet haha (joke of course)

just my opinion...

Point?

Not sure what this will do? I do doubt (even with the current education standards) that these kids want to go off with someone to be attacked. So if they don't think they are at risk why would they ever press a 'panic' button?

Beer button....

Can we get Facebook to put in a beer panic button. When I click it, alarm bells sound & some one gets me a fresh cold one from the fridge.

panic buttoning...

... will become the new swatting if every website had it, a visit from the paedofinder general to the guy that badmouthed you on FB.

Pointless

What a pointless idea.

Young children should be supervised on the internet by their parents. Not the police, not the Government, not anyone else.

If older children/young adults are stupid enough to meet complete strangers they meet online then they are going to end up in trouble anyway. People who aren't able to spot the most obvious of dangers aren't going to press the button. It doesn't matter if a 50 year old is pretending to be a 17 year old. You simply don't meet strangers you only met online. It is simple.

The unfortunate people who have been murdered by wackos on the internet either had useless parents or failed to follow the most basic safety advice.

A button on facebook isn't going to change any of that.

Panic button

Much though I would like to, I don't really see how a "panic button" works.

If the kiddie being targeted suspects something is wrong then they will either stop responding to the suspected perv on the other end of the wire, or they will tell mum or something. The end result is that they stay away from the perv.

If the kiddie being targeted doesn't suspects something is wrong then they wouldn't hit a panic button anyway.

The idea is all very laudable, but It doesn't add up.

I feel safer already

now if there was only some government funded group children could join to be trained to snitch on their families. Their parents would cry with pride as they are hauled off to be incarcerated. We can only dream.

"Facebook users will have direct access to all the services that sit behind our ClickCEOP button"

oh yeah, what services would those be? Live video feeds of the police eating doughnuts as they download all the new information this "app" will give them unrestricted access to? No doubt laughing at how lame your children are - for their protection of course.

Can't wait to see the first people hauled away off the back of this fishing expedition. Pass the popcorn please.

MSN?

I've been using MSN for years and years yet have never once seen a PanicHere button, anyone care to enlighten me?

"Stranger Danger" still applies online

Softly softly approach is utter bollocks! Kids are a lot tougher and they see through BS like no other sometimes.

When my parents wanted me to be aware of stranger danger, no messing about, "If you go off with strangers, they may take you away and we will never see you again. So don't talk to strangers! And NEVER go with them no matter what!", scared the life out of me aged 6, but made me think twice and be careful when I was out and about.

Recently my little ones brought home a Micorsoft/CEOP sponsored story from junior school. Story about some under sea creatures being cajoled into handing over their info to an octopus in exchange for the promise of free stuff! It was so vague as to be useless! Just make an effort to talk to your kids, explain to them that if they hand over details or talk with people, these people could be sneaky and could be on the make. So be very careful, as they are strangers and should be treated just like strangers you meet when you're out and about.

Title Required

Surely the title for this article should in fact be "Child protection campaigners claim hollow victory over Facebook.. bitch"

Once again,

I am dissapointed by this little fella's failure to make an appearance, at any point:

http://209.85.122.83/2501/24/0/p1002856/keyop.jpg

Sod this kiddy protection button.....

..... I want a widget added to facebook profiles that bars access tounder 18's altogether, thereby eliminating risk to the underage themselves, and the risk of "textspeak" suddenly appearing on my page, allowing the grown-ups to talk without interruption from the ankle biters.

Getting away from humour for moment though.... As has been pointed out, those kids that have come a cropper with Facebook have primarily done so because of their own failure to panic when the going got weird. If I'm correct at least one of those kids was using facebook under their own account, despite being below the minimum age in the FB T's and C's......

I think those parents that use internet and entertainment media as surrogate parents really need to have good long think about the "protection" this button offers......

This CEOP button icon could get hacked.

Imagine the nightmare scenario as *millions* of FB pages have their re-assuring CEOP button swapped for an image of.......

A cartoon man (thinning hair, old raincoat, stained boots) or (worse yet) a set of male danggly bits.

Children traumatized and in need of years of counseling.

Panic in the streets! The end of civilisation as we know it! Run for your lives!

Utter nonesense

Father of two girls here both now grown up but had full access to the internet since 1996. They used to tell me if any perves tried to chat to them they just 'banned them'. This was the days long before we had CEOPs etc.

Let the kids manage themselves, they can do this very well from what I hear. This is yet another job creation measure and isnt useful at all to anyone.

CEOPs have to look like they are doing something, the police must look like they are doing something (usually standing in the street with big guns and Oakley sunglasses trying desperately to look cool), everyone has to look as if they are doing something.

pathetic really.

nuff said

following on from my earlier post

I forgot to say - I hope the useage statistics for the button, including how many actually install it, are released to the press in six months time!

clickage

wicked lets get clicking gonna click every one i know!

more sensationalism to keep us afraid and accept interference from the Orwellian police state in the name of [s]terrorism, pirates[/s], opps paedophiles!

this role is down to parents not the state, please ppl stop walking into this nightmare by conditioning our children to think its ok...

But think about the adults!!!!!!

Can we sue CEOP if some child accidentally clicks on the PANIC!!!! button and then we lose our jobs because it turns up on the CRB Rumour sheet?

Let's keep this "threat" in perspective

Number of children lured to meeting a stranger through the internet. and molested. Fairly small

Number molested by parents/close relatives/family friends. Lots.

Will this actually save any one?

time will tell.

And how will the button change anything?

So supposedly this is being brought in due to the murder of a 17 year old girl who met her murderer on Facebook.

Now let's say we could go back in time and put this panic button on Ashleigh Hall's facebook page... How exactly would that have prevented her murder?

Would it have stopped her from meeting up with the guy who became her murderer?

Given they were meeting up in secret, I don't think it's likely that she would have clicked the button herself.

Was the button gonna jump off the screen and come to her aid?

Oh and apparently she spoke to this person on MSN. And they might even have called or texted each other.

So we should have panic buttons for both of those too... since buttons, electronic or otherwise, have always been the things that prevented crime.

From where I sit, this button will do a whole lot of nothing... unlike educating young people about managing risk and how to mitigate your risk... like meeting someone for the first time in a public place... preferably with some friends around. *That* would likely have prevented her murder.

Now in the Telegraph article it states "“It's not Ashleigh's fault what happened. All we can do as parents is try to and get across to them that there are two sides to the internet.”

I vehemently disagree. She wasn't exactly doing something smart my meeting a total stranger in secret and somewhere private. She absolutely bore *some* responsibility in regard to her fate.

And anyone who thinks a button on a web page would have made a whit of a difference needs to get a clue.

If Jim Gamble truly believes that this button will do more than just be political window dressing that will achieve nothing, then he is definitely one of the more clueless people out there.

Am I the only one...

...who read this and went: if a kid is worried enough to click the "ClickCEOP" button, then they don't need the damn button in the first place - they know enough already. And for the others, having the button won't help them.

Children on Facebook

According to T&C "You will not use Facebook if you are under 13." Therefore I would question the parents first how the hell and why their children are signed up, and as a parent they should ensure at least at home, they have the appropriate settings set up on the web browsers. Seems like a trend from now days parenting, they blame on everyone else when their little one is come across something "disturbing".

Wake up people and start looking in your own dump first.

But it makes Jimbo feel *so* good.

That is all.

The excuse for this was a girl murdered by a guy pretending to be a teenager.

Teach kids on the internet "Things are *not* what they seem. People tell fibs, exaggerate and generally cannot be trusted without some kind of proof."

Get this. If you're an adult who uses the Internet and does not understand even *vaguely* what can happen prepare for pain. EG Friend having laptop trouble goes to shop saying they don't have AV. Shop muppet "You only go on a few big sites, you don't *need* AV for that." (No that is what was said to a friend of mine in a major PC retailer. My comment was 2 words long. The second was "wit".

If you're a *parent* who knows their children have net access and that's all, prepare for *lots* of pain.