Worried parents strike back at Bebo and other online dangers

The internet is a wonderful place. It is also the repository of much that is weird and dangerous - particularly to the young and vulnerable. There are moves afoot to ensure that as much as possible is done to make cyberspace a safer place. For technologically illiterate parents that can only be good news

Once bewildered and intimidated by the cyberspace in which their children routinely communicate and network, parents are fighting back and accessing new safety tools and anti-bullying mechanisms to optimise the safety of their virtual enthusiast.

Following a series of cyber-bullying controversies, the avalanche of criticism has propelled online operators to respond to the concerns shared by parents about the emerging online community, of which they are often not a part.

Stories of fake websites being set up to embarrass and harass a student and hackers breaking into a website and changing the content have abounded, much to the embarrassment and humiliation of students, teachers and parents alike.

In the absence of a comprehensive understanding of computers and technological literacy, parents have often resorted to unplugging cables from computers and telephones in an effort to ban any internet usage, only for their child to plug in using spare cables or access the internet by mobile phone.

In respect of recent research conducted on behalf of the Department of Justice, which found that four out of five parents do not monitor their children's internet use because they don't know enough about it, it appears that a steep learning curve now awaits most parents.

In an effort to address the problems which arise online, Bebo, which boasts 500,000 Irish members and 26 million users worldwide, has been participating in an internet task force on child protection in an effort to establish best practice guidelines designed to maximise the safety of young people online.

Since mid-September, an anti-bullying moderation tool has been installed on all Bebo sites, enabling the Bebo member to pre-screen and vet the comments and images others try to post on their site.

Existing comments can be deleted by simply clicking on the "comments" tab and selecting the words and phrases that require deletion. In addition, a "report abuse" link is visible on every single page, so users can also report abuse to Bebo's customer care team, who pledge to respond within 24 hours.

Bebo's newly appointed chief safety officer, Dr Rachel O'Connell, who travels to Ireland in November to discuss best practice guidelines, contends that there is one simple concept online users should note.

"What young people have to realise is that you are not anonymous online. Every website's IP address is unique. Even if fake e-mails and fake addresses are used, a computer can be traced . . . we are working to communicate to people that nothing is anonymous online," says O'Connell. In essence, a "digital record of bad behaviour" exists and can be retrieved.

The site's newly launched law enforcement agency, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), also enables Bebo users to report suspicious and illegal behaviours of a sexual nature directly to the police.

While individual police forces within the UK have appointed "single points of contacts", otherwise called "spocs", to deal specifically with complaints regarding internet-related crime, no such system is currently in operation in Ireland.

However, www.hotline.ie operated by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI) has been providing a platform for reporting material believed to be illegal since 1999. Every month, between 200 and 380 complaints are registered with the website, which primarily works to combat the distribution of child pornography, according to Paul Durrant, general manager of ISPAI.

"We take calls all the time about defamatory material on social networking sites, but there is huge difficulty with defining defamation at the moment and deciding if something is in fact defamatory because of the current legislation," he said.

Each complaint registered with Hotline is duly traced to its creators if the material is found to be illegal and the host country subsequently informed so that it can deal with the breech under its own legislation.

"The key advice I would give to parents is to teach your child to be wary. If they receive unsolicited e-mails, teach them not to give out any information which can place you or identify them," he says.

Durrant's remarks follow a recent comprehensive survey by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE), which revealed that one in 10 Irish children who arranged to meet someone they first met on the internet experienced physical threats and abuse.

In all the cases of physical and verbal abuse reported in the survey of internet usage among 848 nine- to 16 year-olds, the person who introduced himself or herself as a child turned out to be an adult. One in 10 young people said the person they met tried to hurt them.

Director of the NCTE, Jerome Morrissey, believes that a more rigorous registration facility needs to be implemented in other to prevent people masquerading as teenagers on multiple sites using multiple identities. More "proactive responses" from website operators are also required when people lodge a complaint, according to Morrissey, who contend that the rule of responding to a query within 24 hours is rarely realised.

"This is the first time that we are seeing technology being used as an active tool . . . its communication potential has been realised and has come to the fore compared to the past when IT was simply associated with business and commerce," he says.

"Social networking is a very exciting world where people can now explore their personalities and interactions. That has to be praised, but it does raise questions about the need for a moral and ethical tool kit, and that's something parents and schools need to look at."

Simply advising parents to ensure that the computer is in a room that can be easily observed and monitored no longer applies. The era of 3G phones and laptop computers is making supervision increasingly difficult for parents and leaving undiscriminating youngsters who are eager to communicate online open to dangers.

"There is a naivety amongst youngsters when it comes to the internet. They need to have a healthy scepticism and operate the rule that they should never put something online that they wouldn't be prepared to write in a school article," says Morrissey.

While computer software, which filters out illegal material, pornography, unsavoury content and sites of hatred, is often used by schools, it is not perceived by the NCTE as the solution to the problems which can arise on school networking sites.

"Sites such as Bebo and MySpace are not available in most schools now. It shouldn't be about banning the sites, but about barring use on the basis that they can waste important school time. Simply banning something is not the best way to encourage responsible behaviour online."