• @webmums: Hi Nikki, our blog is http://www.parentalcontrol.co.uk - it includes a daily round up of news about protecting children online. #

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Today’s news is filled with articles in response to the story of Ashleigh Hall, who was murdered by a man she met on Facebook.

Public bodies have been banned from using internet companies that do not block websites with child sex content. The ban was announced by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and comes amid growing concern over how sex offenders are using the interest to communicate with children online. The OGC asked all government departments to only deal with contractors who agreed to block a list of sites known to carry abusive images. The list, which is updated twice daily, contains between 500 and 800 websites and is maintained by the internet Watch Foundation.

Facebook has been condemned for refusing to implement the official paedophile alert button. The alert button allows children who fear they are being targeted to contact CEOP directly and allows their complaints to be investigated by the police.

However, from our point of view, anyone in their right mind can see that such a button is a complete waste of time, used only to promote ineffective quangos rather than provide online protection for young people.

Facebook should not receive any blame for Ashleigh’s murder. Even if the button had been present, she would not have clicked it, as she did not believe she was in danger. As far as she knew, the person she was speaking to was a teenage boy that genuinely liked her – so why would she even consider reporting this as abuse?

The pair spoke on MSN chat sites, which do carry the CEOP button yet she did not report any suspicious behaviour – as there was none to her knowledge. CEOP’s ‘Report Abuse’ button is utterly useless when users disguise themselves as normal individuals in order to befriend innocent children, as their young victims are unaware of the potential danger.

There is absolutely nothing to stop registered sex offenders and paedophiles from creating false profiles on social networking sites. Simply entering a pseudonym and uploading a fake picture gives them access to communication with millions of children all over the world. What’s also worrying is that although the minimum age to use social networking sites such as Facebook is 13, there is nothing to stop under age children from lying about their date of birth in order to join a site and start chatting to strangers.

Rather than implementing pointless buttons and ineffective age restrictions, we need to address the source of the problem – educate children properly on the dangers of the internet and make parents realise that it’s their responsibility to know what their kids are doing online. If children suspect online abuse or suspicious behaviour, they should speak to their parents who can step in and manage the situation much more effectively than an electronic button ever can.

The lack of parental influence in Ashleigh’s case is discusses in an article on the Daily Mail website by journalist Allison Pearson, who questions why her mother allowed her daughter to meet a stranger from the internet in the first place. Mrs Hall said she had been powerless to stop her daughter going out to meet Chapman.

‘You tell them to be careful, but she said she was meeting a 15-, 16-, 17-year old or whatever age he said he was. So, of course, she was going to meet him. He was a nice-looking boy. I couldn’t have stopped it and I wouldn’t have stopped it,’ she said.

Pearson quite rightly comments, “I have a teenage girl of my own in the house, a creature with a whim of iron, so I know how hard it can be. But what does Andrea Hall mean by ‘powerless’ to stop her? She was Ashleigh’s mother. Her guide and her protector, a handrail to hold onto all her life. Yet Andrea allowed her daughter, who appears to have been a virgin, to go out to meet a total stranger with the clear expectation of spending the night with him.”

You can read Allison Pearson’s full article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1256792/ALLISON-PEARSON-A-mothers-love-means-saying-no.html

Peter Chapman has been jailed for life after the kidnap, rape and murder of teenager Ashleigh Hall. 33 year old Chapman posed as a teenager on Facebook to lure 17 year old Ashleigh into meeting him.

Facebook has been strongly criticised over its lack of privacy and child safety. Today, the site issued a warning after Ashleigh’s case, urging members not to meet strangers they only know from the internet and exercise ‘extreme caution’. It made the rare public statement following Ashleigh’s appalling case, which demonstrates how easy it is for online predators to trap victims.

Facebook has been accused of a ‘glaring failure’ by not having a Child Exploitation Online Protection button on its site, which allows users report suspicious activity. Ashleigh’s case shows how easy it is for teenagers to be targeted by sex offenders who can easily fake their identities online and then arrange to meet them.

Astonishingly, dozens of other young women were prepared to send explicit photos of themselves to the teenager’s killer - despite never having met him.

The Daily Mail reports that Chapman had met Ashleigh through Facebook on September 21, 2009, using the bogus photograph of a handsome boy in his late teens and a new identity, Peter Cartwright.

Graham Reeds, QC, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court: ‘She was excited about meeting the person she thought was an attractive 19-year-old lad, who had a Facebook page showing his picture, and who had been sending her suggestive text messages.

‘However, what she did not know was that all of these text messages and the computer chat were from this defendant: A 32-year old man who at the time was living out of the back of his car.’

They arranged to meet - with Chapman pretending to be ‘Peter’s dad’ to explain why he looked nothing like the photo - on October 25 last year.

He drove her to a secluded area called Thorpe Larches near Sedgefield in County Durham. Once there Chapman forced her to perform a sex act before he bound and gagged her with duct tape, wrapping so much around her head that she suffocated to death. He dumped her body in a ditch and drove off.

After his arrest, Chapman was taken to Middlesbrough police station where he asked to see a detective and confessed: ‘I killed someone last night. I need to tell somebody from CID where the body is… It hasn’t been reported yet.’

Mrs Hall, 39, wept yesterday as horrific details of her daughter’s last few hours were revealed in court. She said later: ”Something more should have been done to stop him. He had someone else’s photo on his (Facebook) page. It’s an awful thought that there is a boy out there and this man was using his photo to prey on young girls. It is unimaginable what my family and I have been through.’

As Chapman began his sentence, her distraught mother Andrea begged: ‘Parents - ask your kids to tell you who they are talking to online.’

Is there such a thing as internet addiction?

The Times questions if online games addicts should be treated in the same way as drug addicts and alcoholics.

Online Gamers Anonymous offers a 12-step programme to help compulsive players to wean themselves off online games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Final Fantasy. David Smallwood, the addiction treatment progamme manager at The Priory in London, believes that such games are particularly addictive for young men.

“What then happens is that kids become withdrawn, their schoolwork suffers because they are not doing homework and they may develop an addiction to skunk because they are locked in a room. Plus there’s the problem of not eating, as they have no time to eat in the middle of a battle.”

Sometimes it is the parents who have a problem. On Gamerwidow.com, other halves of avid players vent their frustration at failing marriages. One “widow” wrote recently: “At first I thought that [gaming] was better than him being in a bar, but he started to become detached from even me. For years I begged him to please come to bed — sometimes he would go to work on just one hour of sleep.”

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7052999.ece

Anti-social truth about these social networkers

In her column in the Daily Mail, Janet Street-Porter writes about the serious impact of online bullying, especially on social networking websites.

Social networking sites are impossible to police because of the sheer volume of material, with the result that a huge amount of content is highly controversial. A quick trawl shows how gangs use these sites to post threatening material intended to impress rivals and scare off detractors.

The internet is the place where these gangs post their threats and brandish their weapons, and yet the police seem powerless to do anything about it until someone has been harmed.

Rhys Jones was murdered in Liverpool in 2007 by a member of the Croxteth Crew, and five other gang members were convicted. The Croxteth Crew and their local rivals posted lurid pictures of themselves on social networking sites for months before the murder. Brandishing guns and knives is one form of aggression; sarcasm and innuendo is another.

Last week, an inquest heard that 15-year-old Holly Grogan committed suicide by jumping off a bridge after being bullied on Facebook. There are countless other examples of young people killing themselves because they could not deal with this modern form of torture.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1256191/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Anti-social-truth-social-networkers.html

Europe threatens web openness

A treaty being negotiated in secret could force internet service providers to monitor internet traffic and services and risk the openness of the web, according to the European Internet Service Providers Association (EuroISPA).

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a series of negotiations aimed at preventing counterfeiting both on and offline. Taking place between the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Mexico, all negotiations have so far been held in secret, although leaks have become more extensive.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7400075/Europe-threatens-web-openness.html

US eases Cuba, Iran, Sudan sanctions to allow freer web

The US treasury department has eased sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Sudan to help further the use of web services and support opposition groups.

US technology firms will now be allowed to export online services such as instant messaging and social networks. Companies had not offered such services for fear of violating sanctions.

Opposition supporters in Iran used social networking sites and services to organise protests after the country’s disputed presidential poll last year.

The US Treasury said exports would be allowed of services related to web browsing, blogging, e-mail, instant messaging, chat, social networking and photo- and movie-sharing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8556341.stm

Dr John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has stated that children today are harder to teach due to internet culture leading them to expect instant gratification.

In his speech yesterday, he commented, “nobody under the age of 21 would subscribe to the dictum of Mae West that “anything worth doing is worth doing slowly”. He also added that teacher’s jobs have become significantly harder over the last 10 years as they have to compete for youngsters’ attention against the internet, computer games, TV and celebrity culture.

Dr John Dunford

Children are also increasingly reluctant to put real effort into their studies because they expect success to be instant.

Dr Dunford added that young people spend an average of 1.7 hours per day online, 1.5 hours on games consoles and 2.7 hours watching TV. “They live in a celebrity-dominated society where success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,’ he said.  “It is difficult for teachers to compete. Success in learning just doesn’t come fast enough.”

Dr Dunford’s comments were seen as a rebuke to Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove, who wants a return to a traditional curriculum. “To engage the impatient young people of generation Y, something more is needed.  This means ensuring not so much that young people learn more, but that they become better learners.”

Korean child ’starves as parents raise virtual baby’

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said. The pair fed their own premature baby just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe, the official Yonhap news agency reported.

Police officer Chung Jin-won told Yonhap they “lost their will to live a normal life” after losing their jobs. He said they “indulged themselves online” to escape from reality. The 41-year-old father and his 25-year-old wife were arrested in the city of Suweon, south of Seoul, earlier this week, five months after they reported the death of their baby.

An autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition. The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online, police said on Friday.

The game enables players to interact with Anima and as they do so, help her to recover her lost memory and develop emotions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8551122.stm

Fake drug scam hijacks UK college websites

UK academic institutions have unwittingly become the accomplices of criminals selling fake drugs online as a security firm has discovered many organisations using the .ac domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering the fake pills.

The scam exploits software flaws to piggyback on the computing resources of the colleges and universities. Researchers at security company Imperva believe “thousands” of organisations may have fallen victim.

In most cases, said Mr Shulman, the spammers have exploited vulnerabilities in a widely used technology called PHP. Many organisations use this technology to make websites more interactive.The injected code included search terms associated with drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and many others. Also included was code that spotted when a visitor arrived at a compromised site from Google.

When combined, the code meant that when a person searched for in the drugs online, the universities and colleges web addresses would pop up in the top results. Anyone clicking on the link would then be re-directed to a fake pharmacy peddling counterfeit pills.

At all other times a visitor would get through to the proper site. Typing in a web address would also lead straight to the real site.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8550219.stm

Coming to a screen near you: an online tutor

The Telegraph reports on the world of online tutoring, where teachers can communicate with students on a global basis using webcams and microphones.

“I know that parents throw up their hands at the mention of today’s screen culture,” says Will Orr-Ewing, founder of upmarket Keystone Tutors. “The truth is, though, that children feel it’s far less of a chore to sit down in front of a computer than it is to sit down in front of a pile of books. And if anything, an online teaching session is more structured than a face-to-face situation, because only one person can speak at a time.” That’s because spoken communication comes down the computer phone-line hook-up known as Skype (free of charge). Meanwhile, written communication takes place on the computer screen; both tutor and pupil can write or draw on a computer-screen “whiteboard”, which performs the function of a shared blackboard, suspended in cyberspace.

So what do parents think of online tutoring? “I was very impressed,” says father of four Nicholas Wright, from Bexley, in Kent, who has used Home Tutoring Online for two of his children. “From our point of view, we didn’t have to keep taking the children to and from the tutor’s house,” Wright says. “We also got regular, detailed reports on how the children were progressing. With a real tutor, you only ever get rather vague feedback.

“Results-wise, the tutoring got our son up from a C in maths GCSE to a B, which is what he needed if he was going to achieve his ambition of doing maths at A-level.”

“It’s a matter of quality control,” says Helen Spiegelberg, of Greater London Tutors. “Our tutors are CRB [Criminal Records Bureau} checked, and have all attended our compulsory training seminar.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7361509/Coming-to-a-screen-near-you-an-online-tutor.html

The Telegraph reports that a teaching assistant accused of using Facebook to mock a four-year-old who cried in class has been suspended.

Yasmine Judge allegedly posted a message on the social networking site saying she found it “funny” when Faye McDonnell burst into tears after being punished. Parents have started a petition demanding that she is not allowed to return to work at Lowerhouses CE Junior and Infant School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

“She has trouble breathing and when she gets upset she goes red and starts breathing heavily. Faye’s mum Louise McDonnell, 24, said: “If the children do something wrong they have to go and sit under the thinking tree, which is a paper tree on the wall. They have to think about what they did wrong. It’s supposed to be a positive thing rather than just telling the child off. Ms Judge sent Faye to sit under the tree. Faye says she didn’t do anything wrong but Ms Judge didn’t allow her to explain herself. She had to stand there for three or four minutes.

“She has trouble breathing and when she gets upset she goes red and starts breathing heavily. She’s a very confident little girl, very outspoken. She really enjoys school most of the time and she wouldn’t tell me why she didn’t want to go to school. I was so angry that the staff didn’t listen to her. School is supposed to be fun at that age.”

Ms McDonnell’s anger grew when she heard that Ms Judge had mocked her daughter on Facebook.

She said: “The following day four or five other parents told me about the message on Facebook. Apparently she wrote about how funny it was when Faye was crying under the thinking tree. I wanted to know what had gone on but when I got to the school Miss Judge had already been sent home.”

Ms McDonnell then spoke to the school’s headteacher Paul Scrimshaw.

She said: “He told me he was sorry and that he didn’t approve of it. The school offered me an apology at first but I don’t think an apology is good enough.”

Ms Judge, 20, is still suspended and the message has been deleted from Facebook. Ms McDonnell has now gathered 60 signatures for a petition demanding that the teaching assistant is barred from returning to the school.

“Mr Scrimshaw has told me that if she does come back to work it will be with the older children,” she said. “But Faye would still see her in the playground and on school trips. If Ms Judge goes back I will pull Faye out of the school. I don’t want my daughter being unhappy.”

A Kirklees Council spokesman said: “A disciplinary process involving a teaching assistant is ongoing and we are unable to comment about this individual case. However, the school and the council are working closely together to resolve the issue.”

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7359339/Teaching-assistant-who-mocked-crying-pupil-on-Facebook-suspended.html

Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent for the BBC, has posted an article that discusses the technology revolution in schools that has taken place in the last 10 years.

After billions of pounds have been spent fitting out classrooms with the latest IT equipment, politicians and teachers alike are questioned if the huge investment is really providing children with what they need.

Rory speaks to the head teacher of Bristol Brunel Academy, a school that has 400 desktop computers for 1,000 pupils and provides every child in years seven and eight with a netbook computer of their own.

The projectors, electronic whiteboards, a wireless network and a swipecard electronic registration system in place at the school all adds up to about £1.5m for the initial fitting-out, and then big running costs every year.

When asked if the money had been well spent, the head teacher insisted that overall the school had got good value. But he conceded that a swipecard registration system had not worked - teachers preferred to register pupils themselves, albeit using an electronic system. And the wireless network had indeed fallen over under the strain of hundreds of students trying to use it at once. The school had needed to spend extra on a new one from a different supplier though the principal was hazy about how much that had cost.

Rory states that no one he spoke to wanted to go back to chalk and talk, dump the computers, and leave children to make their own way in the digital age. But there was a growing recognition that spending big sums on kit did not necessarily deliver better education.

Read the full article online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/03/are_we_building_schools_for_th.html

Research conducted by YouGov has revealed that 58% of teachers would like parents to help more with their child’s learning and more than one-third of parents want to be more involved in the youngster’s schooling.

But with half of mothers and fathers only seeing their child’s teacher once a term, parents and staff both said they wanted more opportunities to discuss feedback about pupils in less formal situations than at parents’ evenings.

Two-thirds of mothers and fathers said email would be a good way to discuss any issues, while 22% said they would like to be able to text or swap messages over the internet. One in five parents in wanted to be able to contact their child’s teachers through social networking sites such as Facebook.

The BBC reports that an ex-army sergeant has been jailed for five years for directing child sex abuse films thousands of miles away via his webcam.

Michael Charnley, 52, of Denbigh, admitted a variety of offences, including four charges of inciting children to engage in sexual activity. Judge Philip Hughes, at Mold Crown Court, said in some cases the victims’ “distress is audible”.

The court heard he paid about £20 a time online to tell adults what to do to their victims. The children were all aged under 13, and one of them was just two.

North Wales Police, who work with law enforcement agencies around the world, arrested him and found 10,000 images and 356 videos of child sex abuse. Charnley was ordered to register with police as a sex offender for life, and a sexual offences prevention order was made in a bid to control his activities on the internet.

He admitted 17 offences of making child sex videos with 31 similar offences taken into consideration, two charges of possessing the images, and four of inciting children to engage in sexual activity - which carries a maximum life sentence.

Judge Phillip Hughes told him: “That involved you entering a chat line on your computer and talking to other adults in another country.” You gave them instructions so that the children were videoed on a camcorder as sexual acts were performed on them at your direction.”

He added: “Because of what you did these children were sexually abused and sometimes their distress is audible.”

The court heard Charnley has served 22 years in the British army and was discharged at the rank of sergeant.

Access the original article online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/8545556.stm