Study shows teens engaging in risky Internet behavior

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Such is the hysteria surrounding teen sensation Justin Bieber that Anne’s Diary has been compelled to issue a release to clarify the situation regarding a competition to win tickets to his ‘My World’ tour.

In response to speculation on Twitter and from the many emails the Company has received on the subject we would like to announce that Anne’s Diary Inc via the Koini Club is, indeed, running a competition to win VIP tickets to see Justin Bieber in concert on 23rd of November in his hometown of Toronto.

The Koini Club is a safe social network for young people from the ages of 5 – 17 years of age. The site has verified members which make the community one which is safe and secure. Within the Koini Club community users are able to do everything other networks offer plus features such as proprietary instant messaging and chat. All these features offer protection option for parents who would like to monitor friend request and IM requests, making the community a fun and safe one for young people.

Koini (koini.com) has also developed a competition section within the community where users can enter various competitions related to activity on the Koini Club platform and compete against other members to win. Many of these competitions will be geographically related for groups started in different countries but the majority will be open to all members.

The first such competition is for fans of Just Bieber, the teen sensation. In this awesome give away Koini, via its parent company Anne’s Diary Inc, will be awarding one grand prize and two runner up prizes. All winners will receive a return ticket to Toronto for them and a parent/guardian and accommodation as well as tickets to see Justin Bieber perform in Toronto, but the grand prize winner will get the full package:

Grand prize VIP tickets include:

The My World Ultimate Experience:
- Two amazing top price reserved tickets in the front floor sections;
- Two entry into the preshow VIP sound check;
- Two entry into the VIP preshow party that includes catered hospitality and a dedicated VIP preshow host;
- Two autographed photo books or programs;
- Two exclusive Justin Bieber VIP gift bags;
- Two limited edition VIP laminate & matching lanyards;
- Two commemorative souvenir concert tickets;
- VIP preferred parking (where available);
- VIP priority check-in (where available);
- Separate VIP entrance at venue (where available).

The prizes have been announced, however, we are working on the promotional materials and the technicalities within the site to organise the competition. Koini Club will be announcing the competition, its rules and how to win in the next week.

Those interested should follow us on Twitter or on our Facebook Page or join the Koini Club which carries no charge. The company will be discussing the competitions with various media and invite interview requests and statements.

competition · Justin Bieber

(CNN) — Concerns over Facebook’s new privacy policy and the online social network’s recent efforts to spread its information across the Web have led some of the site’s faithful to delete their accounts — or at least try to.

On Wednesday’s episode of a podcast called This Week in Technology, host Leo Laporte, a well-known tech pundit, said he had to search wikiHow, a how-to site, to figure out how to delete his Facebook account permanently.

After finding the delete button, which he said is hidden deep within the site’s menus, Laporte proceeded to delete his account during the online broadcast.

“That’s it. It’s gone,” he said during the show. “And I think that’s the right thing to do.”

It’s unclear how many people have chosen to delete their Facebook accounts in recent weeks. The popular social network doesn’t publish statistics on how many people quit the site.

But there has been much uproar online about Facebook’s alleged lack of concern for the privacy of its users’ personal information, and its clear that some people have become so upset that they’re leaving the networking site, which has more than 400 million members.

Still, the account deletions likely aren’t numerous enough numbers to affect the site’s overall size. Facebook spokeswoman Annie Ta said in an e-mail that Facebook has grown by more than 10 million active users since late April.

iReport: Are you done with Facebook?

In recent weeks, the site has been hit with several privacy bugs and scares that, among other things, made private chat conversationsbriefly visible to Facebook friends. And on April 21, Facebook CEOMark Zuckerberg announced a new Facebook feature called the “Open Graph,” which essentially brings Facebook-like functionality to a number of websites.

CNN.com is one of several dozen sites that partner with Facebook to display and share users’ interests.

Some Facebook users, including Sam Schreiber, say they are bothered by the fact that their online preferences are showing up all over the internet now, instead of just on Facebook.com.

Schreiber, a 24-year-old who considers herself social-media savvy, says she may delete her account soon because she doesn’t understand Facebook’s privacy settings well enough to know that her information is being kept safe.

“People already use them like it’s crack, so I don’t see what the next step is aside from world domination,” she said. “So I just think it’s too much.”

She was particularly concerned when one of her Facebook friends saw on the music site Pandora that she likes the band “New Found Glory.”

“I was like, that’s really creepy. I haven’t logged in. I didn’t give it permission. I didn’t do anything,” she said.

Schreiber said she tried to change her Facebook privacy settings to keep that from happening again, but had to turn to news articles for information about how to do so, which she thought was unreasonable.

Facebook: Read the site’s privacy policy

Facebook appears to be rattled a bit by these changes. The blog All Facebook reports that the site’s executives called an “all hands” meeting Thursday to discuss its privacy policy in light of recent criticism.

And there are rumors that the site may amend its policies, as CNET reports.

The site has had its detractors before. Each time Facebook makes changes to its privacy policy, thousands of users tend to complain.

But interest in deleting Facebook accounts appears to be rising.

If you type in the phrase “How do I” on Google, one of the first suggested searches that comes up is “How do I delete my Facebook account,” a factoid discovered by Danny Sullivan, a blogger at Search Engine Land.

Sullivan looked at similar searches over time and published a graph that shows searches about deleting Facebook accounts have been on the rise sharply since 2009.

“Yes, there’s definitely a rising trend,” he writes in a blog post on the matter. “Over time, more and more searches at Google have involved [deleting Facebook accounts], it appears. In fact, if you go back to Google and start typing in ‘del,’ you get ‘delete facebook account’ as the top suggestion.”

A number of tech pundits, including Laporte, have also written recently about deleting or deactivating their accounts.

The blog Silicon Alley Insider posted a list of these on Friday with a headline that says, “Suddenly, everyone is quitting Facebook!”

The blog lists Peter Rojas of the blog GDGT and Matt Cutts from Google as among those who have deleted or deactivated their accounts.

That blog also posted a list of 10 reasons most people will not be able to part with their Facebook accounts, an apparent nod to the fact that, as Facebook continues to grow and to spread into other websites, it may become necessary to have an active Facebook account to make full use of the Web.

The New York Times also reports that people who once made a career promoting Facebook now may cancel their accounts. The newspaper says Deanna Zandt, author of a book called “Share This! How You Will Change the World With Social Networking,” may delete hers.

“It’s getting harder and harder for me to say, yes it’s worth it, you’re giving up your privacy to get these services, and I have to put my money where my mouth is,” she told the paper.

Tech blogs have asked whether a “Great Facebook Deactivation Wave” is about to take off, and have listed reasons people should ditch the popular site.

Meanwhile, there is a second set of concerns about how difficult it is to delete your Facebook account if and when you decide that’s what you’d like to do.

Facebook says on its website that you can “deactivate” your account by following these steps:

“To deactivate your account, navigate to the ‘Settings’ tab on the Account Settings page,” the site says. “Deactivation will remove your profile and content associated with your account from Facebook. In addition, users will not be able to search for you or view any of your information.”

But the social network will hold onto your photos and posts if you only “deactivate” your account.

If you want to completely “delete” your account — meaning that all of your information will be deleted from view, although some of it may remain on Facebook’s servers for a bit — you can follow these instructions from wikiHow.

The user-edited site lists several methods for deleting a Facebook account. One of them is a seven-step process.

In his podcast, Laporte said one of the main reasons he felt he needed to delete his Facebook account is that having one gives his friends and family members an incentive to join, too.

And, because many people don’t understand that everything on Facebook can be public, Laporte doesn’t think it’s responsible to have an account. By having a Facebook page, he said, “I’m coercing people I’m in relationships with to do something bad.”

Source

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Ofcom, the media watchdog, said that one in five children, 19 per cent, between eight and 12 years old use social media sites such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. This is despite these sites officially having an age limit of 13.

One in six parents didn’t know their children are on social networks.

The report included internet audience data that showed that 37 per cent of home internet users aged between five and seven visited Facebook in October 2009. But it did not examine how many had profiles on the site.

The figures are likely to once again spark a debate about how Facebook and other sites police the age of their users. Though these sites insist that users type in their age, there is no verification process.

Facebook recently came under criticism from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre because it has refused to introduce the CEOP abuse reporting button, which is intended to make it easy for young people to report inappropriate behaviour online.

Graham Cluley, an internet safety expert at Sophos, said: “It does matter that children as young as eight are on social networking sites. At that age they are not sceptical and very easily taken in.

“There are some pretty adult things on Facebook, for instance, not just racy content but scams and predators.”

The Ofcom study found that among the under 11s, 70 per cent of those using blogs or information sites such as Wikipedia believed all, or most, of what they read.

“That’s the problem. When you are that age, you tend not to question the veracity of many websites,” said Mr Cluley.

However, the survey of the 747 children did suggest most were cautious about allowing people to view their social networking pages.

The poll found 83 per cent only allowed visits from friends and 4 per cent made the pages completely private.

Ofcom’s annual Children’s Media Literacy Audit for 2009 also gave an insight into young people’s views on piracy.

It showed 44 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds thought downloading films and music for free should not be illegal.

The report showed mainstream television shows such as The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent were the most viewed programmes among children aged from 10 to 15 in 2009. Among four to nine year olds, Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor were beaten into second and third place by The Gruffalo, broadcast on Christmas Day.

Earlier this month, Facebook rejected calls from ministers and child protection campaigners to include an anti-paedophile “panic” button on its site.

Company executives said including the button on the main section of the site could deter anxious users from coming forward.

Calls for the button to be placed prominently were made following the conviction of a serial rapist for the murder of schoolgirl Ashleigh Hall, who met him on the site.

Mr Cluley added: “I think Facebook should add the button for its own reputation. But if truth be told it would not have prevented the Ashleigh Hall murder. The problem is that she thought she was talking to a fellow teenager, not an adult predator.

“And that’s why it is so important for youngsters to be careful.”

Facebook said it was the responsibility of parents to monitor where they were online just as they do in the real world.

A spokesman said: “Our policy is very clear, Facebook requires its users to be at least 13 years old before they can create an account. Anyone who wants to report an underage user can do so easily on the site and we will promptly remove the account, as this breaches our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which is the governing document for Facebook.com”

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COPPA · Daily Telegraph · dangerous · Kids on Facebook · no alternative

Reports of crimes allegedly involving Facebook have increased by 346 per cent in less than a year in one police force, it was disclosed today. Incidents of abuse or other crimes allegedly involving the social networking site reported to Nottinghamshire Police rose sharply between April 2009 and February this year. The force recorded 13 such reports between April 2008 and March 2009, it said.

Facebook was cited in a case of actual bodily harm, four cases of harassment and one other crime in Nottinghamshire in the past year

In the following 11-month period, this number leapt to 58. This led to six people being charged with offences, compared with three the previous year. Harassment was the crime most frequently reported to involve Facebook in the past year, accounting for 36 of the 58 alleged incidents, Detective Sergeant Harry Parsonage said. DS Parsonage, who manages the force’s e-crime unit, said: ‘For crime that involves communication, Facebook is just a method of communication.

Peter Chapman, left, kidnapped, raped and murdered 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall, right, after entraping her on Facebook using a false identity

‘Essentially Facebook is no different from any other part of the internet.’ Users of the site are becoming increasingly careful and making sure they adjust their privacy settings to prevent strangers from seeing their profiles, he said. However, in the past year it has been cited as a factor in a case of actual bodily harm, four cases of harassment and one other crime in Notts, all of which were prosecuted.
DS Parsonage said: ‘We don’t know what part Facebook played in each offence.
‘All we know is at some point within each crime there is some mention of Facebook.’
A spokeswoman for the site said it was no surprise that it was being mentioned in reports of crimes, given its huge growth in users in the past 20 months. She said: ‘With active monthly users rising from 100 million globally in August 2008 to more than 400 million globally in February 2010, Facebook’s name is featuring more frequently in the conversations we are all having every day and being used as a tool for raising awareness of issues such as knife crime through to political activism in Iran.
‘As such, it is no surprise that Facebook is also mentioned in criminal reporting, especially since everyone knows that the police use Facebook as a tool in many of its investigations. ’The correlation between the growth of the service and its mention in crimes is probably the same for any number of digital platforms that have entered our everyday lives in recent years, from the mobile phone to email.’ The statistics, she added, did not specify how Facebook featured in the crimes, including whether Facebook aided investigations or if the police received help from the company in securing a conviction. She went on: ‘We are committed to maintaining the highest levels of protection for our users.
‘We regularly work with national law enforcement organisations and the world’s leading experts in online protection to ensure we provide the best possible security for anyone that uses the site and we have robust reporting systems in place for individuals to flag any criminal activity that violates our terms of use.’
Facebook came under pressure last month for not doing enough to protect children from online predators after the conviction of a man who murdered a teenager he groomed on the site. Serial sex attacker Peter Chapman was jailed for life for kidnapping, raping and murdering 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall from Darlington after using a false identity to befriend and entrap the schoolgirl online.

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ashleigh hall · crimes · Daily Mail · danger · Facebook · murder · peter chapman · safety

London, England (CNN) — The world’s biggest social networking site has brushed off criticism by a senior UK police officer responsible for preventing online bullying that it is failing to combat abuse.
Jim Gamble, head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Center, said Facebook and MySpace, which between them have more than 500 million users, could work harder to stamp out bullying.
The initiative came as UK charity Beatbullying highlighted Bebo, owned by AOL, and Microsoft’s instant messaging service as hotspots for bullying.
In a poll of 2,094 young people across England conducted by the charity, 30 percent of 11 to 16-year-olds who had been “cyberbullied” had been targeted on Bebo.
Earlier this year 18-year-old Keeley Houghton became the first person in Britain to be jailed for Internet bullying.
Houghton spent six weeks in the young offenders’ wing of Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire, western England, after posting a threatening message about a girl on her own Facebook profile.
Part of the message read: “Keeley is going to murder the bitch,” according to the Press Association.
In response to fears that online bullying is on the rise, Gamble praised an initiative adopted by Bebo, whereby children who fear they are at risk can press a panic button. This allows users to report online abuse, bullying and illegal activity.

If people ask to be your friend or buddy, remember that no matter how much they tell you, they are still strangers and they might not be telling you the truth

Don’t upload anything that might embarass you at a later date

Don’t get into arguments online, this is called flaming and it can turn nasty

Don’t upload pictures or video of anyone without their permission

But Facebook said Wednesday it believed adopting the button would have no effect on reducing abuse and it had a number of measures in place already on bullying.
“The safety of Facebook users is our top priority,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We have a robust reporting system in place and continue to invest heavily in creating the most robust reporting system to support our 300million users.
“We work closely with police forces in the UK and around the world and have trained staff on two continents giving 24 hour support in 70 languages. We are in constant dialogue with Ceop look forward to learning from Bebo’s experience of using the Ceop button.”
On Ceop’s Web site, Gamble said there was “no legitimate reason” for refusing to put the anti-bullying button on a Web site.
He said: “I do not want my criticism to be taken as a swipe at the online industry. The vast majority of players are doing a good job and doing their best to make the environment safe.
“This is aimed specifically at social networking sites. They are creating a public space that attracts young people, children and adults, so they can make money through advertising.
“We applaud that but do not forget while you do that there is a responsibility, a duty of care, to the young and the vulnerable.”
Gamble said some sites claimed technical issues block the button while others suggest companies do not want to lose lucrative advertising space. He added: “It is tiny and does not take up any significant real estate. The bottom line is there is no legitimate reason for not taking it and placing it on a site.”

CNN · Facebook · Internet safety

(CNN) — There are ways to prevent or mitigate the damage bullying can do to a child, experts stressed after nine Massachusetts teens were charged with harassment in the suicide of a 15-year-old.
“Adults can have better control if they know what to ask a child and how to ask it,” said Barbara Coloroso, who has written best-sellers on parenting and how to have a healthier schooling experience.
Phoebe Prince hanged herself in her family’s second-floor apartment in South Hadley in northwest Massachusetts in January, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel said. The teen had endured three months of threatening text messages, her image was scratched out of photos, and books were knocked out of her arms.

Prince had recently moved from Ireland, officials said, and her classmates began taunting her after the girl ended a brief relationship with another teen.

The Prince case is another reminder to keep communication open and non-judgmental between teenagers and adults, experts say. Here are a few tips for parents to know whether their child is being bullied and how to handle it.

• Know that a child who is being bullied will most likely first tell a peer, then a parent and then a teacher. “Always know who your child’s friends are, and if a child answers you, ‘I have no friends,’ that is a major red flag,” said Robin D’Antona, founder of the International Bullying Prevention Association. The group organizes national conferences and conducts training and workshops on how to prevent school bullying.

• If your child confides to you that he or she is being pushed around, do not minimize, rationalize or explain away the experience, Coloroso cautioned. “Assure a child that they didn’t cause the bullying; empower them,” said Coloroso, who keeps a list of do’s and don’ts about bullying on her site.

• Routinely ask your child whether he likes school. If a child replies that he “hates” school, go deeper for details. Does he or she hate the academics? Can he not see the board? Figure out the source of your child’s attitude toward school.

• Privacy ends where your child’s safety begins. Watch what your child is doing on the Web, and check his or her cell phone. If a child wants a diary, buy a book and suggest that it be stashed under their mattress, D’Antona said.

• If your family usually addresses concerns at scheduled meetings, consider giving that up for more flexible communication. Allow a child more freedom when they talk to you. Be open to talking at any time, and consider talking while driving. The child may feel less intimidated because he or she doesn’t have to look directly at you.

Bullying · CNN · Internet safety · Protection · safety

One the questions that websites aimed at young people are constantly asking themselves is ‘how do we keep users interested?’ Koini.com, who provide free parental control software to parents and a safe social network for young people, are constantly updating their network and safe browser in order to satisfy this very question.

As part of the latest changes Koini have partnered up with the ‘WeeMee’ avatar system allowing users to create their own WeeMee for their profile at KoiniClub.com, where you can dress up and style your own online character. “Sometimes kids don’t want to have a real picture of themselves online which we fully appreciate, but rather than just have a standard anonymous avatar for all users we wanted to give them a chance to express themselves via the WeeMee and it is proving very popular with our users”. Said Jorge Sariego, technical director at Koini.

The WeeMee avatars were created in 2002 by the then CEO and Founder of Saw-You.com, Mike Kinsella, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2003 Microsoft began offering the avatars for use to their Hotmail customers with the new service attracting 150,000 users during the first day of the avatars being launched, with the WeeMee website attracting 1.5 million hits daily. In 2004 the UK’s largest social network, Friendsreunited.com, also introduced the WeeMee to their user base and since this time over 30 million Weemee’s have been created across the world.

“The popularity of WeeMees just keeps on building, I understand it is at around 600,000 new avatars per month now, by allowing the WeeMee API to interact with our site we feel that we are giving our users another piece of functionality that they are used to on other sites. Although our browser and social network sites are aimed at protecting our users we don’t want to alter their experience of the web too much so the WeeMee API interaction is an excellent addition to the site” Added Sariego.

The free software and sites that Koini offer provide:

1. The Koini Safe Browser. The parent can download this onto any computer that their kids use and once protection is turned on, the child is unable to IM anyone or search any sites that have not been approved by Koini or the parent. It is important to note that only the parent can turn off use of this browser.

2. Koini Club. This is a social network for young people from 5 – 17 which is totally customizable. From the parent’s dashboard at Koini.com, the parent can now add children and set the parameters for their web experience. For example, if you have a 10 year old girl and you only want her to interact with other 10 year old girls on the Koini Club site then you can do that. If you have 15 year boy and you want him to be able to speak with 14,15 and 16 year old boys and girls then you can that.

3. Koini Cafe. Parents can have fun too, (although our younglings don’t seem to think it is allowed) so Koini created the Koini Cafe where parents have the functionality of the Koini Club but for adults. Everyone on the site will have been verified and everyone is a parent, guardian, or family member of a Koini Club member so when you are chatting you can be certain you are speaking with the person they claim to be.

You can find out more information about Koini and the WeeMee functionality at www.koini.com

avatars · koini · partnership · safety · teamwork · uploads · weeme · weemee · weeworld

It is a billion dollar game of chess being played by 20 and 30 somethings surrounded by Bankers, Venture Capitalists and other investors. The stakes are so high on the outcome of this game, that common sense is being trampled upon by the rush for more dollars and power. Do I refer to political power? International economic power, or perhaps the struggle for military power? I am sorry, I refer to none of the above, what I am talking about is the power struggle taking place in social networking, and our children are right in the middle of the battle that rages around us.

The problems we face with social networking today is that many of the large networks are an exercise in database building. The owners and backers of these businesses want as many ‘eyeballs’ on their screens as they possibly can. This rapacious drive for more and more data from more and more people is a symptom of the closer partnership that is now emerging between technology and advertising.

Let me give you an example. Imagine you were searching on the web for a new car. You fancy a VW Golf. Let’s say you live in San Diego so you go to Google and type ‘VW dealerships in San Diego’. That brings up some information so you browse and think you will maybe visit at the weekend. You then go and switch on the TV and the ads are just coming on, the first ad that comes up is a VW dealership in San Diego. You think ‘Wow! Intuitive’ and make a note of the dealer. This is the advertising technology of the coming years search, TV, digital radio, GPS etc all working together to sell you ‘stuff’.

Now imagine what happen when you throw social networking into the mix. With the amount of data that passes between people on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and others the computers working out all of this data in the coming years will know more about their users than they do! You just know that advertisers will pay huge amounts of dollars for the privilege of using that data.

It may sound sinister but your searches and your social network activity are not far off being used as a trigger for individual ads on all sorts of media, not just the web. Far fetched? Just go to your Facebook profile and have a look at the ad; strangely relevant right? As an advertiser on Facebook I can target pretty much anything. Let’s imagine I own a bar in Orlando. If I want to target 21-25 year olds in a 20 mile radius of Orlando who have ‘party’( as in ‘like to party’) in their profile and a I also want to target my ads more at women than I do men then Facebook will serve up those ads for me all day long for a nice fat fee.

The technology for manipulating data and making hundreds of billions of dollars from selling that data to advertisers is becoming more and more sophisticated everyday and the technology I mention will come. Right now we are in the early stages, collection of data. Anything that stands in the way of the sucking in of as much data as possible is being, and will be, resisted by all of the parties involved. Unfortunately, as we see from the horror stories on ‘To Catch a Predator’ and other media, it is the vulnerable that are the pawns in this very dangerous game to capture the data of consumers of the present and the future.

Still wondering why the big social networks are resisting putting in place more protections for your children?

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Sarah’s mother thought she’d done everything to keep her 12-year-old safe online. She couldn’t have been more wrong

On first impression, the pretty, porcelain-skinned teenager seems incredibly impolite.
She won’t say hello when she meets you, doesn’t make eye contact and just scribbles ferociously on a piece of paper in front of her. At times during our – interview, she stands up and starts – talking into her mobile phone.
The truth is, however, that Sarah isn’t rude – she simply has a problem with strangers, as you might expect from a girl who was groomed online from the age of 12.

United: Sarah and Janet, whose identities have been obscured for legal reasons
‘It’s a barrier,’ explains her mother Janet, 48, whose name has also been changed to protect her daughter’s identity. ‘She writes notes or talks on the phone, so she doesn’t have to look at people.’
But little wonder Sarah admits to being ‘uptight’ around new people. The last time she trusted someone she didn’t know – a 26-year-old man who befriended her on a social networking website – she was persuaded to perform sexual acts on a webcam, and ruthlessly pursued when she attempted to evade him.
And although the predator is now in prison, serving a lengthy sentence for the abuse he inflicted on more than 30 girls and boys, Sarah’s distress is increasing.

It’s not just that she’s terrified he will find her and seek revenge because of her part in sending him to jail, but also because it is only as she grows older (she is now 17) that she appreciates just how sexually depraved his behaviour was.
Only as she learns about other girls groomed online – particularly Ashleigh Hall, whose Facebook killer was jailed for life earlier this week – have the – dangers really hit home.
Ashleigh, a shy 17-year-old who was desperate for a boyfriend, was murdered by serial rapist Peter Chapman, 33, who posed as a teenager online before luring Ashleigh to her death and dumping her body in a ditch.

Ashleigh Hall, 17, was murdered by Peter Chapman after he posed as a teenager on Facebook and arranged to meet her
But five years ago the man Sarah met was no more than a friend making strange requests she didn’t understand.
‘At the time it all came out, I felt all right – I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t comprehend how bad it was. Now I do,’ she says. ‘The upset gets worse as you get older and understand more. But you can’t change anything, so you’re just left with the horrible feelings. I am more angry at him than at myself, but I feel really stupid and disappointed in myself.’
‘I wish I’d listened to the part of me that said: “Don’t do it.” But when you’re 12, you have so many mixed-up feelings. I really believed that he was my friend and that I could trust him – he made me feel so secure.
‘It feels like one of my best friends has stabbed me in the back. It makes me so angry I want to scream.’
Sarah is speaking out for the first time in the hope of saving other children from the ordeal she endured. Her mother, meanwhile, is desperate to warn other parents who falsely believe their children are safe.
They are telling their story a week after the news that the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) receives 500 reports of potential abuse each month.
‘You think it happens only to other families, but this affects thousands of kids every year,’ says Janet.
‘I was adamant nothing would ever happen to my children and took all the recommended precautions – I installed Net Nanny on our computer, with filters and parental controls, and made sure my children knew anyone could be a risk and must be reported. I thought they were safe. I was wrong.’

Teenagers needs to be wary of who they accept to be their ‘friends’ on social networking sites
Sarah, now a college student, began using the internet at the age of 12, soon after starting secondary school and discovering her friends were using social networking sites such as Bebo, Myspace and the then-popular Facebox, now called Netlog.
There were two computers at home, where she lives with her two older sisters, younger brother, her mother and her mother’s partner of 11 years.
‘My sisters were often on the internet in their room, and all my friends were on social networks, so I wanted to do it, too,’ says Sarah, who was allowed to use the family computer – which was in a communal room – only after being warned of the dangers of trusting strangers by her mother, a nurse.
‘For the first few months I only talked to my friends online because Mum had asked me to stay safe,’ she says. ‘But then I accepted the request from a guy I didn’t know to become his “friend” online because I could see we had mutual friends on the website.
They hadn’t mentioned anything bad about him, so I thought it would be all right to talk to him, and we started chatting online every evening. Whenever I was on the internet he would be there, asking about my day and what I’d done at school.’
What Sarah didn’t realise was that her friends did not know him, either.

WHO KNEW?
A staggering one in 12 children who make friends with a stranger online go on to meet them in person.

‘I never mentioned it to any of my friends. I chose to keep it secret. He made me feel like he was my special friend who I could tell everything to, so I didn’t want them talking to him, too. I was bullied most of my life and wasn’t popular with boys, so he seemed the first person to be interested in me, and that was really nice.
‘It was good to talk to someone who was grown-up but didn’t treat me like a child. He treated me more maturely and it made me feel special.’
So Sarah began spending more and more time online – both on the family computer and sneaking onto her sisters’ PC when they went out.
‘It was flattering, and it felt as if all the attention was on me for once, which meant a lot because at that point there were so many of us at home and I was just left to do my own thing.’
A fact which the man determined to groom her exploited as much as he possibly could.
Having slowly gained her trust, after a few months, his once innocent questions became more personal. So personal – and sexual – that Sarah breaks down at their mention and cannot bear to repeat them.
‘The questions were really inappropriate and intimate – things you wouldn’t even ask your best friends,’ she says.
‘They seemed really odd and out of context, but I was only 12 and had never had a boyfriend, so I didn’t know what to expect and whether what he was saying was normal.’
Then the odd questions turned into odd requests.
‘He started pressurising me and kept on asking. I was so naive that I felt I had to do these things for him because he’d been such a support to me. I didn’t want to, but whenever I said no, he’d say: “Nobody has to know.” ‘
So Sarah began performing sexual acts on herself in front of the webcam, as instructed by her new ‘friend’. What she didn’t realise was that he was storing these images on his PC.
‘It felt as if every time I went online, I had to do things for him that I didn’t want to,’ says Sarah.
‘After a while I tried to avoid talking to him, but he would just find other ways of communicating with me – he followed me when I tried moving websites. Whenever I set up a profile on a different social network, he’d find me there. He was really persistent.’
As Sarah grew older, she also began realising how inappropriate his requests were.
‘It happened over a long period of time, many months, and I started learning things in school about sex which showed me it was wrong.
‘I really wanted to get away from it all, but I felt I couldn’t ask him to leave me alone because he’d get angry.
‘He knew roughly where I lived because I’d told him, so I was worried
he’d come and find me. School became an escape simply because he couldn’t reach me there.’
Janet noticed her daughter wasn’t eating or sleeping properly and was always irritable.
‘Yet whenever I asked her about it, she would have an excuse for her feelings – that she was tired, or having problems with so and so at school, or had a big school homework project,’ she says.
Eventually, one of Sarah’s older sisters walked into the bedroom one evening while she was on the computer and saw the conversation Sarah was having with her ‘friend’.
‘She went absolutely crazy at this man,’ recalls Sarah. ‘She started writing him messages threatening him, and told me that if he ever spoke to me again I must tell her. Although the man brushed it off afterwards – writing, “She doesn’t know what we’re like” – my sister’s reaction had showed me the truth.’
So when two months later, having been temporarily frightened into silence, he started asking her to do the same things for him again, Sarah told her sister, who then
told their mother. Inevitably, though she didn’t know Sarah had acted out what the man had asked her to do, Janet was absolutely horrified.
‘I can remember thinking: “What do I do now? This isn’t in the instruction manual – what do I do?”
‘I immediately went upstairs and hugged Sarah and told her that it wasn’t her fault. Then I promised we’d sort it out, and I called the police.’
The police said it was not in their remit, but they directed Janet to the CEOP’s website (www.ceop.gov.uk), where she reported it. This sparked an investigation by the CEOP, and when police raided the man’s house, they found thousands of graphic images of young boys and girls on his computer.
When the case went to court – with a video statement from Sarah – the culprit pleaded guilty and was jailed.
She says: ‘Him being in jail does make me feel better – especially knowing that it will prevent other girls having to go through this. But he’s going to get out one day, and even if he can’t get to a computer, I’m scared he’ll just find a girl on the street.’
It was only when Sarah recorded the video statement for the court that Janet discovered exactly what her daughter had been persuaded to act out.
‘I felt so angry and guilty,’ she says. ‘It’s bad enough seeing your child hurt physically, but with a grazed knee you can pick them up and put on a plaster; with this, I didn’t know how to deal with things. That’s the reason I’m supporting her by speaking out now – she wants to take action, and finds it very cathartic to talk about it.
‘As a mother, I sensed there was something wrong – and, of course, once I found out, it seemed so obvious, and I was wracked with guilt about how I could have missed it.
‘But I really thought she was safe, that I had all scenarios covered. Now I see I was nowhere near. The people involved in these sorts of offences are by necessity very, very devious and clever – they are hunters, knowing what they want and how to get it.
‘These social networking sites have to face the reality that they attract abusers. But the people who run them can make it easier for victims to report abuse by installing safeguards and ensuring that users understand how to complain. That will also discourage sexual predators.’
Sarah adds quietly: ‘I want to save other children from going through this. They have to realise everyone out there is not as nice as their friends. I want to tell people not to trust anyone you don’t know.’
Sadly, that’s something Sarah is in no danger of doing ever again.

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