17-year-old Ashleigh Hall thought she was chatting with a teenage boy through her Facebook profile who had shown interest and was keen to meet her. Shy and insecure she felt flattered by the attention she received from her good-looking pursuer and convinced herself that this was an opportunity she didn’t want to miss. They arranged to meet up after she told her mother she was going to stay with a friend. Her body was later found dumped in a field near Sedgefield, County Durham, in October last year.
Her killer, Peter Chapman, had lured her by using a fake Facebook profile posing as a handsome and bare-chested teenager. Aged 33, he had a history of sexual offences and was the subject of several sexual assault investigations. He had previously been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for raping two prostitutes at knifepoint and was just released in 2001.
Ashleigh Hall had made the crucial mistake of ignoring the threats posed by seemingly harmless social networking websites. However it is not just imposters and predators that roam undetected looking to groom their next victim online.Primarily social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Twitter and Flikr were developed to enhance the users’ social life. These websites successfully managed to attract a large number of users through their unique applications and offering advantages such as being able to communicate worldwide. Bebo, an acronym for ‘Blog early, blog often’, is one of the most popular social networking website provides its users with options such as add friends, play games, participate in polls and customised profile pages.
Facebook is currently the most popular social networking website with more than 350 million registered users. It is also the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million updated daily. Launched in 2004, it employs over a thousand people all over the world and is available in more than 50 languages. Worth an estimated $15 billion, it is ranked by Alexa, a company which monitors web traffic and ranks them accordingly, as the second most visited site on the planet after Google. In total there are hundreds of social networking sites which results in well over a billion users. With such large numbers involved, it is not surprising that regulating safety issues has turned impossible.
This has led to the examining and updating of safety procedures which were already in place. The government has also announced plans to launch an advertising campaign about using the internet safely. Parents are being advised to keep computers in areas where they can monitor their children’s use. The child protection authorities are lobbying Facebook and other social networking sites to install a one-click Panic button which can allow children to get immediate police help if they suspect they’re at risk.
Are these measures enough to protect young teenagers like Ashleigh Hall? Is there anything more that can be done to deter criminals from playing with people's lives online?
I have a facebook and a bebo page, but I never add people to my friends lists unless they are people that I genuinely know. I think that there needs to be a lot more done to protect young people who are often a bit more vulnerable and perhaps more naive than adults are when it comes to these sites.
ReplyDeleteAs a fan of stalking females on social networking sites I have to say I am most displeased at facebook where the default setting is private, meaning I can only view the profile picture and a select few of the unsuspecting victims friends on the bottom. I can't even view comments or pictures on the persons page. This is most inconvenient.
ReplyDeleteBebo was much better and easier, oh how I wish people would start using it again.
People can make their bebo pages private as well Robert, no-one can view mine unless they are on my friends list. Can't have stalkers such as yourself being able to look at all my private information...
ReplyDeleteOh the irony...
ReplyDeleteI think people need to remember that the internet is still the real world. Children are warned not to speak to strangers in the street, but their parents are usually unaware of who they are tlaking to online.
I regularly use Facebook but only to connect with people I know. I would be very unlikely to speak with any strangers and certainly wouldn't meet up with anyone.
ReplyDeleteMy only issue with social networking is that the effectivity of offering sweets as a means of luring is vastly reduced.
ReplyDeleteI am quite put out.