Telegraph : Government guidelines to protect children on social networking sites
by Andrew Redfern @ 2nd April 2008 9:36 am
The Telegraph today released details of government guidelines it has obtained pertaining to internet child safety.
The article states “A copy of the draft guidance, obtained by the Telegraph, shows that the Home Office wants sites like Bebo and MySpace to display adverts for the emergency services to encourage children to call the police directly if they think they are being targeted by people who might be trying to abuse them.
It also suggests sites should take steps to make it more difficult for children to lie about their age and gain access to sites aimed at older users.
These could include offering free software which parents could download to enable them to restrict the websites children visit and the amount of time they spend on them.
Millions of children are using social networking websites intended for older users, according to a study by the media regulator Ofcom.
More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds claimed to have a profile page on a social networking website, despite nominal age restrictions aimed at preventing pre-teens from using such sites.
This means a significant number of Britain’s 11.5 million children may be seeing inappropriate material.
Read the full article here : Facebook, MySpace to carry 999 link
Another report featured in the The Times today said that the Home Office will announce a code of conduct for social networks. A key feature will be that when under18s set up profiles by default they will be set to a high privacy.
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