CEOP – What do they do?

As CEOP has provided support and advice for the company I work for and are all over the flyers and leaflets in work, i've often wondered what exactly it is they do, I thought i'd create a post while I found out!. Although I've heard of CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) as it's a pretty well known name now e.g. i've heard it quite a lot on the news, I don't know a great deal about them, apart from when they were in the news a year or two ago, trying to persuade websites such as Bebo & Facebook to install “panic buttons” on their webpages, and i'm sure many people have roughly the same amount of knowledge.

CEOP's main objective is to eradicate the sexual abuse of children. The organisation consists of police officers who have specialist experience of tracking and prosecuting child sex offenders and are working towards their objective with seconded staff from organisations such as the NSPCC, sponsored by companies such as VISA and SERCO as well as experts from government and corporations such as Microsoft who offer specialist advice and guidance.

CEOP's work is far more in depth than just tracking convicted and potential sex offenders both at home and abroad though, they study how offenders operate and think, how children and young people behave and how technological advances are developing. Which is well needed in today's modern world.

As i've already mentioned (and this may also be how you've heard of CEOP),  A “ClickCEOP” panic button was created to help protect vunerable kids online which has been installed on several websites that young people use including GreatBritishKids.com, Facebook, Bebo to name a few. The idea first came from CEOP's former CEO Jim Gamble who called for the panic button to be installed in March 2010. The idea behind it is that if a child felt uncomfortable or at risk online, they could simply click a button and it would be reported to the police via their ThinkUKnow website where it could then be investigated by police officers.

So what actually happens when the button is pressed? Well...

Statistics

CEOP first came together in 2006 and there's no denying that the work they continue to do is invaluable, just take a look at these statistics:

Key:

CP = Children Protected due to the help of CEOP

A = Arressts made thanks to intelligence passed on from CEOP

SO = High risk sex offender networks disrupted and dismantled. 

 

Looking forward, CEOP has three priorities this year:

• Prevent – to make it more difficult to exploit children.
• Protect – Identify and safeguard children who are at risk.
• Pursue – Identify offenders and stop or disrupt their activity.

And they will also be dealing with six high threats this year which is what they will be mainly focusing on:

•  How children behave online which is putting them at risk online.
•  Children who are particularly vunerable to abuse.
•  Use of developing technology by offenders and those who are vulnerable
•  Offenders who exploit children
•  Offenders who make, distribute or access child abuse material; and 
•   The trafficking of children. 

References:

CEOP

www.ceop.police.uk

If you would like to know more about CEOP then visit their website. It has information on Most Wanted lists and the child sex offender disclosure scheme.

ThinkUKnow

www.thinkuknow.com

This website contains information for parents, carers, teachers and trainers, but it also contains useful information for different age groups of kids too. The 8-10 section has information about how to stay in control on different devices that many young kids have today, such as mobiles and online games. It's worth a look if you're a parent too – just to keep yourself updated!

Hope you've found this post useful. Thanks for reading! CEOP are also hosting a “Safer Internet Day” on the 7^th of Feb 2012, so i'll be looking into what they've got planned in my next post.

@Lizmundo

NB: CEOP suggest that if a child is in immediate danger and anyone is concerned then they need to contact 999.

Gary Glitter On Twitter?

Hi all,

Some of you may have read the recent news articles regarding the Gary Glitter account set up on Twitter. If you haven't, this is the story:

Disgraced pop star Gary Glitter apparently set up an account on social media website Twitter last week. The singer tweeted news of a comeback tour, an album and an autobiography, however the account turned out to be fake and was just created as a “Social Experiment”.

The person behind this account, known only as “Ben” revealed the hoax by posting a link to his blog (Glitterontwitter.tumblr.com) however this has since been deleted for an unknown reason. Ben explained “Let me say that this account does not belong to convicted paedophile Gary Glitter. I am deeply disgusted by what Gary Glitter has done in his life and am not condoning, making light of or glorifying child abuse. His crimes are unforgivable and chilling. I set this twitter account up as a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality. It's been an interesting and eye-opening experience for me.”

He went on to explain that the reason for the account was to highlight the dangers of internet safety- primarily children using websites such as Twitter and Facebook. He explained that Facebook has a strict rule that states that any person registered as a sex offender is not allowed to use their site, however Twitter does not have such restrictions. They didn't attempt to contact him when the account was set up despite being a well known convicted sex offender - however they have zero tolerance for any discussion of child sexual abuse.

Within 48 hours, the @OfficialGlitter account had over 2,000 followers, and had received media attention from several well known organisations and Newspapers, as well as celebrity followers.

Ben says that although most of the tweets were opposed to him being on Twitter, there were a large amount that were positive. 

An interesting point about this is that anyone can set up an account like this claiming to be official.

Anyone can pretend to be anyone else online. An example Ben used in this case is: imagine that a sex offender set up an account on Twitter claiming to be a Justin Bieber fan club. Imagine how many young followers that would get. Now imagine that even with privacy settings on, if your child sees that the club is willing to “follow” them, they will more than likely accept.

The person in charge of that account will then be able to directly message your child privately, as well as having access to all their images.

Very scary thought. Terrifying in fact. Especially when Twitter doesn't even have a “report abuse” button.

There isn't a way of preventing convicted sex offenders from using the internet as it would be impossible to police and it would also “breach their human rights”. The only thing you can really do is discuss internet safety with your kids about the types of things that are acceptable to post & to encourage them to make you aware if they receive any sort of inappropriate contact – no matter who it's from. We'll all just have to be vigilant in this changing world and stay up-to-date with new technologies, privacy policies and pay extra attention to children's online activity.

Thanks for reading

@Lizmundo

NB: I'm not suggesting that any Justin Bieber fan clubs on twitter are run by paedophiles.