I read this headline in the morning newspaper. It kind off shook me up. What may seem as a harmless facebook post of our children, in reality it may not be so.
Child rights activists in Chennai have forced authorities to shut down two Facebook pages in Tamil created to attract pedophiles. The pages had photographs of young girls with a number of sexually explicit comments. They were spotted by social activists who immediately contacted the authorities to take it down. One of the blocked pages reportedly had over 3300 likes with comments full of sexual connotation.
Social media giant Facebook has a policy that does not allow nude pictures, but these pages used pictures of children in full clothes, there was nothing sleazy or objectionable about the images – the photos were the kind you and I would post of our children. So technically it doesn’t fall under the obscenity category and hence the website’s algorithm was probably unable to decipher. Also, Facebook was unable to pick up on these pages because both the page and the comments were largely in Tamil and it is difficult to identify regional language words. The online predators could have taken those photographs from innocent posts uploaded by young children or their parents. This has sparked immense outrage all over the state.
Last week, similar pages surfaced in Kerala. After several complaints, the pages were pulled down. There were pictures of children from the age of 5 to 15 with sexually explicit comments. The cyber police had forwarded the complaint to Facebook and the page had been taken down.
But the big question here is, “In today’s world of Social Media interactions, how much should parents share and how much should they refrain?”
Most parents embrace social networks as a way of keeping family and friends scattered across the world constantly updated about the growing years of their young children. While we shouldn’t let paranoia take over our lives, we have to be very careful when doing so. Bear in mind:
- Know how much to share. Never give away exact locations, school names and other such details.
- Understand the importance of not tagging locations
- Refrain from posting updates and pictures on a daily basis. It could entice someone within your circle.
- Use stricter privacy settings
With the perversion and pedophilic individuals all across the web, great caution should be exercised.
I read something similar yesterday and it scared the daylights out of me. I think even if one does post pictures under strict privacy settings, it’s imperative not to give any other detail of where the child is! This is just too too scary!
LikeLike
You’ve offered good safety instructions for parents. In the modern world, this type of dreadful activity is prevelent. Thank you for drawing the situation to our attention.
LikeLike
Hope they are useful
LikeLike
This is shocking! And, paedophiles are stretching their monstrous hands everywhere…😦
Only last month a news in The Daily Mail stirred me a lot and wrote a post on it….
https://maniparna5002.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/angels-and-demons/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, you know I never once thought about it being bad to tag the place where the pictures are taken. Point taken. Thank you.
LikeLike
Ghor Kalyug! Narayan, Narayan.
LikeLike
Sickening.
LikeLike
It is scary! Privacy settings should be enabled all the way to the highest level. And not sharing pictures on a daily basis might help. But still the situation is scary.
LikeLike
Agree with you Vinitha
LikeLike
Miracle baby:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32730294
LikeLike
Creepy!
LikeLike
Was not aware of this so I am happy that someone found out about it.
LikeLike
Hey Ramya,
Had a chance to bump into your blog and I must say I just loved your stuff! Its was awesome to read you.
Will not take much of your time. Will directly jump to the point: I work for Whatsay, an app that allows bloggers and website publishers to create and embed polls into their posts and articles for free.
Just created a poll on your latest post, check it, might be fun to get your readers more engaged and involved: http://goo.gl/UYn4tG
This is how it will show up on the blog (I have placed it on my blog and got pretty awesome response!)
http://learnabouttelecom.blogspot.in/2012/06/difference-between-fdma-cdma-and-tdma.html
You can, place this at any place on the website or inside posts or you can also place it as a widget on the side bar. This can, as well be customized. And it is quite simple to embed: you just need to paste one link wherever you want to place the poll.
Check how to create and embed these polls, on our website: http://whatsayapp.com/publisher.html
Or please feel free to shoot me a mail at shivani@neuv.in to know how to do embed a poll or for any other queries…
Regards,
Shivani
LikeLiked by 1 person
HI Shivani, Thanks for your comment. Glad you liked my posts. At this moment I dont really htink I want a poll… BUt maybe later.. Thanks for letting me know.
LikeLike
Hi there everyone, it’s my first go to see at
this website, and piece of writing is really fruitful for me,
keep up posting these types of articles.
LikeLike