Facebook and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre have launched a panic button to give direct access to the CEOP advice and reporting centre, after months of wrangling, a rejected request from Alan Johnson and which saw Facebook lambasted by the head of the CEOP as arrogant and remote.
CEOP already has similar panic buttons installed or embedded into many social networking and instant messaging sites such as MSN Messenger. Our first thought was a fun game where teenagers threaten each other with a click, and a worthwhile service is rendered ineffectual by being inundated with a lot of Facebook larks gone awry.
But a spokesperson said that fake clicks had not been a problem in the past. She said: “The button has been around or years, and we hardly see any fake reports. Part of it is that teenagers are more sensible than we give them credit for.”
13.4 per cent of Facebook users in the UK are 17 and under, and the new Facebook button will provide a one click access to a landing page where teenagers can report a variety of issues, which are then fielded out to CEOP’s partner organisations such as Cyber Mentors, or if it is a sexual issue, is passed on to CEOP’s team of intelligence officers who then do a risk assessment and deal with the report.
