The rise of online networking has created social and educational opportunities, but that’s not all. It has also created significant risk. The Internet may be the information superhighway, but it has also become a conduit for sexual exploitation of children and teens.

“The Internet has expanded our lives incredibly, but it has also expanded our kids’ availability to predators and lowered the barriers between fantasy and behavior,” said Judy Westberg-Warren, president of Web Wise Kids, an organization founded to educate youth about responsible Internet behavior. According to a recent study titled “The State of Internet Security: Protecting Children Online,” by Webroot Software, 43 percent of children aged 11 to 17 who use social-networking sites reported having been contacted online by complete strangers, while 37 percent said they’ve received a sexually explicit e-mail or pop-up advertisement over the past year.

An April 2007 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “Teens, Privacy & Online Social Networks,” had similar findings: Of the 55% of teens who have online profiles on a social-networking site, 43% said they’ve been contacted by strangers. Although 65% of these teens said they ignored the contact or deleted it, 21% admitted following up on the solicitation. And many observers say these numbers are inaccurate, as children are notoriously unreliable when self-reporting behaviors they know will be frowned upon. “The number of kids who are willing to set up meetings with people they don’t know in real life is off the charts,” said Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security lawyer and executive director of Wired Safety, a Web site devoted to helping victims of cyber-abuse, ranging from online fraud to cyber-stalking and child safety…

Source: iTnews
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=54809&src=site-marq