Facebook can be accessed by users of different ages, be it young or old. Anyone can use all the facebook services offered. Since it is a social media site in the first place, users would be able to meet different kinds of people from different places, worldwide. Facebook may be an avenue to meet different people but users should always bear in mind that not all people are worth befriending. Some people should be better left alone considering the fact that they can be dangerous.
CEOP Takes Action
With accordance to the issue at hand, different methods have been presented by different organizations to help avoid the probability. One example of these methods is the action made by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre of Britain of the CEOP.
The CEOP focuses on providing possible aid to secure the youth in using social media networking sites such as Facebook. The first proposal that the organization has presented to the site is the panic button that users could click when in need of help or in a situation stated above. This was proposed after the incident of a serial rapist in Britain who used Facebook and pretended to be a young boy in order to attract the beautiful Ashleigh Hall, a 17 year old. Peter Chapman, the rapist tracked the teenage and was responsible for her death.
However, the social media networking site involved declined the action saying that a panic button is not a solution which gave birth to other methods that the CEOP thought of for the protection of the youth.
CEOP’s Protective Measures
The protections that CEOP offered vary from form to methods. One of the presented plans is to have a button that would directly send users to the CEOP account. The button is called the ClickCEOP. The button could be added and be bookmarked by the users by their will. The CEOP account would also provide which behaviors would seem to be dangerous and which could be suspected. With this, users could be cautious in identifying who to avoid and who to befriend.
Another promotion that the website offers is the different discussions on topics that would affect the safety of the users. Different questions will be answered with regards to the online safety that the users may have. This will educate users to be more careful with whom they socialize with online.
The chief executive of CEOP, Jim Gamble specifies that the safety of the people especially the youth should be as much as possible be on the top list of priorities. Many dangerous people are now to be found in the world especially with the existence of the social media networking sites. The good part about this is that even the vice president of Facebook for EMEA, Joanna Shields approves and encourages users on bookmarking the ClickCEOP button. She believes that this would be a big help in providing protection for the users and that Facebook will want nothing more than to protect its users as much as the site can.
