Latest Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre Stories

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children Expand Efforts by International Law Enforcement to Curb Problem ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In most households spending time on the Internet is a regular daily activity. While the Internet enables immediate access to virtually unlimited resources for school, work and entertainment, it also poses a potential danger for children. To help combat...

International police led by a UK team report that they have shut down the largest Internet pedophile ring.According to a BBC report, the ring had 70,000 followers at its peak, leading to 4,000 intelligence reports being sent to police across 30 countries.There have been 670 suspects and 230 abused children identified as part of the operation. Detectives told BBC that 184 people have been arrested, and 121 of them were in the U.K.About 60 children have been protected in the U.K.Operation...

Investigators said Thursday that the social networking site Facebook has seen a big increase in young people reporting suspicious online behavior since it introduced a "panic button" last month.There have been 211 Facebook users that utilized the panic button since July 12, compared to 28 who reported alleged abuse through the site a month before the button's introduction. The application hopes to prevent predatory adults from "grooming" unsuspecting young people...

Facebook is facing a lawsuit from a New York man who claims he owns an 84-percent stake in the popular social networking website--a lawsuit that they dismiss as "frivolous" but one that has nonetheless led to a judicial order blocking transfer of the company's assets.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Wellsville, New York native Paul Ceglia on June 30. Ceglia claims that, in April 2003, he signed a contract with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in order to design a website to be...

Facebook has partnered with the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to create a "panic button" application for the popular social networking hub, officials announced on Monday morning.The "panic button" will appear on a user's profile page when it is added or bookmarked, and is designed to allow users between the ages of 13 and 18 to notify Facebook officials if they encounter "suspicious or inappropriate behavior," according to a report...

Officials from a child protection agency met with Facebook representatives on Monday in an effort to try and convince the social networking website to add a "panic button" for children.Jim Gamble, chief executive of the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), met with Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan in Washington D.C. for four hours yesterday, and while the networking agency has agreed to implement a series of new protections for younger users, they...

A growing number of British teens are "sexting," exchanging explicit pictures of themselves via their mobile phones in a practice experts say may leave them vulnerable to cyberbullying and other forms of victimization.Sexting has also resulted in explicit images of children being posted on Web sites used by pedophiles without the knowledge of the sender, said Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP), a law enforcement agency associated with the British...