If your child avidly surfs the Internet and spends most of the time chatting with his or her friends online, it’s time for you to keep vigil on them.
For along with the immense amount of information on the Web, there are well entrenched traps to ‘net’ children for sexual abuse, especially through seemingly pop-up advertisements with links to unpleasant websites and chat rooms.
According to a recent study conducted by Tulir - Center for Prevention and Healing Child Sex Abuse, unwanted advertisements and links to pornographic sites are the key reasons which result in internet-assisted sexual violence against children and adolescents in India.
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“It is those inane ad that pops up when they are searching the web which actually traps them,” says Vidya, Executive Director of Tulir, who conducted the sample study in Chennai. “Most of these ads, have been scripted to defy the pop-up blockers that are enabled in browsers so that the user gets to see them,” confirms Shyam, a techie working with an IT firm.
Most such ads are in the form of invitation to unidentified chat rooms that seem to capture the information of the user and their interests.
“Unnecessary questions about sexual interest and unwanted ad links to pornographic sites are the key trappers,” confirms Vidya, who undertook the study.
Lending credence to her argument, Najat M'jid Maalla, the U.N. investigator on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, had recently pointed out to the 47-member council that Internet chat rooms have become the main method for child abusers to recruit children. She also quoted the statistics of the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, which said that about 4 million websites worldwide show images of children being sexually exploited and the number of sites showing abject images of brutal rape, bondage, oral sex etc have quadrupled between 2003 and 2007.
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With increasing Internet penetration, chances of children falling victim to the aggression of pedophiles have assumed unimaginable proportions.
Explaining the modus operandi of internet pedophiles, the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell of Mumbai, in its website says, “pedophiles contact children in the chat rooms posing as teenagers or a child of similar age, then they start becoming friendlier with them and win their confidence. They then slowly start sexual chat to help children shed their inhibitions about sex and then call them out for personal interaction. Then starts actual exploitation of the children by offering them some money or falsely promising them good opportunities in life. The pedophiles then sexually exploit the children either by using them as sexual objects or by taking their pornographic pictures in order to sell those over the Internet.”
Guidelines to parents
Says Ankit Fadia, India’s certified ethical hacker who works with the police departments to solve cyber crime cases, “Since its difficult to track the criminals on the internet, the onus entirely rests on families to install parental control software to block access to such sites from computers and Software such as Netnanny and Cyberpatrol can be used on home computers to block specific keywords.” Also, it is better to have the computer used by children at a common room and not at an isolated place, he adds.
But the only effective solution to safeguard the children seems to be an open and free talk with the children explaining the dangers. “As parents, it is our responsibility to explain to them to differentiate between the right and wrong,” says Vidya.
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“No parent can keep a constant watch on children though they should keep a tab on the websites they are browsing,” says Fadia. “However, the value education inculcated by the parents is the key factor and children should be trained to face the dangers,” he adds.
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