For reasons we can ‘t  begin to understand Facebook in the UK has refused to bow to pressure and install a ‘panic button’ on their site which would link the page to the government’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP)website. The pressure comes after a series of high profile crimes including a murder of a young girl who met her killer through social networking sites such as Facebook. It’s hard to see what Facebook would have to lose from doing this apart from a few thousand undesirable people using their site. You can read more on the decision and the background HERE 

Currently Facebook have a VERY small link to report abuse, it’s hard to find and from my experience of using it you get no feedback to say your report has been received, considered or acted upon. This is what it looks like.

You can use one of Facebook’s features to put a more prominent ‘panic button’ onto your child’s profile which they can click on to report any suspected abuse to the CEOP, the button will also be visible to anyone who clicks on their profile and might just disuade a potential groomer from engaging with your child. Here’s how.

Get your kid to log on to their Facebook account and on the top right of the screen click PROFILE

Once their profile opens look down the left hand side, underneath their profile picture you should see a box which will either look like this

Or have something written in it like this

In the first case click on the writing in the block, in the second case click on the pencil (circled), this opens up the box for editing

Delete any text in the box and replace it with the following text which you can cut’n'paste

 http://www.ceop.gov.uk/reportabuse/index.asp

Now click a point away from the box – the text should have saved and stuck in the box

This box will appear on the Facebook profile underneath the picture anytime you and anyone else looks at the profile. If your child needs to contact someone about potential online abuse they just need to click profile and then click on the box, this will then take them to the CEOP website which will direct them to the best place to report it to.

Note this is for UK parents only, outsite the UK if you can find out the internet address of a proper authority for reporting online abuse of children then us that full address including the http:// part instead of the CEOP one.

Hopefully Facebook will see more sense or beef up their own procedures properly in the near future. Please feel free to share this with others who could use it.