Comments on: After a girl goes missing, is Netlog doing all it can to protect children on its site?

By: TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Netlog launching language translation for developers

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:17:46 +0000

[...] back in August a girl of 15 who was feared to have fled to Turkey to meet two men who befriended her on Netlog, was eventually found by police safe in [...]

By: Nic Brisbourne

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:55:01 +0000

Hi Mike – without for a second suggesting we should let up on services implementing best practice with regard to child protection, I would like to see more emphasis on self protection, with children and parents being taught of the dangers and how to avoid them. In the final analysis this is the only way to keep people safe, and also to benefit the sites that do protect our minors.

By: Tony H

Tony H — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:37:23 +0000

If you know how to write advanced search queries, it’s quite easily to tunnel into eg myspace profiles from a google search…. site: and intitle: will get you a long way…

By: Clunky Flow » Online predator/prey relationships: a youth is its own worst enemy

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:28:20 +0000

[...] Mike Butcher just written a post about the case of a 15 year-old Welsh girl getting herself into what could have been a very dangerous situation as a result of a relationship she developed with two men via the social network Netlog.The rest of Mike’s piece explores Netlog’s role and responsibility with regard to this drama. [...]

By: headless

headless — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:18:19 +0000

“Co-founder Lorenz Bogaert, and ceo said: “There is a lot of pervention”.

Pervention, eh? An unfortunate slip of the finger perhaps?

By: Prdo

Prdo — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:24:19 +0000

I’m not surprised this is a Belgian start-up. They have lots of pedophiles there. That, and chocolate. And why does Index Venture invest in such a company?

Here you go:
http://www.iht.com/articles/1996/09/12/belguim.t.php

By: Luke Stanley

Luke Stanley — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:57:32 +0000

Wow, I stayed in Penglais, Aberystwyth. Brings it closer to home.
But the fact of the matter is: Kids WILL meet (usually not abroad).Parents need to know: physical protection is their responsibility. meetups need security planning, just in case: its like a hostage transfer in movies. What would Jack Bauer advise to kids meeting up, that WILL meet up?

“Child International charity recommends that all default settings on social networks should be set to ‘private’”

They clearly haven’t tried to run a startup. Viral lead-ins are critical, minimum effort is critical. I’m fed up with charities giving bad advice, if you don’t take the smart middle ground, no one will listen to you.

Also, we could just make digital interaction more immersive.

By: babul

babul — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:47:05 +0000

Blocking/privacy problem is by nature inherently against the nature of social networks.

The only real answer short of iplementing semenatic rules (so kids cannot accept request from older people, and also communication language is analaysed to assess age etc. which have proven not to work really) is having subset only networks (just for kids) that are self policed by the kids?