Corporate Finance

That is the calm, thoughtful person inside of me rationalizing the tragedy of Ashleigh Hall, the young woman who was raped and murdered by Peter Chapman after having met up with her from communications on Facebook.

I have to tell you today, dear reader, that today I am all out of rationalization. I am drained of giving the benefit of the doubt and frankly I am sick to the back teeth of the excuses that the big Internet businesses are giving on security issues within their sites.

Facebook – J’accuse!

The latest tragedy of Ashleigh Hall has taken away much of my sympathy for businesses such as Facebook and Myspace and crushed any hope I had of them doing the right thing. The simple fact is that the big social networks have placed a dollar value on the lives and well being of its members.

Even the simplest solutions have been ignored by Facebook. It was attacked recently for a ‘glaring failure’ for refusing to have a panic button on its pages, which would allow children to raise the alarm if they believe they are being targeted by predatory paedophiles.

The Child Exploitation Online Protection Center has created the system, which is already in place on other sites like Bebo, MSN and even on the safe-site Koini.com, so that users can report suspicious activity.

Facebook, however, is among those who have yet to sign up. Chief executive of CEOP Jim Gamble said to The Mail that the group had 267 reports about the website last year. Of those, 43 per cent (114) were about suspected grooming but ‘only one or two’ were from Facebook itself – the rest were from people who were forced to go elsewhere to raise the alarm.

Facebook, of course, leapt to its own defense saying that ‘nothing is more important’ than members’ safety and that it has a ‘variety of measures’ to help people protect themselves as it distanced itself from the horrific killing. ‘Peter Chapman was a twisted, determined individual with an evil agenda who used every online and offline opportunity to meet people,’ it said. ‘This case serves as a painful reminder that all internet users must use extreme caution when contacted over the internet by people they do not know.

‘We echo the advice of the police, who urge people not to meet anyone they have been contacted by online unless they know for certain who they are, as there are unscrupulous people in the world with malevolent agendas.’

Well thanks for that Facebook, that’s OK then… phew… glad you have got our kids back’s..

Koini.com is the free parental control software suite of products. They have spent the last two years developing ideas, programs and processes, experimenting with biometrics and other access controls, They have done this because they want to get things right.

People like the developers and management at Koini.com are not just paying lip service to the issue, they are actually doing something about it. They have actively developed a system that will aid in the fight against predators, not just come up with the lame talk that ‘nothing is more important’ than the safety of our users. Lets face it, that is all it is… talk.