Police raise abuse fears over Bebo and Facebook
The Association of Scottish Police Superintendents is to call for greater regulation of social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo, fearing that they pose a grave threat to communities because of online grooming and paedophilia.
The association also voices alarm over increases in e-crime which sees hundreds of millions of pounds lost in Scotland through a variety of scams involving banking fraud and identity theft.
A number of high profile cases have raised concern at the issue, particularly Operation Algebra which broke the worst child abuse network ever found in Scotland.
David O’Connor, the associations incoming president said: “On the internet it is very difficult to identify victims and even more difficult to identify suspects. Whilst we are trying to put measures in place to track these people down it is highly specialist, technical and resource intensive work.”
Internet providers, senior officers, search engines and government are urged to come together to discuss the problem and how to pay for its policing.