The dangerous World Wide Web we have weaved

KUALA LUMPUR: It’s a disturbing fact. At this very moment, many more paedophiles like Richard Huckle are likely to be preying on children on the Internet. And they could be yours.

What’s more, there’s absolutely nothing to stop these twisted individuals from posing as normal youngsters on social media to befriend and lure innocent children into their grotesque world of perversion and depravity.

To date, the Royal Malaysian Police, Interpol and the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) have blocked 167 child pornography sites.

According to CyberSecurity Malaysia CEO Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab, children become easy targets if they sign up to social media and do not privatise their accounts.

“Their pictures are open for everyone on the World Wide Web to see,” he says. CyberSecurity Malaysia is the national specialist centre in cybersecurity.

This calls for extreme vigilance as these pictures can attract predators, Amirudin adds.

Already, a Malaysian activist has exposed a chat group in Malaysia where revealing pictures of young children are lifted off other social media and posted for the groups members to view. Many posted lewd comments on pictures of a young child. There could be many more groups like that.

“As a parent, you should know your child and who he or she befriends in school or at home. It’s especially worrying if children have ‘friends’ that their parents do not know about,” says Dr Amirudin.

A Kaspersky Lab spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity, concurs: “Children can be as vulnerable online as they are in the real world. They must be made aware of the potentially dire consequences of befriending the wrong people.”

He added that parents should also keep monitoring and communicating with their children on their online experiences.