British children are not properly protected from paedophiles on the internet, a Home Office-sponsored report says today.
The Internet Crime Forum - who represent police, social workers, the internet industry and civil liberties groups - spent nearly two years examining cases of abuse of children through the net.
The study - called "Chat Wise, Street Wise - children and internet chat rooms" - urges a review of the law to tackle adults who target children for abuse on the internet.
Numerous examples of abusers "grooming" children, often through winning their confidence by pretending to be teenagers in online chat rooms, were looked at.
Although it does not call for a sweeping reform of the law, it does recommend internet service providers set up "safe haven" spaces within their domains. It also calls for cyber police to monitor the areas, and some form of "kitemark" to reassure parents the sites were safe.
Children and parents are also to be given advice on net etiquette, such as never giving out email or home addresses, their phone number or details about which school they attend. A special police hotline will also be set up for parents to report suspected cases of grooming.
More than 5m children under 16 in the UK are online, with 1.15m admitting to using chat rooms. There are thought to be around 100,000 chat rooms on the web.
The report - which will now go to the home secretary, Jack Straw, for consideration - comes as concern over the safety of children on the net grows in the UK.
London's Saatchi gallery was forced to defend an exhitibition of photographs containing pictures of naked children after an expose in a Sunday tabloid newspaper.
The paper claimed the photographs had already been posted on child porn sites on the web.
More than 2,000 men in the USA have been convicted of internet sex offences in the past six years - but prosecutions are more rare in the UK as defence barristers can argue any police operation constitutes entrapment.
Last year one of the designers of the Lara Croft computer game, Kenneth Lockley, was jailed for 18 months after trying to incite an undercover police officer to lure child for sex.
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