IRISH TEEN PHOTOS PUT ON PORN SITES

AN internet safety expert will tell principals there needs to be a more ‘mature’ discussion with teenagers about sharing photos of themselves via apps on their smartphones.

Pat McKenna, founder and chair of Child Watch, the Irish platform promoting digital-based security and privacy for children, will present a workshop for secondary school principals today aimed at encouraging teens to be more conservative about their images and consider impact photo-sharing can have on their reputation.

Mr McKenna told the Irish Daily Mail that Child Watch has encountered 270 cases where photos of young Irish girls between the ages of 12 and 18 were uploaded to pornographic websites without their knowledge or consent since 2013. He said these sites accept and publish images with no regard for the privacy, personal safety, reputation and psychological wellbeing of the unsuspecting victims.

‘The problem with uploads is ongoing, a lot of children are moving away from Facebook and some of the new apps they are using like Snapchat are good up to a point but if you send someone delicate images you can’t guarantee that the person who is receiving them or the device upon which they are being received is safe. Most people have anti-virus on a desktop computer but how many teenagers have it on their phone?’

‘The internet is maturing, cloud computing and data are maturing, so we need to mature in what we tell children about what goes on, what can go wrong and the core things we need to do to protect their reputation.

‘Reputation and online safety are two sides of the one coin.’