Kids' blogs = 'pedophile's dream'

A lot of parents have had a hunch about this, but now an expert has voiced it: Lancashire University-based forensic psychologist Rachel O'Connell told Scotland's Parliament that online journals and picture blogs have increased the risk to online kids. "The emergence of moblogs - mobile weblogs - allowed even faster transfer of pictures to the Internet using mobile telephones with cameras," the BBC reports. That's "just a paedophile's dream because you have children uploading pictures, giving out details of their everyday life," Dr. O'Connell told Parliament. We tell our children not to give out personal information online, but we - and they - usually think that's about name, address, and phone number in an email, IM, or chatroom. Kids who blog, O'Connell pointed out, aren't thinking along those lines. Blogs are all about giving out personal information! Very personal, except that smart kids don't include their full name in posts and blog names. Still, pedophiles are experts at putting 2 and 2 together. "The parameters of grooming are now about to alter whereby they don't necessarily have to have contact with the child," O'Connell told the Scottish Parliament. The BBC continues: "She described a scenario where a group of paedophiles could exchange information on a child's movement [because of moblogs], potentially leading to an abduction." For more on this, see "Monitoring bloggers" and "Blogs booming."