Twitter Needs to Do More to Protect Children from Abuse and Exploitation

A child protection unit has called on Twitter to help tackle online child abuse by working harder to report suspicious activity.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre said 'more can be done' to safeguard children who use the micro-blogging website.Social networking sites Facebook and Bebo both report far more incidents of illegal activity to Ceop than Twitter does.

Peter Davies, head of Ceop, said: 'Providers of online services have a responsibility to safeguard their environment in order to minimise the risk to children and close down opportunities for offenders.

'Many companies work closely with us to enhance their ability to do this, including Facebook and Bebo.

'The centre does receive reports relating to material on Twitter but it’s important to say these amount to a very small proportion of 1,000 reports a month relating to a wide range of online environments.'