How To Report Abuse

Background to the Click CEOP button and CEOP Safety Centre

The Click CEOP button

The Click CEOP button (pictured below) is an asset of the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Command. The CEOP Command works to protect children from the harm of sexual abuse and exploitation both online and offline.

The button has been developed to offer children, young people, parents/carers and professionals working with these groups with a simple and convenient mechanism for gaining access to trusted online safety advice, help and support. It also provides access to an online mechanism for reporting known or suspected child sexual exploitation or child sexual abuse directly to CEOP. This is offered as a convenient and potentially less [OFFICIAL]

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intimidating method of reporting these sensitive types of crime, alternative to face-to-face and telephone reporting to local police forces.

The CEOP Safety Centre

The Click CEOP button provides a gateway to the CEOP Safety Centre, an area of the CEOP website offering:

 advice on a range of online safety issues, such as hacking and cyberbullying;

 signposting to NCA-CEOP partners offering help and support on issues outside of CEOP’s remit, such as ChildLine and BeatBullying;

 reporting of suspected or known child sex offender activity directly to CEOP for investigation.

The following advice is from www.thinkuknow.co.uk:

Internet Safety

• Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends they do not know offline.
• Explain to your children what information about them is personal: i.e. email address, mobile number, school name, sports club, arrangements for meeting up with friends and any pictures or videos of themselves, their family or friends. Small pieces of information can easily be pieced together to form a comprehensive insight in to their lives and daily activities.
• Make your children aware that they need to think carefully about the information and pictures they post on their profiles. Inform them that once published online, anyone can change or share these images of them.
• It can be easy to forget that the internet is not a private space, and as result sometimes young people engage in risky behaviour online. Advise your children not to post any pictures, videos or information on their profiles, or in chat rooms, that they would not want a parent or carer to see.
• If your child receives spam or junk email and texts, remind them never to believe their contents, reply to them or use them.
• It's not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don't know. They won't know what they contain—it could be a virus, or worse - an inappropriate image or film.
• Help your child to understand that some people lie online and that therefore it's better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
• Always keep communication open for a child to know that it's never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.

Some simple ways to keep children safe online

• Get to know your child’s online habits. Children are inquisitive. They will look to explore the internet as much as they do the real world. Knowing the sites they go to, the people they meet there and what they do will help to keep children safe.
• Stay alert to any sudden changes in mood or appearance, or to any major change in habits or to increased secretiveness. These are often tell-tale signs that something is not right.
• Keep lines of communication open - tell your child they can always talk to you or another trusted adult, such as a teacher, if they do end up in some sort of trouble on the internet. Make children aware that there are things on the internet which may distress them.
• Spend some time surfing the internet yourself. The more that you know about the internet, the better able you are, in turn, to help your child navigate around it without coming to any harm.
• Install internet filtering software showing a Child Safety Online Kitemark on your computer. Filtering products with a Kitemark have been independently tested to provide a simple and effective means of support to parents, helping to ensure that a child’s online experience is a safe one. The Kitemark scheme is sponsored by the Home Office and Ofcom.