Facebook resists installing panic button
Published:Tuesday | April 13, 2010 | 5:59 PM
Social networking site Facebook is continuing to resist calls by the British child protection agency to place a panic button on its pages.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre wants such a link on every page of the website.
Chief constables from across England and Wales, including Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, have signed a letter supporting the addition of extra safety features.
The Centre’s director Jim Gamble says the issue is an urgent one, especially after the murder of 17-year-old student Ashleigh Hall in County Durham last October by Peter Chapman, a man she met via the site.
Thirty-three year-old Chapman was jailed last month for at least 35 years for the killing.
The teenager had been raped, suffocated and her body dumped in a field near Sedgefield, County Durham, after agreeing to meet Chapman who used a false name on the website to lure her.