Based on this report, all you young people should keep your profile marked 'Prevent Search Engines from accessing your profile'.

Google Helps Group Find Child Predators On The Web

The software tools help the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sift through millions of pornographic images and videos from the Web to find child sex predators.

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
April 15, 2008 02:26 PM

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has developed search technology that sifts through millions of pornographic images and videos from the Web to help police find child sex predators.

A team of Google researchers led by Shumeet Baluja used the free time the company provides employees to work on pet projects to develop software tools tailored to help the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children track down child predators. Google is a member of the organization's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography.

To date, NCMEC analysts have reviewed more than 13 million child pornography images and video in helping law enforcement identify and rescue children, Baluja said in a blog post on Google. With such a large volume of data, NCMEC analysts had been overwhelmed by what was being sent to them each week from their CyberTipline and from police investigators nationwide.

The tools developed by Google researchers helps NCMEC workers sort and identify files that contain child pornography. In addition, the new video tool streamlines analysts' review of video snippets, Baluja said. "In particular, the tools we provided will aid in organizing and indexing NCMEC's information, so that analysts can both deal with new images and videos more efficiently and also reference historical material more effectively."

In organizing the data more efficiently, analysts will be able to work faster in getting law enforcement the information they need to locate missing children and find child sex predators, the researcher said.

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real by creating tools that have the potential to aid investigations of child predators, find child victims, and reduce the flow of child pornography on the Internet," Baluja said.

The latest report from the Internet Watch foundation shows that in 2006, 50% of Internet images showing sexual abuse of children were traced to the United States. The report also showed that the severity of online child abuse content is increasing.

Oh my gosh!!!  How do i set my account to that!?

Oh, nevermind, I found it!  :]

thank you so much for the warning!

=(

Original Post by peacelovehominy:

=(

Hi there - this is the lady who put us on the alert a couple months ago; just adding more info' that came out recently.

E-mail addresses that are put on profiles could be garnered; then you could wind up with spam or unwanted mail of 'any kind'.  Photos that you upload; make sure you don't mind if 'anyone' sees them.

The article is placed here only as a reminder; I didn't write it - it's a public report from the web.

Thanks PLH for stopping by.

Note:  You can use the 'links' to join the discussion as I did.  You can also e-mail or print based on the selection you choose on the site; it appears they want the information circulated to the advantage of everyone.

...just click your 'choice' of how you want to share with others that might not be on this site, but on the web in other ways.

I know I have several web-sites; blogs, and other places where my profile is (like here) subject to a 'peek', so I always use something other than my own photo for privacy.

I should mention the pretty 'rock' that's painted like the flag - some small children in our complex did this as a tribute to some people serving in Iraq - I took several photos, and it was featured in our local newsletter.  If you've got something like this that you'd like to use, you can choose that for posting.

I believe your gallery can be set to be 'safe' from a search engine; even from others on this site, if you choose only to have your friends view your journals and profile.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's what I was told when I first joined.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/buildi ng-software-tools-to-find-child.html - There are many interesting articles here; some are about finding missing children - another is about locating children who're abused.  Just scroll down from the main article, to find a variety of additional links.