Do more to protect children, Twitter told

Twitter should do more to protect young users from online predators, a child protection unit has said.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre said “more can be done” by the micro-blogging website to safeguard children.

Social network sites, such as Bebo and Facebook, report far more incidents of illegal activity to Ceop than does Twitter. Peter Davies, head of Ceop, said: “Providers of online services have a responsibility to safeguard their environment to minimise the risk to children and close down opportunities for offenders.

“Many companies work closely with us, including Facebook and Bebo.

“The centre does receive reports relating to Twitter but these amount to a very small proportion of 1,000 reports a month relating to a range of online environments.”