Sex offenders face website bans

[Sweetpea]

Sex offenders' e-mail addresses are to be passed to social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo to prevent them contacting children.
Under government proposals, offenders who do not give police their address - or give a false one - would face up to five years in jail.
Websites would be expected to monitor the e-mail address usage or block them accessing the sites. The Home Office said the new laws would apply to about 30,000 sex offenders.

BBC NEWS | UK | Sex offenders face website bans


Was talking to my husband about this the other day. Maybe computers should be licensed, like TV's. Email address logged with some government body. Personally it would not bother me one bit and it might go some way to stopping these perv's and all other cyber crime.

How would you police it I hear you say? Dunno, I just think it what put a dent in it.

The trouble with this blocking of emails is silly though, we all know how easy it is just to produce another.

[poppy]

not sure what the answer to this one is, as you say blocking emails will make no difference. Only allowing IPS mail addresses may help, as they are traceable.
But as with all laws they are only as good as their enforcement.
If it isn't policed any law is worthless

There are always ways round anything if people are determined enough but banning by email address is just plain daft. Like you say, they can always get another one. Even the ISP related ones aren't foolproof as thy usually allow two or three and when I was on AOL there was nothing to stop you changeing those at a whim.

[Hekna]

All sex offenders have to have their addresses registered with the police - so when someone is newly added, you contact all the internet providers to black list that address, or to monitor it's activity. Or when you apply, they not only do a credit check but they check the sex offenders list too. All broadband dial ups have a number associated with them, so you restrict or monitor that.

[ambriel]

Originally Posted by Hekna

you contact all the internet providers to black list that address, or to monitor it's activity.

You can't just 'blacklist' an email address. It's a pointless exercise and just what are you blacklisting it from?

1. If you block the sending and receiving of emails to it then that would only affect SMTP/POP3 mail and they'd just use webmail services such as Hotmail.

2. You can't just block any data packet containing the text of the listed email address as that could result in genuine and innocent data packets being lost.

3. It's no good distributing a 'blacklist' of banned email addresses to operators of forums, such as this one, because there are hundreds of thousands of them, there'd be no way of verifying it had been actioned, and the perp' would just go and get another free Hotmail (or similar) webmail address.

The only way you'll stop perverts getting access to the internet is to take away their access to a computer, but with mobile phones, internet cafes and PCs in libraries there is very little chance of being able to achieve that.

[Hekna]

Originally Posted by ambriel

You can't just 'blacklist' an email address. It's a pointless exercise and just what are you blacklisting it from?

To clarify - black list a POSTAL address. Email addresses would be pointless. They have all sorts of technology to monitor activities so I don't see how monitoring a particular address should cause any problems.

[Hekna]

Also, it appears that very little is being done to stop these perverts from searching for their paedophilic materials and from grooming children in chat rooms. Again, search activities on mobile phones, PDAs etc. can be monitered by the service providers. Chat rooms need to be monitored by independant bodies, which is probably the hardest part.

[ambriel]

Unfortunately when it comes to the internet there is a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding about how it works.

For instance, if I load MS Internet Explorer and go to Google they (Google) can see my IP address. It's called the referrer IP. At first sight logging this referrer IP seems an ideal way to track what people are searching for but...

..Some internet browsers offer the ability to mask or fake the referrer IP address and so it is rendered useless. Not only would this mean the true inquirer would not be traceable but a totally innocent person could be placed under suspicion if through chance their IP address were used as the mask.

Originally Posted by ambriel

The only way you'll stop perverts getting access to the Internet is to....

burn out their eyeballs with an oxyacetylene cutter, smash their fingers with a mashing hammer, cut out their tongues with a pair of garden shears, and pour molten lead in their ears so they can not even use a "blind/deaf" web link.


Quite easy. Can't see the problem my self.

All other ideas mentioned here, noting addresses etc are crap. unless you monitor his mates/all internet café within 200 miles of his house/library terminals etc, etc.

[Dunkirk]

Surely the best way to keep convicted sex offenders away from the internet is to keep them in prison for longer.

Why should you and I have to get a licence for a PC because of the activities of some perv who went to prison for three months ( instead of the many years he should have been in for )