Every school pupil in the State should be provided with a Government-supplied e-mail address as a way of verifying their age when using social networking websites such as Bebo.com, according to the website's chief security officer. John Downesreports.
This could in turn help to prevent "grooming" of young children by older men and help to combat the risk of bullying by helping to establish the identity of individual users.
In an interview in today's Irish Times, Irishwoman Dr Rachel O'Connell, an international expert on paedophile activity on the internet, also warns parents they need to monitor children's online activity as carefully as their "offline" activity.
Dr O'Connell acknowledges that companies such as Bebo find it difficult to verify an individual's age. However, she says the industry has adopted a proactive approach amid increasing efforts to raise awareness of the dangers associated with placing personal material on such websites.
She has suggested the use of Government-supplied e-mail addresses to the Internet Advisory Board, and intends to pursue this further this year.
Any move to introduce such a system would have to take into account data protection and personal privacy considerations, Dr O'Connell added, but the use of such e-mail addresses as an age verification tool was something Bebo would support.
Advocates of this system would hope that the special e-mail addresses would mean that older adults would be unable to misrepresent themselves as being of schoolgoing age.
Audrey Conlon, advisory board chairwoman, said effective age verification was "absolutely vital" to protecting vulnerable users, particularly as adult content became more available on mobile phones.
She welcomed any initiative that aimed to address the problem. "It has been a problem for quite a while - we saw it previously with chatrooms and people lying about their age," she said.
However, other experts in the area say any such initiative would be a relatively long-term solution and would not work in all circumstances.
Other measures, such as increased funding by service providers for education campaigns, could also have a significant impact, they pointed out. Teachers in some schools are currently being allocated Government e-mail addresses on a pilot basis.
A Department of Education and Science spokesman said access to social networking sites, such as Bebo, is blocked under content filtering services in place in schools.
The development of registration systems was a "matter for the service provider involved".
"The roll-out of broadband internet connectivity under the Schools Broadband Access Programme is nearing completion," the spokesman said. "The provision of an e-mail service for schools is one of the services being developed for schools under this programme."