Facebook pages attracting paedophiles pulled down: Report

Two Facebook pages, which were created in Tamil to attract paedophiles, were pulled down after a massive outrage on social media, news channel CNN-IBN reported on Thursday.

Two Facebook pages, which were created in Tamil to attract paedophiles, were pulled down after a massive outrage on social media, news channel CNN-IBN reported on Thursday.

The pages, which had pictures of young children and attracted lewd and sexually explicit comments, were shut down by the social networking site, the news channel said.

It added that child rights activists in Chennai are planning to file a petition to the police commissioner to demand action against Facebook and the creator of such pages. Facebook takes down pages that can lead to sexual exploitation.

However, this is not the first time such pages have been created.

Last week, similar pages came up from Kerala and according to reports had several thousand followers. After several complaints to Kerala's cyber cell, which forwarded them to Facebook, the pages were pulled down.

Those pages had images of children aged 5 to 15, probably sourced from the internet, with comments asking what one would like to do to the child and commenting on their body parts.

Cyber experts say parents need to be careful about their privacy settings, and exercise some discretion in whom they allow to view their feed, and whom they befriend online.