Radlett mother warns parents about perils of social networking

Karen Baker’s 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, accepted a friend request on the site last Friday from someone she believed to be a mutual friend.

Ellie accepted the request after seeing a picture of herself and a friend on the profile, but later discovered photographs had been taken from her own profile.

Mrs Baker said: “My daughter asked the person who 'she' was and the person wrote back abusive messages.

“My daughter came straight to me and was very upset. I told her to delete this person to block them and to go in and change her password and security settings.

“At first we thought it was a group of girls who for some reason had a grudge.

"I sent this person a message suggesting they delete the account and then informed as many people as possible about what was going on.”

Since then Mrs Baker has discovered the profile belonged to a 38-year-old man living in Turkey.

She added: “The pictures that he used were family pictures of us on holiday, which is such an invasion of privacy.

"I was worried that he was from the local area and so was concerned about the safety of my daughter. It's a relief he is not from here.

"I want to make parents aware of this and how to deal with the situation. Often parents talk to their children when they start using social networking sites at around ages 11 or 12, but then leave giving another talk in their later teenage years.

"It’s very important to make people aware about the dangers of accepting friend requests from people they don’t know."

Facebook representative Emma Clarke confirmed the profile was taken down on Tuesday.

She said: "Our number one priority is keeping Facebook safe. We work hard every day to ensure that we are analysing and acting upon reports submitted by the 500 million people who use our site."

She added Facebook looks out for all "offensive or harassing content through a trained team of reviewers".