Vigilance needed on Facebook

Published 10:21 am Monday, February 5, 2018

Parents and social media users beware, there is a child pornography video targeting inboxes of users in the region.

We had heard that Facebook many users in the Mid-South were receiving a video in their inbox that showed a young girl and an adult male involved in an act that constitutes child pornography. Late last week, we received the video in our EAGLE Facebook messages.

We contacted local authorities and learned that they were quite aware of the video, as well as law enforcement agencies throughout the region. The video, unfortunately, is making the rounds.

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Reports suggest the video may have originated in Alabama and multiple agencies are investigating. We bring it up to warn parents who may have children on Facebook and social media users in general so they can be vigilant.

The image is disturbing, to say the least and a reminder that child pornography lives on the Internet along with trolls willing to share the most despicable material. That this video is being sent to unaware social media users is also disturbing.

We hope that no children have accidentally seen the video but reports of its distribution are so widespread that we fear otherwise.

Such risk is just one of the perils that come with a free social media service.