A Cape Town-based company has introduced an SMS service to block cellphones from accessing adult content and pornography in an attempt to stem the tide of pornography schoolchildren can obtain.
Smsweb has so far provided 125 schools with the SMS service called PornBlocker, which allows parents to block their children from accessing pornography on their cellphones. To activate the service, parents send an SMS with their children's cellphone details and the company blacklists the number so that they are unable to view inappropriate material.
The Director of the Childline KwaZulu-Natal branch, Linda Naidoo, said cellphone chat rooms posed another potential danger for children. She said this was one of the most common ways used by paedophiles to lure children.
The Managing Director of Smsweb, Salah ElBaba, said the service did not yet extend to chat rooms but was something the company would offer in future.
Commenting on whether children's rights would be compromised by limiting their cellphone activities, Naidoo said children needed parents to protect and guide their decisions in viewing media containing inappropriate material.
Though unwilling to endorse the SMS service, the Superintendent-General of the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department, Cassius Lubisi, commented that he supported the idea of preventing unhealthy behaviour among children.
The service would prevent children from downloading content from adult websites but could not prevent the exchange of such material using Bluetooth technology