Pedophilia is a psychological disorder. As level-headed or cautious as your children may be, pedophiles will always have the inherent drive to try to fool or manipulate them. Contrary to the perception in media, many pedophiles seem to live perfectly normal lives. They can be cunning, witty and handsome (or beautiful), and combined with the Internet and social media, this can lead to dreadful results.

Fortunately, software programs to help identify and block access to pedophiles are improving every day. One particular product developed by United Parents Online uses a range of criteria far beyond the first-generation software programs, which merely scanned text for suspicious words. With the old system, once the suspicious words were found, the parent would have to manually check chat logs in order to find the context and determine whether or not there was a threat. This process is both time-consuming and inefficient, and it violates the privacy of children who may be yearning for their own identities.

The new software by United Parents Online, an Israeli company, recognizes behavior patterns associated with pedophiles. It stores profiles on suspected users and establishes digital fingerprints. This means that even if the suspected pedophile changes their chat name or gets a new IP address, they will still be identifiable.

Once a pedophile is identified during an interaction with any of the community’s members, the program bans him or her from chatting with any child with the same program in that community. “United Parents’ strength is based on the fact that the parents essentially work as a community,” said CEO and entrepreneur Hanan Lavy. “And as the community’s critical mass grows, so does its strength.”

The program is not available for purchase yet, but when it is released a few months from now, it should also be ready for use with social media applications.
It would also be a good idea to make this technology available for handheld devices such as Wi-Fi-ready e-book readers, and handheld computing devices, or even cellular phones. The market for this technology would grow exponentially.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Startups.