Porn pop-ups and spam hijacking UK kids' surfing

Teenagers are looking at dodgy content on the internet and their parents don't know anything about it - that's no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that most claim to be unwitting victims of spammers and pop-up merchants.

According to a London School of Economics report, UK Children Go Online 36 per cent of children have stumbled upon porn while surfing for another type of site, 25 per cent have got porn spam and 38 per cent have seen porn pop-ups they weren't expecting.

Ten per cent said they had been deliberately checking out porn on the internet, however.

Whether deliberate or accidental though, the parents of internet users are rather in the dark about the whole issue. While 57 per cent of the children surveyed, aged between nine and 19, said they had looked at porn, just 16 per cent of parents thought their children had done.

The effect on children of exposure to porn was mixed, according to the report. "Coming into contact with pornography is, it seems, commonplace for children and, especially, teenagers… Annoyance and disgust seemed to be more frequent reactions than being upset," it said, adding that younger children may have claimed to be unaffected to not lose face.

Although the purveyors of pop-ups and spammers are exposing the UK's kids to porn, internet-shy parents aren't helping.

Over 80 per cent of parents quizzed in the research said they couldn't install filters against thier children seeing pornographic material or use software to remove a virus that might be causing it.