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recent case involving the exploitation of children on the Internet has led to questions from parents and the government alike on how best to ensure the safety of the nation'€™s children.

On Wednesday, the National Police arrested a man in Surabaya, East Java, for allegedly persuading six children via Facebook to send him nude '€œselfies'€, which he then sold online, including via a pedophile chat room.

The UN and the US'€™ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) say that at any given moment, there are 750,000 child predators connected to the Internet. Furthermore, data from the Indonesian Commission on Child Protection (KPAI) shows that there were 1,620 recorded cases of child sex abuse in 2013, compared to 1,075 the previous year.

In order to protect their own children, some parents keep a close eye on their children'€™s activities online.

Hilwina Agita, a mother of two, said that she monitored her children when they used computers or tablets. '€œMy children are still young, and to be frank, I am a little paranoid they will come into contact with content that may harm them,'€ she told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Hilwina explained that she regularly took her laptop to work so her children could not use it and turned the WiFi off before leaving the house. Furthermore, she also supervises her children while they use the Internet and vets the games they play online.

In contrast, Mustofa Latif did not believe such strict measures were necessary.

Mustofa, a civil servant with two children aged 10 and 14, told the Post that he made sure that his children knew how to be safe online by lecturing them on suitable websites.

'€œWe try to make our children understand that there are dangerous consequences to surfing the Internet recklessly by informing them of past cases of child exploitation over the Internet. It'€™s similar to teaching children not to speak to strangers,'€ he said.

He added that he did not monitor the websites his children visited because he trusted them.

Nevertheless, Mustofa said he had installed several basic parental controls on his children'€™s gadgets as a precaution.

KPAI chairman, Seto Mulyadi, said that encouraging communication between parent and child about their Internet activities was the most effective way to ensure children'€™s safety.

'€œIf you'€™re bossy and strict, your children may not want to discuss their online activities with you. Children must learn to be smart, independent surfers who trust their parents, or they may become victims of cyber-bullying or sexual exploitation,'€ he said.

Seto, who is also a psychologist, added that some children may not want to talk to their parents because their parents were not tech-savvy.

'€œParents cannot be technologically impaired because you need to understand how technology is used in order to understand what your child is doing online,'€ he said.

Furthermore, he said, the government was obligated to play a bigger role in protecting children from online exploitation and harmful content.

Director general of informatics application at the Communications and Information Ministry, Bambang Heru Tjahjono, said that the government had made it easier for parents to ensure their children'€™s safety online.

He explained that although the ministry did not filter or censor itself, it was working with Internet service providers (ISP) to block sites according to a '€œblack list'€, which means it contains negative content, and the Information Transaction Law.

The law stipulates that criminal charges could be brought against individuals distributing obscene material. The penalty is increased by one-third when minors are involved.

The black list can be found on Trust Positif, a public database accessible on trustpositif.kominfo.go.id. Since March, the ministry has listed 758,240 domain names and 54,994 URLs on the black list.

'€œWe have sent warnings to 10 ISPs that have not blocked pornographic sites. If there is any suspicion of obscene content transactions on social media sites, we will ask the ISP and Indonesian representatives of those websites to take it down,'€ he said. (fss)