Ebay is a great shopping venue. I sell and buy on eBay and enjoy both very much. I want eBay to continue to provide an open market that is both varied and safe. But, we have a community problem on eBay, and until a solution is found, parents whose children shop on eBay need to be made aware that some content on the general site of eBay is not suitable for children and could lead a child into contact with a sexual predator. Therefore, it is important when allowing your children to shop on eBay that you supervise their journey.

Although eBay has a mature audience section and rules about what is not allowed on the general site, these rules are, at present, inadequately enforced, thus allowing large quantities of materials that should be in the mature audience section to continue to appear on the general site. Even prohibited images of naked children and teens are commonly sold on the general site of eBay.

It has been my experience that reporting these violations generally does not result in their removal.

If your child shops for collectibles such as photographs, books , magazines, art, movies, dvds, postcards, or posters, your child is at high risk of encountering explicit sexual content and images such as: full frontal nudity of both men and women, couples engaged in various stages of sexual foreplay in the nude (both heterosexual and homosexual males and females), male and female strippers both nude and partially nude, depictions of sexual torture, degradation, masochism and sadism, as well as nude images of children from birth to teens with exposed genitalia.

Until eBay comes up with an effective solution to this problem, we must be vigilant in protecting our children from these materials! We all have to take responsibility for our children’s safety online, and eBay, as it turns out, is no more a safe place for children to surf than the general web.

So, take it from a mother who has been there, do not let your children travel on eBay alone and remember to report suspected violations to eBay so customer service will get the message that we want them to enforce the listing rules and move these items out of the general area and stop the proliferation of images marketed to child predators on eBay.

If the reader wants to chat with me directly on this subject, I can be reached through eBay's mail forwarding system.