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Students in Bahrain have been found using a website for bullying and defaming schoolmates, teachers and rival schools.
On condition of anonymity, a head teacher said that cyber bullying was an issue in many schools in the kingdom. Children had also been caught posting clips on video-sharing sites of their schoolmates and teachers in 'awkward and embarrassing positions'. This was despite restricting the use of mobile phones and laptops in most schools.
SafeSurf Bahrain, a newsletter published by the island's internet and telecom watchdog, TRA, revealed that the Little Gossip site had been brought to its attention because it was 'being used maliciously' with anonymous posting about people in schools in Bahrain that were abusive and contained 'explicit obscene sexual innuendos and extreme racial slurs'.
"This site has no moderation or controls in place to monitor the types of gossip posted and allows anonymous posting," SafeSurf Bahrain said. "This increases the likelihood of extreme malicious postings which are clearly evident on the site.
"In or-der to safeguard children and schools from this abuse and to limit the incidence of cy-ber bullying SafeSurf Bahrain has taken the necessary steps to have access to this site blocked from within the Kingdom of Bahrain and to have it removed by its web hosting company in the US."
Promoters of Little Gossip, Platinum Century Ltd, based in Belize City, Belize, insisted that it was only for adults and college-goers.
A spokesperson said: "Teenagers are not allowed to use the web site. We don't keep schools on it. For example there were two schools added by users in Bahrain - they were removed and added to our 'stop list'.
"We weren't contacted by Bahrain officials; they seem to have just blocked the web site on the Internet Service Provider level.
"That's their right and we are not in a position to criticise it."
