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The term \u201cstranger danger<\/a>\u201d was coined as a warning to children: beware the unknown adult, proceed with caution and be very careful what personal information you reveal. The question is, do adults take their own advice? Perhaps most would be more guarded and make sure they know who they are dealing with before revealing too much about themselves. But our relationship with \u201cstrangers\u201d has been evolving and social media has torn down some of the barriers that used to protect us.<\/p>\n Now a relative stranger could be a Facebook \u201cfriend\u201d and evidence shows<\/a> that sexual predators are using this to their advantage<\/a>. How we transition from stranger to non-stranger relationships is a relatively unexplored strand in research, with little recognition paid to the fact that the internet has completely transformed our level of engagement with strangers<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time other studies<\/a> are showing how the rate of reporting sexual offences to conviction is low. A report by Her Majesty\u2019s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)<\/a> concluded that 1 in 4 sexual offences should have been recorded as crimes but were not. Reasons cited for this were mainly centred on poor processes for recording the crimes and transferring them on to national recording systems. The rate of reporting sexual offences to conviction is low.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Regardless of these issues, the reporting of sexual offences is on the rise<\/a>, with this attributed to increased reporting of sexual offences and apparent improved investigative responses. In the year ending March 2015, the Office of National Statistics recorded the highest figure<\/a> for sexual offences since recording began in 2002, up 37% increase on the previous year. For female victims of serious sexual assaults, 16% were recorded as \u201cstranger relationships\u201d. Other categories included partner\/ex-partner (47%) other known (33%) and family member (4%).<\/p>\n What is a \u2018stranger\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n What is our understanding of how stranger rapes occur? Do we believe this happens within a dark alleyway, involving victims randomly chosen by someone they have never interacted with? Given that most of these attacks are perpetrated by people the victims know \u2013 as opposed to the dangerous \u201cstranger\u201d \u2013 do these statistics allow us to feel safe within our online social interactions? Herein lies the problem: people we know. At what point would we say we actually know<\/em> someone in the online and interconnected society of today?<\/p>\n One in three relationships now start online<\/a>. The change in how people communicate in their day-to-day lives has impacted on the \u201cmodus operandi\u201d of sexual offenders. The online environment has evolved a \u201cnew type of sexual offender<\/a>\u201d. Police forces have recorded a six-fold increase<\/a> in the number of \u201cinternet-facilitated\u201d sexual offences between 2009 and 2014.<\/p>\n The vast amount of dating and social networking sites<\/a> easily accessed through smartphones has resulted in the normalisation of providing personal information<\/a> to strangers. Even Snapchat now allows users to share their exact location. People are able to see your every move<\/a> from your home location, work, school or college.<\/p>\n Snapchat states that their default setting is \u201coff\u201d for location-sharing and users must activate it. They claim that locations can only be shared with your friends list. Given our friendship circles are continually changing and our friends lists are likely to contain people we have never met<\/a>, how practical is this safety feature?<\/p>\n
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