A NEW campaign to keep young people safe online has been launched by North Yorkshire Police.

The Keep It To Your Selfie campaign encourages teenagers to think about how anything they share over the internet, social media or mobile phones can be sent to others or otherwise shared.

Launching the campaign at Selby Town Hall yesterday (THURS), Detective Chief Inspector Matt Walker said an estimated 75,000 paedophiles were online at any one time, which meant young people must be careful about the information or images they share.

Three specially-commissioned videos will be released in the next three weeks which target 11 to 18-year-olds, and make it clear that information they share can travel further than they initially intend.

DCI Walker said: "People share images and information in the virtual world that they wouldn’t dream of sharing in the real world and we need to make young people think about that.

"It is also important to bear in mind that once you have shared an image online you lose control of it, you don’t know where it will end up or whose hands it will fall into. You might think you are only sharing it with one person but do you know who they are going to share it with?"

Detective Inspector Shaun Page, the force’s lead for child sexual exploitation, said: "Children have grown up knowing about an online world. The internet is a great way of keeping in touch with people and getting access to goods and services they wouldn't ordinarily be able to get but equally the internet can be a place where criminals can operate.

"Children can be exploited online, so what the campaign aims to do is to get the message across and we want children to be careful about what they are putting online, be careful and understand who they are talking to online and ensure privacy settings are set correctly on social media applications. The three key messages about keeping safe online before children break up from school."

One 13-year-old pupil from the Rubicon Centre school said: "We learn about this at school and outside school as well, and I think it's a good idea to tell people our age about this kind of thing, to keep us safe online.

"It's not been a problem at our school, and we don't follow strangers anyway, just friends and family, and we don't share anything we wouldn't want anyone else seeing."

The videos will be shared by @NYorksPolice on Twitter and Facebook, and at youtube.co.uk/NorthYorkshirePolice More information about child sexual exploitation can be found at northyorkshire.police.uk/cse