With the huge number of people searching and buying products and utilities, the internet has become an attractive place for scamsters, for social engineers, whose sole motive is to trick you into gaining some profit. Moreover the internet being relatively new, legislation is poor. And at the few places that there is a cyberlaw, there are numerous loop holes.

Hence the only way that people can prevent falling into such traps, is to look out for one another. A number of internet organizations have come up in the recent past for this specific reason. For example Crimereports.org aims to inform netizens of scams that others have come across. By alerting people about such traps they hope to become the internet “Neighborhood Watch”. Another website TheCyberHoodWatch.com by Bill Wardell and David Ballard, blogs about recent happenings in the world of cyber-security. The local government of Utah has taken steps to prevent such acts of cyber crime too. For example the Utah Attorney General Mark Shutleff, is promoting the program for Responsible Cyber Citizen and aiming to take it to the national level.

Although these programs are good, and they do alert people against such crimes, the best way to be secure is to be alert against such crimes, while surfing the internet.

There are lots of individual groups working around the world with a goal to eradicate this heinous crime. However there was no tool which combined their efforts and brought them in front of the general public, in a simplified manner. Now SlaveryMap.com provides a tool which enables these organizations to spread the word about their work to a much larger audience. The website was started by Prof. David Batstone, who was so shocked by the fact the death of Seetha Vemireddy, a bonded laborer at a local restaurant in his backyard that he decided to start a full time organization to combat this crime. SlaveryMap.com essentially collects information from government sources, NGOs and from people like you. This information is then mapped on to the Yahoo Mapping solution, which spreads this information regarding the reported incident. To prevent people misusing it for their own purposes and reporting false cases, the website has a full time editor who scans and documents the incidents reported. The website was inaugurated recently in June of 2008, but has gained significant momentum to attract over 500,000 unique visitors over the last couple of months.

SlaveryMaps.com was also recognized recently by ChangeMakers.net as the leading as “a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators who are exposing, confronting and ending modern day slavery”.

Do you know that:

1.       It is estimated that 2 children are sold to trafficker s throughout the third world countries every 2 minutes

2.       The United Nations Childrens fund now believes that an average of 1.2 million children are trafficked annually (2006)

3.       The Unicef estimates that the total market value for trafficking is around $32 billion. This makes trafficking second largest valued crime in the world after drugs.

4.       Approximately 27 million people throughout the world at present are in bonded labor or slavery.

5.       In Mississippi, in 1850 an average slave cost the equivalent of $50,000 to $100,000, and the profit per investment was around 5-10%. So slaves had to be taken care of by their masters to prevent any long term injury or disease, which could harm their investment. In India a bonded labor costs around $90 with a profit margin of around 50 %. Now their masters don’t even care what happens to their slaves, when they get crippled or diseased, they just throw them to the dogs.

6.       About 14 % of the total under 18 population or around 300,000 children in Haiti, are restaveks, children working as domestic slaves. Thirty percent receive just one meal per day.

These are some of the facts that the United Nations has revealed after widespread study throughout the last two decades. Shocking as they might be, they are true hard, undeniable facts. However since UN is a governing organization, and member nations can’t be forced to take actions, UN has been largely ineffective in taking counter-trafficking measures. Hence, smaller grass-root organizations have grown up to mitigate the situation. Through comprehensive education and reform, organizations such as Free the Slaves and Love146 aim to abolish such 21^st century slave trade. Other still smaller scale organizations such as the TheCyberHoodWatch by Bill and Dave, aim to spread the word and make more people involved.

So go ahead today, and become part of this movement, you will find the association much satisfying. And it’s through such small contribution from people like you that the world will finally be free of slavery.