Mobile phones can be a useful safety device for children, but also make them vulnerable.

Mobile phones can be a useful safety device for children, but also make them vulnerable.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to equip mobile phones with cameras probably didn't anticipate people taking photographs of their genitals and transmitting the images to websites for all to see.

But having places on the internet where people could send and publish - "post" - instant images taken with camera phones, was always part of the plan. They're known as "moblogs" and most are innocuous - homes for electronic albums of family, pets, holidays, gatherings, and the like. Plus the weird craze of the moment in "drive-by shootings" - photos of buildings, roadsides, scenery or anything else one drives by.

But there are also a few moblogs where people have used the technology for less wholesome things - like the aforementioned instant DIY porn. Sick exhibitionists? Undoubtedly. But such sites also represent the avant-garde of mobile phone use - creativity gone mad when it comes to what one can do with a fledgling technology. Why? Because they can.

Surprising, new uses for mobiles are cropping up all time. Like the gang member in an Auckland District Court seen last week using a camera phone to photograph members of the jury. The judge was not impressed and immediately had the jury taken to a secret location.

The behaviour also has court officials and Government ministers wondering whether the incident represents a new tactic for causing mistrials - and whether mobile phones should be banned in court.

Besides the spectre of pornographic postings and juror intimidation, other mobile phone behaviours may give parents pause for thought if they're considering buying their daughter or son the latest in mobile gadgetry this Christmas.

Internet Safety Group (Netsafe) director Liz Butterfield talks of incidents where schoolchildren have been photographed with camera phones in changing rooms by their peers. And of how those photos (pxts) are passed around from phone to phone, or worse still, put on websites.

The behaviour is an extension of so called cyber-bullying where denigrating text messages (txts) are sent (sometimes bombarded) to children's phones. The results can be devastating - as in the case of Oamaru teenager Daniel Gillies who fell down a cliff to his death last year.

"My son is dead and those text messages were a significant factor in that," Daniel's mother Helen Algar told a Sunday newspaper, convinced her son killed himself because of the bullying texts. "Text messaging can be a potent weapon."

It's a weapon adults are quick to use too. "We are seeing an increase in domestic violence-related abuse being conducted through mobile phones," says policing development group senior researcher and e-crime co-ordinator Judith Jefferson. Mostly that's people breaking protection orders by texting messages to those under protection. But the Herald has been told of a case where "you are going to burn **** you" was sent to a close friend of a person under a protection order. The texter, knowing the message would be passed on, was engaging in harassment by proxy.