What's YOUR child buying online?

Alcohol, knives, pornography... all bought over the internet by a 14-year-old boy using a debit card. So why are the banks giving them to children without telling their parents?

A 14-year-old boy with some spare cash to spend. Like many children, he has a bank account, and with that account comes a bank card. In days gone by, its only use would have been to impress his mates by his ability to withdraw the odd fiver from a machine to go shopping on the High Street. But not today. Once logged on to the internet, the debit card, handed out to young customers by all the major banks, means the users' age becomes largely immaterial.

For starters, despite the worries surrounding the spate of teenage stabbings that has gripped the capital, in just a few clicks of the mouse, a fearsome-looking 12-inch kitchen knife can be bought from John Lewis, delivery by courier guaranteed for the next morning. Sure enough, the retailer warns that the item can be bought only by over-18s, but how does it check? By asking the buyer to enter their age. That's it.

Still, on the subject of violence, how about a copy of the notoriously bloodthirsty game Grand Theft Auto IV? It has been classified by the BBFC as an 18, but on the web that counts for nothing. Tap in the number on the debit card and in a day or two it's delivered to the door by the postman.

Incredible though it may seem, it is even possible for a 14-year-old to order alcohol online. Log on to the websites of Tesco and Asda and once again the card is accepted - enough alcopops, lager, wine and spirits to sink a battleship.

Yet that's just the half of it. Pornographic films, cigarettes, false identities - even drugs such as Viagra - can be bought over the internet in a way that would never be possible in a face-to-face situation.

More worrying still is the fact that it's not just the odd, tearaway child who is trying it on. Of 1,000 children aged 14 to 17 questioned for a survey last month, half the teenage boys admitted they had tried to buy adult DVDs or violent games online using a combination of their own and their parents' cards in the past year. Of that number, three in four were successful.

It also found that five per cent of 14-year-olds have successfully bought alcohol online, while a similar number of 15-year-olds have been able to buy dangerous objects such as knives. So just who is to blame? The banks, say some, for allowing children to have these cards in the first place. Lloyds TSB give young account holders a debit card although, controversially, they have been issuing them directly to the account holder.

The retailers, say others, for being complacent and failing to keep abreast of the sort of technology that has seen the gambling industry clamp down on a similar problem.

Whatever the solution, action needs to be taken fast. It's a big enough loophole already and with analysts claiming 50 per cent of all retail transactions will be online by 2012, it's one that's growing bigger by the day.

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