Over the last year, police working through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre arrested 334 suspected child sex offenders and dismantled or disrupted 82 paedophile rings.

The national centre set up in 2006 to tackle the sexual abuse of children also reported that grooming remains the most reported offence.

In its annual review for 2008/09 it said although the organisation had managed to safeguard 139 children in the last 12 months, Ceop teams were seeing different technologies and applications being used by paedophiles to contact children and mask their behaviour.

These include a significant convergence of social networking sites, with instant messaging and photo and video sharing sites as grooming tools.

Jim Gamble, Ceop chief executive said: “This is about the behaviour of offenders manipulating any environment to abuse children.”

And he sent out a warning to offenders saying Ceop is developing strategies to target those who are increasingly trying to use technology to hide their activities such as ‘piggybacking’ unsecured wireless accounts and hacking.

“Almost 8,000 professionals have walked through our doors since we opened to receive specialist training and in every force we now have specialist points of contact to share intelligence, identify targets and take action.

“Not only that but over 50 other organisations from major corporations to specialist service providers have come forward to creatively work with us in making a difference.

“And increasingly our work in areas such as South East Asia and with colleagues in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US is not only shrinking the world for the offender to operate in but is developing and delivering imaginative solutions that are all about inclusion and cross-border application,” he said.