Plans for a British "Megan’s Law" have been significantly scaled back, it has emerged.
Parents will not be given the right to information about paedophiles in their neighbourhoods except in very specific circumstances.
Children’s charities had warned the move would drive abusers underground and trigger vigilante attacks.
In December, the Home Office made clear that ministers wanted to make it easier for parents, carers and other responsible adults to find out about child abusers in their midst.
It said members of the public would be able to ask officials to run checks on local people suspected of being paedophiles - although the Home Office stressed final details had yet to be hammered out.
Today Home Office sources said people in the community will not now be able to ask for details about local paedophiles.
Instead, the proposals will be almost entirely focused on potential child abuse in the home, and will have little or no impact on "stranger danger" cases.
Parents, guardians and carers will be able to ask whether a person has child sex convictions only if that person is able to spend time alone with a child, it is understood.
The system would build on existing laws which already allow police to approach and warn a woman who has begun a relationship with a known paedophile.
Parents may be able to request information about whether paedophiles live on a child’s route to school but will not be given names or addresses, it is thought. Headteachers may also be informed about serial paedophiles in the area.
A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Secretary commissioned the child sex offender review last year and there continues to be discussion within government.
"Under the existing public protection legislation, a limited form of disclosure already exists, and the review is looking at how best to focus the impact of any extension to this important principle.
"Already the number of sex offenders in a local police area are detailed in the Multi Agency Public Protection Agency annual reports, published for the first time last year.
"Furthermore, all headteachers have been informed of the location of approved premises if child sex offenders are housed there."
Kidscape children’s charity director Michelle Elliott welcomed the decision not to give wider access to paedophiles’ identities.
"I never supported that - it would be the road to ruin," she said. "It would bring vigilantism and did not consider how to decide which paedophiles should be named because they were more dangerous than others."
The US’s Megan’s Law commemorates seven-year-old Megan Kanka who was raped and murdered by a paedophile. The child was strangled and her body stuffed in a plastic toy chest by neighbour Jesse Timmendequas in the New Jersey suburb of Hamilton Township in 1994.
The murder of eight-year-old schoolgirl Sarah Payne by paedophile Roy Whiting in July 2000 sparked a nationwide campaign for similar legislation to be introduced in Britain, dubbed "Sarah’s Law".
The system now being proposed would have arguably had no effect on the Sarah Payne case, as she was grabbed by a stranger, and is a far cry from the "Sarah’s Law" originally envisaged by campaigners.
Sources said final decisions on where pilot schemes may take place have not yet been made.
Labour MP Dan Norris claimed that a pilot would take place in his constituency in Wansdyke, north east Somerset.
Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that trials would be "very bad news".
Mr Narey, a former Home Office permanent secretary who ran the prisons and probations services, warned sex offenders may be driven underground, away from the supervision of probation officers.
He said he was shocked by news of the trials and claimed Barnardo’s and the NSPCC had been given assurances that the pilots would not take place.
He said: "This is very, very bad news. This will put children in danger.
"Our only concern is children and this will put children’s lives in danger."
Sir Chris Fox, former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), also expressed concerns about the proposals.
He told Today that offenders could be "potentially punished in the community for the rest of their lives" as a result of the plans, and warned about the dangers posed by vigilantes who might attack suspected paedophiles.
Sir Chris said: "By not naming individuals, we need to look at the atmosphere that is created in an area - what happens to somebody who is unusual, an eccentric, a recluse - because an atmosphere can be built up where a totally innocent person comes under threat."
Children’s Commissioner for England Sir Al Aynsley-Green said: "We are yet to explore the detail of these proposals but I am reassured that they do not include revealing the names and whereabouts of child sex offenders.
"I remain convinced that moves to identify individual offenders are not in the best interests of our children.
"Such action would lead to offenders retreating underground, making it more difficult for authorities to monitor them, and result in increased vigilante action in communities.
"This would not serve to safeguard children and could give a false sense of security for parents. The emphasis this would place on ’stranger danger’ could also detract from the fact that children are actually most at risk from people they know."
The reforms would apply to England and Wales but officials are liaising with Scotland and Northern Ireland about the changes.
In the US, Megan’s Law gives communities the right to know when a sex offender moves into the neighbourhood, and makes sex offender registers open for public inspection.
Access to the information varies between states. In some, paedophiles’ names and photographs are featured on internet sites and their home addresses plotted on maps.
