Dear 21st Century Dad, I’ve read that children who are most at risk to online predators share several characteristics. They are between 11 and 15, are sheltered or naïve, are willing to take risks and play at being sophisticated, and are loners who are looking for love. Even though my 13 year old daughter shares none of these characteristics (except her age), and I consider her well balanced with lots of school and friendships, I’m worried about her net safety.
Dear Right To Be On Guard,
By the age of 13, most of our children know they shouldn’t volunteer family information over the phone to strangers, or organizations. We need to set up a similar policy for computers. Children will often volunteer on line information, if they have interest in a product or service. When unscrupulous organizations sell that data to spammers, the torrent of unwanted emails can be a hassle.
Predators do not require any great degree of sophistication to discover online information about our children, just lots of time. They can plug key words into blogging sites and begin to collect a lot of information from the profiles about our children. Many sites are set to private and information is unobtainable. Others are not. In an hour’s work, we can discover a network of friends, the schools they attend, the music they listen to, their pet peeves, their turn ons, their sexual status (gay, straight, lesbian, transgender), and maybe with some luck, an email address or website contact. Notice that most blog site profiles include a treasury of photos.
If we are writing a letter to our aunt or our mother, and one of our children walks by, it is doubtful that we would attempt to make private our notes. If our children attempt to regularly change screens as we walk by, probably we need to enquire about the need for privacy. If we note that our 13 year old wants to attend the mall by herself, without even any friends to accompany her, danger flags should be popping into our consciousness.
If we are engaged parents, we will know the friends of our children and their phone numbers. The children will be in our house and their parents will often come to the door to pick up their childen. The computer offers no such tangible contact. One recent fad is to boast about the number of ‘friends’ accumulated on a blogging site. Our children may have met these bloggers personally, or they could live on another continent. If we feel like our children are vulnerable, ask our children to identify who each person (member ID) is in their on line computer address list. And that web cam? Hackers and predators can externally control web cams. With a few keyboard strokes, a perverted mind a house away or a continent away can program a few hundred computer cams and retrieve live images of our children in various stages of undress. Let’s have a discussion about the web cam, or get rid of it.
If our child is a victim to harassment by a pornography predator, we can take the hardware to a computer dearler and have them erase all information that is not pertinent to the running of the computer. In some towns and cities, our local police force may perform this function. By informing the police, we can discover the source of the harassment.
What is the most important point to remember about computer predators?
Here it is.
Our child must feel comfortable to walk up to us and say, “I got this weird email.” Or, “I think I just did something stupid. I sent a picture of myself over the net.” The true test of parenthood is to be accept our children’s mistakes, hug them, make amends, and get on with the business and joy of watching our children grow up.
Cyber predators are no joke. As 21st Century parents, we should know our way in and around computer communications.
Google:.
1. Internet Safety http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/events/isafety/index.html
2. NetSmartz.org.
3. WiredSafety Learning
4. the local police or school board
5. Our children’s name to see if they have a web site.
Key into YouTube:
1. Girl stripping and then Mom comes in. Another caution. I originally researched this site seven months ago from this blog date. Now the video has disappeared and a couple of dozen porno videos have copied the format and replaced it.
2. CVMS bullying. Myspace discussion
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