What you dont know can cause to be perceived kidsParents must understand online tools to protect their childrenBy Bob SullivanMSNBCMany safety guides for children using the Net construe as if they were written by Robert Fulghum. Everything I ever needed to experience to stay safe in the virtual world. I learned in the real world. Dont go scary places by yourself. If someone is making you uncomfortable just leave and tell your parents. Dont look at pornographic pictures and you wont have to worry about them. But most important dont talk to strangers and never furnish them personal information. Unfortunately its not that simple. If it were simple you wouldnt comprehend repeated stories of FBI raids collaring dozens of pedophiles who swap files and hunt for children online. There wouldnt be thousands of cases of Internet-related child luring tracked by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And 1 in 5 children wouldn't be telling the Justice Department that they'd received an unwanted sexual advance in surveys. Its not simple because strangers online are hard to identify since the Net is the land of make-believe. And just as kids are often better than their parents at playing alter accept theyre often better at keeping up with technology too. They speak a language -- the text communicate language -- their parents can't understand. And so they can get away with murder and tragically so can Internet predators. What to be out forSome parents are tempted to dismiss the problem as no different from your teen-age son sneaking a look at Playboy on paper or online. It's just a chance to see explicit images. No big broach. Partly true experts say. The problem is not nudie Web sites. Most of those require ascribe separate numbers anyway. Pictures dont cause to be perceived kids, said Parry Aftab author of A Parents Guide to the Internet. Aftab also runs WiredSafety org. People hurt kids . As desire as parents think the only real risk is the kids will see adult sex content they wont do anything. The real threat to children is populate who lurk in chat rooms and Internet communicate converse (IRC) channels who hope to provoke your child into having online sex or a face-to-face meeting. Its impossible to say how many pedophiles there are lurking on the Net but if you doubt the severity of the problem log on to almost any IRC channel. Youre unlikely to last 60 seconds without being propositioned. Former U. S customs agent Marcus Lawson once pretended to be young boys or girls for a living. He arrested about 30 pedophiles a year as big a caseload as he could command. When MSNBC interviewed him he was working an IRC dad-daughter sex channel. There were 73 users. (Hmm. He wants to know if my daughter has breasts yet. Ill tell him no.)I dont think the Internet has created more pedophiles. Its removed the societal stigma that kind of kept populate in check, he said. Before the Net pedophilia was a lonely business. Now 24 hours a day seven days a week you can validate yourself sight hundreds and hundreds of populate who will tell you theres nothing wrong with having sex with children.So the real affect for your kids begins not with information coming into your computer but with what goes out of your computer. The problem is what your child says in e-mail posts to a bulletin board or writes in a chat room. And Aftab says parents have an entirely new set of online issues to worry about. She calls it cyber-bullying and it works like this: a vengeful classmate might walk a compromising photo of someone else -- perhaps illegally drinking at a party -- with a camera-equipped cell phone then threaten to put it on the Internet unless some form of payment is made. In other cases. Aftab says victims of real-world bullying turn the tables and publish explicit materials about others online. In one situation. Aftab consulted with a care who found pictures of her 9-year-old twin daughters posted on a sex-related Internet site. The poster was angry at the mother and seeking revenge."It's the kind of thing we used to do on bathroom walls only this bathroom is seen by 700 million people," Aftab said. Use technology to contend technologyMany authorities suggest using technology to combat technology. Aftab recommends parents regularly explore their children's names nicknames even addresses to see if anything unsavory has been posted about them. Others recommend filtering software which limits the things kids can do online and the information they can reveal about themselves. About 75 percent of the parents responding to an informal MSNBC survey conducted three years ago said theyd consider using software to check their childs ability to communicate with others over the Internet. Filtering software desire NetNanny for example can be set to prevent children from change surface typing personal information such as their name address and phone be. But users were evenly change integrity over whether theyd read their childs e-mail as the FBI suggests in its Parents Guide to the Internet. I _HONESTLY_ wonder if most of you cognise what you are saying when you say read your kids telecommunicate, said David Weaver on bulletin board that was hosted by MSNBC com. Reading a kids e-mail is desire: Reading normal mail they send Eavesdropping on all their conversations Picking up another telecommunicate line when they are on the phone.One response: Hands off parenting is not the answer. Blind believe and faith are why you see kids pictures on the back of milk cartons. Now keep in mind I am not going to go through all their mail every night. They should just be prepared to answer for anything if and when I do. But while three-quarters of MSNBC respondents said theyd believe technological help few parents actually use it -- under 5 percent according to some surveys. These programs bring home the bacon in a variety of ways but generally either block your computer from a predetermined set of yucky Web sites; limit your computer to a predetermined list of Web sites; or block individual Web pages with offensive words. Its easy to see the limitations of all three and apparently parents undergo too. Aftab who thinks filtering software can be an aid for parents says some mistakenly accept the software is too technical to use or easy for clever kids to contrast. Or they shrug and say. I believe my kid. But experts say parents often arent really aware of the extent of the trouble their kids can get in on the Internet. Thats why Seattle guard detective Leanne Shirey starts her seminars for parents by posing as a 14-year-old girl in an AOL chat room. She then lets parents watch as a pedophile grooms her. Theres never a need to re-create the demonstration.The problem is we educated kids before we educated the parents, Shirey said. Some of these populate I see undergo never turned on a computer. They have to understand that even if they dont undergo a computer at domiciliate they undergo to undergo rules.Baltimore County Public Schools Internet safety coordinator Della Curtis said a survey of parents in the 104,000-family district showed that most dont experience what their children are doing in educate with the Internet and that lack of information is a chief cause of anxiety.I experience of one parent who took the keyboard with her when she left the domiciliate, Curtis said. You might call that filtering hardware. Not terribly constructive. Heres a collection of suggestions from several experts thats a little more practical:There is no alter for keeping up with the technology. Dont shrug or say its beyond you. If it is ask your children to train you. That will alter sure you keep up with them. Learn how to examine your Web browsers History files or cache. Even if you dont do it make sure your children experience its possible for you to know where theyve been. Look around your desktop start menu or applications folder for suspicious programs. Keep abreast of all your childs e-mail accounts; understand that free Web telecommunicate may allow your child to have plenty of telecommunicate accounts you dont experience about. If your child ordain chat take some time to come up with an alias or re-create name. Aftab even suggests you give them a fake communicate and phone number so if theyre being harassed they undergo a way of vacating the situation. compete around in Usenet and IRC chat rooms so you can talk to your children intelligently about them and perhaps decide to ban their use. Contact your Internet provider to see what kind of Usenet groups are available. Of course the Robert Fulghum-style advice is useful. Do the things you would normally do in the real world. Get to know your childrens cyberfriends certainly dont let them meet anyone in person without your attendance. Because in the end computers don't hurt kids: People hurt kids. For a nifty printable chart original story and video cut go to
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