Keeping Your Child Safe on the Internet

Recently I attended a presentation on child Internet safety given by a local police officer. Because I'd been to two similar talks over the past few years, I wasn't sure I'd learn anything new. But, reasoning that things might have changed since then, I decided to go—and ended up very glad I did.

As with the previous presentations, this one featured a fictionalized but reality-based demonstration of how much information anyone could learn about a child with a MySpace (or other social networking) account. Starting with searches of the child's user name and progressing to searches of user names of "friends," the child's school, sports information, chat rooms, and so on, obtaining the child's real name, address, and phone number—as well as details on exactly where and when the child might be in a particular place—was relatively easy, taking only 20 minutes.

What I hadn't heard about before, however, was the lengths to which online perpetrators sometimes go to obtain the information they seek. For example, if a "friend" request is turned down, a perpetrator may create one or more pages on social networking or other sites specifically geared to the interests of the child in question. The perpetrator may also try to become a "friend" of the child's other "friends," indirectly gaining access to the child and eventually becoming accepted as a "friend." Sometimes, to build up trust, a perpetrator will cultivate an online relationship for months, or even years, before suggesting an in-person meeting.

In addition, although a child may feel "special" and that he or she has a unique, exclusive relationship with the perpetrator, the reality is that most perpetrators pursue many children simultaneously in hopes that one (or more) of them will "pay off." As adults, perpetrators are far more sophisticated than even the most streetwise teens and take advantage of their relative inexperience and gullibility.

Perhaps the most important take-home message of the presentation was that no information is private or safe on the Internet—and that there is often much more personal information available there than kids or their parents realize. If your child receives questionable communications from potential predators, contact the CyberTipline at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children—and don't wait.