LIHU‘E — The public-service announcement before the late TV news used to say: “It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?” The 21st-century version should go something like this, an Internet expert in law enforcement urges: “It’s any
LIHU‘E — The public-service announcement before the late TV news used to say: “It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
The 21st-century version should go something like this, an Internet expert in law enforcement urges: “It’s any time. Do you know where your children are cybersurfing?”
Sgt. Mark Middleton, with the Martin County (Florida) sheriff’s office, made several presentations on Internet safety to parents and youngsters across the island this week.
In his presentation before some 30 people at the War Memorial Convention Hall, the adults nodded in agreement when he made a comment about their children knowing way more about computers, the Internet, cybernavigation and popular chatroom and social-networking sites like facebook.com and myspace.com.
He told cautionary tales about teens and people younger than that putting personal information out in cyberspace, as on myspace alone there are 270 million subscribers who can easily access such information.
Unfortunately, several of them are professional predators, and young people putting personal information including photographs on their myspace and facebook pages could be a recipe for disaster, he warned.
“If you don’t monitor these, you’re going to have problems,” he said. Many young people engage in “risky behavior” online without really understanding the potential risk of these postings which to the young people are simply the same things that all their friends and millions of their peers are doing, Middleton said.
Those who send text messages and instant messages back and forth via cell phones are no less vulnerable, potentially, he added.
He offered some suggestions to parents, basically, to establish rules for children going online:
— Restrict the amount of time young ones can spend online;
— Limit the numbers and types of sites they can visit;
— Make sure they know who they are talking to online;
— Don’t allow the computer to be used or set up in a child’s room;
— Tell a parent or other adult if something they see or experience online makes them feel uncomfortable.
“You don’t know who you’re talking to” online, he warned, saying that two of his fellow detectives in Florida spend their work days doing investigations where they pose online as 14-year-old girls and get hit on in cyberspace by all kinds of boys and men.
He also cautioned about frequenting Web sites offering things like free music downloads, saying sites like Limewire offer free music downloads that oftentimes come with unseen attachments that might be child pornography, for example.
“Be very careful what you download,” he said.
When someone signs up on facebook, he said, the new subscriber authorizes (with or without their knowledge) facebook networkers to go inside the new subscriber’s address book and send e-mails to everyone in that address book, asking them to be the new facebook subscriber’s friend.
“Change your password all the time,” he advises all computer users, and install filtering and monitoring software, he told parents.
For tips on common chatroom lingo (“POS” stands for “parent over shoulder,” for example) and other online safety information, go to cybertipline.com.
Netsmartkids.org is another “excellent resource, and it’s all free,” Middleton said.
