Help Your Kids Be Safe on the Internet

Our children are at a higher risk to be victims of Internet crimes than most parents realize. Don’t be uninformed. Understand the scope of the problem, where your child is in danger online, and how you can protect them.

Did you know that:

• Only 1/3 of the households with Internet access are proactively protecting their children using filtering or blocking software. (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
• 75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves in exchange for goods and services. (eMarketer)
• 71% of all parents reported that they stop monitoring their child’s use of the Internet after the child turns 14, not knowing that most of all Internet-related missing children are 15 years of age or older. (Protecting Our Children website - Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office).
• One in five U. S. teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet said they have received unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations are defined as requests to perform sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information. (University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center)
• One in 33 youth received an aggressive sexual solicitation in the past year. According to the survey a young person was ask to meet somewhere, or called on the phone by a stranger. Also a stranger through correspondence, money, or gifts via the U. S. Postal Service contacted some young people. (Youth Internet Safety Survey)
• 77% of the targets for online predators were age 14 or older. Another 22% were under 13. (University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center)
• Only 25% of solicited children were distressed by their encounters and told a parent. (University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center)
• Only 17% of youth and 11% of parents could name a specific authority including Police, FBI, CyberTipline, or an Internet Service Provider to report the crime. (University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center)

How You Can Protect Your Child from Internet Dangers:

• The key is to SUPERVISE your child’s Internet activity. Use the Internet with your child and help them become responsible users. Keep the computer in a family room so that you can monitor their Internet usage.
• Establish ground rules for Internet usage with your children. Stress that the rules you make are to protect them, not to control them.
• Let your child know that the person they meet on-line may not be who they claim to be. (A person with a profile of an 8-year-old boy may really be a 40-year-old pedophile.)
• MONITOR POSTINGS.  Even on child-friendly websites, kids should never reveal personal information about themselves, such as name, age, address, gender, physical description, telephone number, photo or school unless, you as a parent, approve it (Internet predators look at personal profiles stored on the Internet to find their victims).
• Children should never fill out forms on the internet without a parent's permission.  Before giving your go-ahead, be sure the form is on a "secure" site, that is, one that encrypts information so that it can't be viewed by others.  The government has enacted the Children’s Online Privacy Policy Act (COPPA) to protect children’s privacy when he/she registers on certain web sites.
• SCREEN EMAIL.  Do not allow your child to have multiple e-mail accounts or create accounts without your knowledge. Accounts should only be in an adult’s name. You may insist that your children give you their email and chat passwords.
• Tell your child to let you know immediately if a stranger tries to contact them on the Web, whether through an Instant Message, chat room, or even an e-mail. Tell them NEVER to meet a stranger and let a parent or trusted adult know if someone on the Internet asks them to meet somewhere.
• DESIGNATE SAFE SITES.  Ask other parents and your local librarian for the names of safe websites for kids, and check them out yourself before your child logs on.  Then use the "Favorites" setting on your browser to set up a folder of websites that your child knows that he or she has permission to visit. 
• Consider purchasing third-party filtering software such as Cyber Patrol, and Net Nanny that can be purchased at most software electronics stores. This software can be used to filter out harmful websites from being accessed on your computer. Net Nanny restricts Internet access, monitors some on-line activities, protects personal information, blocks IRC chat and newsgroups, and search engines, and is customizable to individual users.

For more information on how to protect children in cyberspace go to:

University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center

www.protectkids.com

For more information and a copy of the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation publication “A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety”, please visit their site at www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguide.htm

Sites to help teach children on-line safety include:

www.netsmartz.org
www.safekids.org
www.livewwwires.com
www.wisekids.org
www.wiredkids.org