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Cyberpredators – protecting your children

These predators count on this sense of security in lulling your children into letting down their guard. There is a sense of intimacy online that cyberpredators take advantage of to convince your children that they are not strangers at all.

It's your job to teach your children that these people ARE strangers, no matter how friendly they sound. If you stay close at hand, make it a point to get to know their online friends, the cyberpredator's task will be much harder.

What to do?
Protecting your children online is like buying a theft device for you car. Although it can't completely prevent thieves from stealing your car if they really want to, hopefully you've made it hard enough that they'll go somewhere else. Report any attempts to lure your child into a face-to-face meeting to law enforcement officials immediately! And if anyone is harassing your children or yourself online, by sending repeated unsolicited
e-mails and stalking them elsewhere online, report it the systems operator.

There are a few tips that can help keep your child safe online.

• Keeping your child safe online
• Read an anatomy of a pedophile
• Additional reading material:
  "Innocence Lost? Protecting Your Child from the Trauma of Abuse" by Debbie Mahoney

Keeping your child safe online

• Keep the computer in a central family location, not in the child's room. The computer shouldn't be an escape for the child, but a family activity.
• Get to know your children's online friends. You wouldn't let them spend lots of time with a new friend in the neighborhood until you've met them and know about them, online friends are no different.
• Screen e-mail with all younger children. Many pedophiles attach child pornography to e-mails sent to children. The child pornography is used to convince the child that other children are performing sexual acts. Make sure you screen all attachments or limit e-mail through parental control features or software.
• Help your children keep computing online in balance. Too many children get compulsive about computing and forget to play with real friends and never play outdoors in physical activity. Help them find a healthy balance.
• If you can't be home with them when they're online, use child protection software to help keep an eye on them. Some software keeps them from sharing personal information with others online, like their names, addresses and telephone numbers.
• Make sure they understand that they should never meet anyone in real life that they met online without parents in attendance, and that people online are often not honest about who or what they are.

An anatomy of a pedophile
In Parry's book, "A Parents Guide to the Internet", she analyzed the kids for things pedophiles look for in spotting their prey online. She also noted how they typically try to lure your children into trusting them.

There are a few things a parent should note:
Pedophiles prey on the new, inexperienced kids online. The more your children display cyber-smarts, the less likely they will appeal to a predator online. Before your children wander around online unattended, surf with them. If you're new online too, find some helpful sites to get you up to speed fast.

Pedophiles look for loners. Many parents buy their children a computer because they don't have many real life friends. These kids are easier prey, since it's less likely they'll talk about the overtures to their friends, and they are more susceptible to someone trying to befriend them. They're lonely, and the pedophile poses as a much-needed friend.

Pedophiles look for kids who are having problems at home. They too are easier prey, since they are looking for a sympathetic ear. The pedophile tries to win the child over by further separating the child from their family, complaining about "parents" generally.

So you're being stalked or harassed online, now what?

The fact is that both men and women have the same rights online as offline, and NO ONE has a right to harass, threaten and distress you.

On many networks and with many service providers, harassment of another user is a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy and abusers can have their accounts terminated.

And in certain circumstances, once harassment becomes a systematic and malicious campaign of threats against you, then the harasser may be breaking the law and there are a number of steps you CAN take to deal with it, both through the criminal and civil courts.

You don't have to be a victim, remember, if you get the sense that the person may try to stalk you offline...call your local police immediately!

Getting people and law enforcement to take online stalking seriously is often difficult. Thank goodness in recent years the attention the press has given to this new age phenomenon has helped to improve that situation.

Many times when you report online stalking to the authorities your told, "Well stop using the Internet" or just "turn off your computer". If you were receiving obscene telephone calls would they tell you to stop using your telephone? Of course not. Many people make their living with the Internet and to be told to just stop using it is unacceptable.

Unfortunately many law enforcement departments do not have the training or the funding to train their officers in Internet crime. This does not mean that they can not act on your behalf. With assistance often the offensive e-mails and logs can be traced to the persons Internet Service Provider. With this accomplished the police can get a subpoena to require the ISP to release the offending persons identifying information and press charges of harassment or stalking depending on the situation and jurisdiction.

When your gut tells you that something is wrong listen to it and react. Ask for help. Don't keep the stalking and harassment a secret from your friends or employer. Often people are embarrassed as they may have had a previous relationship with the stalker or feel they somehow contributed to it in a flame war. Your silence gives the stalker power. Break that silence tell people and you will get the help you need.

Criminal Cyberstalking appears to have caught professional Law Enforcement unprepared. The technology is so new and State and Federal funding for Internet resources is so sparse among the law enforcement community, that many times cyberstalking targets will find themselves trying to explain what is happening to them, in vain, to technologically unprepared Police Officers.

The nature of the Internet also makes it difficult for governments to draft effective online anti-stalking legislation. There are multiple problems facing legislators, including issues of legal jurisdiction in a communications medium that is truly international, problems gathering and authenticating online evidence and the thorny problem (particularly in the USA) of free speech rights, and how to draft statutes that deter and punish harassment without curtailing constitutional rights. These problems are not helped by the fact that much legislation is drafted by legislators who do not themselves use the Internet and its technology.

One other reason why cyberstalking targets still get so little help from law enforcement or the civil courts is that cyberstalking as a crime is not yet taken seriously. Even real life stalking laws are very new: In the USA for example there were no laws against real life stalking until 1990, when California passed the first one. In a country where even targets of real life stalking are still told by the Police: "We are sorry, but we can't do anything unless you get physically attacked," small wonder that the "virtual crime" of cyberstalking gets even less respect.