The statistics are scary. "One in three kids online talks to someone they don't know. One in seven kids online is approached and sexually solicited online," Priscilla Natkins of the Ad Council said. "For the most part, these kids, and for the most part, these girls, don't share the information with their parents."
The statistics are from the U.S. Department of Justice, which tapped the Ad Council and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create a new series of public service advertisements. The spots will warn children about the dangers of putting too much information about themselves online.
"Short of scare tactics, we want sort of an alarm to go off in their heads that the activities they do right now might be inappropriate and harmful to them," Natkins said.
It's an alarm Lt. John Otero has been sounding for years as head of the NYPD's Computer Crimes Squad. He often visits schools and shows kids how easy it is for a predator to find everything they want to about a child from social networking sites like myspace.com.
Often times, a predator can find out information even if the child uses a fake user name, with no personal information about themselves.
"Even though he didn't have his information on that account, his friends did, so the first thing I did was start digging down into what his friends do, and I found out what school he goes to," Otero said. "One of them had him on his link, so I found out his last name. Then, I go on the Internet and find out how many kids are in this school by this last name. The whole process took me about 3 minutes."
A few minutes later, he also had the child's age and home address, Otero said.
"If you're a parent, check the profiles on AOL and myspace. Check the profile out and take two minutes to see where that leads you. Go and see what friends they are linking to," he said. "Consider buying programs that will help you keep track of what they're doing. Kids, minors, don't have an expectation of privacy. Parents are allowed to put software in there that allows them to track what the kids are doing. They can track the e-mails. They can track the conversations or chats."
Perhaps the most important tip for parents is, whether they're tech savvy or not, keep the family computer in a public space within your home such as your living room. That way, you can peek over your child's shoulder to see what they're doing and the child knows that, even if you're not in the room, you have potential to sneak back in and peek over their shoulder.
The new ad campaign, that'll remind us of all those tips and pitfalls and then some, is set to launch as early as December
