Child Safety Online

Teenagers (13 and older)

Teenagerss often spend more time online than adults — surfing, chatting, emailing and instant messaging. Teach your teenagers, early on, the importance of keeping their personal information private at all times.

Chatroom

Nowadays, chat is an extremely popular activity for young people, especially teenagers. It is also the place where they are most likely to get into most trouble or even be solicited by an offender. When you're in a chat area, it's easy to forget that you are in a public "place" and that you don't really know the true identity of anyone in the chatroom. It's common to "meet" someone in a chat area who gains your confidence by having something in commom or being sympathetic and willing to "listen" to your problems. Children and especially teenagers need to be extremely careful in this situation. They should never reveal their identity to anyone, even when they claim to be a friend. They should never assume that someone is telling the truth or is as he or she appears to be. They should NEVER agree to meet someone in person they've met in an online chatroom even if the person seems harmless. The first thing they should do is talk to their parents and let them know about the proposition. Secondly, IF parents agree to the meeting, it should always be in a public place and a parent or another adult should be there as well, along with authorities, if the situations seems suspicious.

Several ways to avoid problems in chatrooms:

Do not let your child chat in unmoderated chatrooms. Only allow them to chat in rooms operated by a reputable company or organization that monitors activity constantly and consistently.

Many spammers use names they can easily collect from a chatroom so consider giving your child a "chat" name. This name must be different than their email address. This helps prevent unwanted spam email from coming to your child in the future.

Instruct your child never to give out personal information in a chatroom.

Talk with your children about the way some people interact in chatrooms. Remind them that people are not always who they appear to be. Remind them to be very careful about people who offer easy solutions to difficult problems or make offers that are just "too good to be true."

Block sensitive personal information from being transmitted through your children's chat by installing blocking software on your computer.

Instruct your child never to agree to get together with anyone they meet in a chatroom without checking with you first.

Email messages

There are two real dangers when it comes to email. First, someone may try to contact your child via email. It could be something innocent... a form of "spam" (unsolicited commercial email), or it might be a message from someone who is trying to lure your child into an inappropriate situation. If you suspect that the latter is the case, and that your child's physical or emotional safety is in danger, you may wish to contact local authorities.

"Spam," or electronic "junk mail" is designed to get people to purchase something, visit a Web site, or take some action by clicking on a link within the email. People who send out spam often don't know who the recipient is, and it is common for inappropriate messages to find their way into your childrens' inbox. One of the most disturbing types of messages are those that promote sexually explicit Web sites and include links to those sites along with attached photographs or banners. It's very difficult to stop these types of messages and, unfortunately, asking the spammer to stop sending them doesn't always work. Many spammers don't ever see the response you send in, as they are overwhelmed with mail, and some who actually invite you to write back to "remove" yourself from their list fail to honor such requests. In some cases, spammers actually consider a remove request to be a validation that they sent their spam to a real email address, which causes them to send more — not less — to your email box.

Any mail from a stranger, even if it's innocent, can be disturbing to some children, which is why it is a good idea for parents to monitor their children's email, periodically. That's not to say that kids, at some point, shouldn't have their privacy, but parents need to decide when privacy is appropriate and when it is necessayr to keep an eye on their email inbox.

More Child Safety Tips

Along with the child safety tips below, we've included more specific topics for parents to read through to prevent child abduction as well as articles about teaching stranger danger and internet safety.

Child Internet Safety
Stranger Danger
School Safety
Safe Shopping
Protect your Child
Missing Children
Child Safety Online
Internet Safety for Kids
Child Safety in the Home
Child Abduction Statistics

Most online services and Internet providers have tools to help you block spam now and many email programs have blocking features too. You can try these various tools, but they don't always work because spammers often disguise themselves and keep changing identities so they can get past the spam filters easily.

Your best defense is to tell your children not to open email from strangers. If they do open the email — not to click on any links, respond, or take any action without checking with their parents first.

Another danger from email is that your child can send out information that could put him or her or other people in danger. The basic rules of safety is not giving out personal information. This applies to email as well as other places of the Internet. Children should never send a photograph of themselves via email to anyone without checking with their parents to be sure it's safe to do so.

Instant messaging

Instant messaging is like chat, except that it's usually a one-on-one experience instead of a group activity, and is almost never moderated. In some ways that's safer if the person the child is messaging with, is a friend or relative, but can be dangerous if it's a complete stranger. Unlike in chatrooms, there is never anyone else there to monitor activity, so when your child is messaging another person it's as if the two of them are together, alone in a private room.

Posting Websites

It is now possible for children and teenagers to set up their own Web sites at no cost. The danger of setting up a Web site is that anything posted can be seen by anyone visiting the site. If your child has a Web site, it is important that parents visit it often to see what it contains. Make sure that your child doesn't post personal information, photographs, or anything else that could identify them. Also, be sure there is nothing on the site that could get your child into trouble at school or with the law or might be harmful or offensive to others.

Children and teens who post material to Web sites must also avoid infringing on the copyrights of others by not posting copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder.

Ways to know if your child is posting inappropriate material to Web sites:

If you know your child has a Web site, find out the URL (Web address) and check it often.
If you're not sure if your child has a Web site, ask them first.
If you've asked and are still not sure, try searching for the child's name using one of the free Internet search engines (like google.com or yahoo.com or msn.com or aol.com). Also search for your address, phone number, school name, and the names of your child's close friends.