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Articles
7 things to stop doing now on Facebook
Last reviewed: June 2010
Using a weak password
Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word "houses": hO27usEs!
Leaving your full birth date in your profile
It's an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you've already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.
Overlooking useful privacy controls
For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don't want anyone to have access to that information anyway.
Posting your child's name in a caption
Don't use a child's name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn't on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.
Mentioning that you'll be away from home
That's like putting a "no one's home" sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.
Letting search engines find you
To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook's privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn't checked.
Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised
Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. "What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious," says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment "Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes" every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents' regular comings and goings.
October is Cyber Safety Month in Ohio
October is Cyber Safety month in Ohio. It reminds me of the time I worked on a Federal Internet taskforce where I experienced first hand the on-line dangers that confront our children. They are extreme. While posing as a child, or an adult with access to children, or as a child picture trader, I learned of things which should scare any parent. Dangerous situations were taking place without parents’ knowledge and were happening within quiet anonymous clicks of a mouse in social networking environments.
In response to parent complaints received by the task force I worked in an undercover capacity in chat rooms or other related places online. I was always surprised by the volume of individuals who would view my profile and send me an instant message. It was staggering and my age or gender didn’t matter to these people. Worse, these numerous instant messages turned perversely depraved within just a few lines of chat. And that was just the text in the instant messages. The pictures and links sent by these individuals were truly x-rated, some horrifying.
The images were not only explicitly foul, but were of children in completely compromised circumstances of abuse. These children were exploited and victimized and often had blank facial expressions with a far off gaze in their eyes typical of victims suffering abuse. Each still photo was a crime scene. These digitized pictures are virally spread out over the internet where they are never removed. As the child victim ages they grow up knowing they are “out there” as a child victim being viewed over and over again.
The individuals sending those images to me did so thinking I was a child. They used them to me to teach me the “fun” we could have when we meet face-to-face. This is all a trick. Regardless of what the child is led to believe, no child has fun when they meet the monster who has been chatting and lying to them. The individuals invested days and weeks of “grooming” me by instant message. Grooming is virtual dating. Wikipedia defines grooming as actions deliberately undertaken with the aim of befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child in order to lower the child's inhibitions in preparation for abuse or exploitation. During the grooming phase the individual would say all those things to me that kids like to hear to feel special and well-liked. Once the bond was formed and molded, the suspect asks to meet the child out in the real world to do the things seen in the images.
The attempt to meet is quite sinister and occurs under a ruse. The child’s innocence is leveraged against them by the perpetrator. The perpetrator lies about who and what they really are working hard to create an image for the child to believe this is a fun friendship, a sort of mentoring to teach life experiences in a fun way. It is anything but that. Instead it is a sex crime. Usually when a face-to-face meeting takes place it results in criminal physical contact with the child. Knowing that consider these two alarming statistics from www.cox.com/TakeCharge/includes/docs/teen_survey.pdf regarding children and online safety.
· 14% have actually met face-to-face with a person they had known only through the Internet (9% of 13- to 15-year-olds and 22% of 16- to 17-year-olds).
· 30% have considered meeting someone they’ve only communicated with online.
There are simple ways to protect children from such dangers. Things like placing the home computer in the busiest part of the home making parent supervision easier, parents viewing what kids are doing online, making children provide all password and usernames to the sites the children log into, being active with “snoopervision” by logging on to sites as your child to see who interacts with them, password protecting the operating system so a parent must log the child onto the system, using parental controls on web browsers, and not allowing kids to be online in the privacy of their bedrooms for long periods of time.
The best prevention is education. Teaching children how to be safe online will set the tone for their growth in the digital age and guide them in the appropriate use of computers and the Internet. Coupled with strong parental supervision much of the dark side on the Internet can be avoided by the brilliant light of knowledge and parental involvement.
Kevin Owens, President, Founder
Blue Knight Productions, Inc.
www.e-copp.com
Keep Your Children Safe on the Internet This Summer
Now that school is at a mid-point out and kids are past the holidays with an eye toward their summer leisure hours, caregivers should pay particular attention to their children's Internet use and not rely on it as a co-babysitter with their television sets. It is a time of year when Blue Knight Productions, creators of e-copp.com, have serious concerns about the safety and welfare of our children from the increasing dangers posed by the Internet.
Tom Wetzel quotes, “As police officers who have been teaching children's Internet safety for years, we recognize the naiveté of young people to just how dark the World Wide Web can be and the casual lack of oversight by parents or the misplaced confidence in screening software. All of it mixes up a recipe for serious problems for the lives and psyches of our kids”. The anymonity of the Internet lures children into the dangers that exist on-line.
For children 10 years and under, early exposure to pornography is particularly troublesome. Whether accidentally or deliberately, porn can find its way onto your computer screens when your child is on it. Make no mistake that their little minds are not hardwired for such imagery and there are indications revealing disturbing trends where some children are acting out sexually on other children as a result of this corrupt visualization. Children do not understand such imagery and sometimes have a hard time expressing what they have visualized. Not withstanding the blurring lines for law enforcement on determining culpability of young violators, it is crystal clear that children have been victimized. The poison of porn has always been problematic for adults but now it is corroding our children's minds primarily through easy Internet access. With over 40,000 porn sites on the Net, this toxic influence will likely get worse. Caregivers have to be aware of this and know how to take control of the computer.
An invasion of their privacy can even begin with on-line chatting. Children will feel a trusted friendly relationship was violated through empowering behavior. Most offenders openly solicit victims on-line through bringing up sexual topics, engaging in cyber sex or transmitting sexual pictures. This is done through the anymonity of the Web. Phone encounters may progress after on-line activity then can advance to actual physical encounters. Many cases of abuse involved face-to-face sexual encounters, some of these involving some form of sexual contact between the offender and the victim. The offender is not considered a stranger to the child for they feel they have created a “trusting” friendship. Many crimes occur after the offender builds a relationship on-line with the victim therefore they were not perceived as someone victim did not know. A type of a trusting relationship was built then the unequal powering activity occurs. This is a form of abuse.
And for our young teenagers, the hip appeal to social networking sites such as My Space and Face Book are not without serious risks and parents are negligent if they dismiss their teen's participation as nothing more than "kids being kids." Moms shouldn't delude themselves into thinking that their sons and daughters are just kibitzing with their friends inside networks only secure to those pals with passwords. Visits or browsing throughout these systems can lead them to some bizarre stuff. Also, the word out is that there are two networks set up, one that teens show their parents and one that they access outside their supervision. Ask yourself why they would do this. Also "friends" can become estranged and we all know that ex-friends are capable of sharing those old secrets, i.e. room access, of ex-friends. Instantly outsiders are accessing private information and downloading pictures without permission. This is indeed violating. These “notebooks” are not secure and safe. Many so called “outsiders” can gain access to personal information and befriend anyone listing personal information about them. It is so important to always know who the children are chatting with. If they were not on the computer teens would probably having nothing to do with some of the people they are chatting with. Why should this be different on-line?
Parents and teens should be especially vigilant in posting those innocuous pictures of them at the beach in their bathing suits, at school in varsity jerseys, with friends, family, or honestly any photos at all. Once those pictures are out, they can easily get lost in an electronic universe where retrieving them is unrealistic. So for every Dad who is uncomfortable with the idea of a picture of his daughter wearing her two pieces being a screen saver for a pedophile two states over, careful oversight of what your kids post is in order. Actually, if anyone thinks that it is only kids visiting these sites, they are not being real. There are 550,000 registered sex offenders in this country of which 150,000 are in non-compliance. Don't mislead yourself that plenty aren't regularly visiting these networking sites to "socialize." Older adults pose as teenagers and young teens pose as older to gain access to the web sites. Nothing is honest and almost anything goes.
With teens spending almost 15 hours a week online, parents need to maintain strict time management of their kids' access to their computers. Although not fool proof, screening software can help in controlling their access to some visual trash and hate speech. But being a nosy parent is a critical behavior that could help protect your child from unhealthy imagery and the luring efforts of Internet child predators. Don't be afraid to look over your kid's shoulders when they are on-line, "snoop" when they are off-line and ask questions. Have the computer situated in an open family environment. Kids are less likely to be secretive when they are using the computer in the family room with the family rather than in private in their bedrooms. Consistent open channels of communications are critical for parents and kids. Cops know that idle minds can lead to mischief but when you toss in a computer with Internet access over the summer months, mischief can lead to outright danger for our youth. A visit to Blue Knight Productions web-site at www.e-copp.com is highly encouraged to learn more about ways to keep your children safe.
Tom Wetzel, Vice President, Founder
Lisa M. Owens, Director of Marketing; Public Relations; RN, BS, MBA, CLNC
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Irish politician Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797).