Online Predators

Internet has become safe heaven for Online Predators. Using internet, online predators can remain anonymous and morph themselves of any age they want to. They act as the same age as the target child in order to be friend with. A recent survey of 1,501 kids between the ages of 10 and 17 concluded:

At any time, there are 50,000 sexual predators online.
Around 1 in 4 had an unwanted exposure to some kind of image of naked people or people having sex in the last year.
Around 1 in 5 kids had received a sexual solicitation.
One in 33 kids had been asked by someone to meet them somewhere, or called them, or sent them regular mail, money or gifts.
22% of targets for online predators were between the ages of 10 and 13.

Story does not end here, Your child could be physically harmed by someone he or she encounters online and later meets in person. Online predators use every method in their disposable to achieve their objective. Some of them gradually seduce their targets through the use of attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts. They are often willing to devote considerable amounts of time, money, and energy to this process. Online Predators are capable of digging out most of the essential information about the targeted child, either by chatting online with them or visiting their blogs or social networking sites. You may be surprised how much personal information a child can post which can range from their name to their address, school, age etc... This helps online predators tobe aware of the latest music and hobbies likely to interest kids, and listen to and sympathize with kids' problems.

Internet education to our kids, is the first step towards protecting them against online predators. They must be told not to give personal information on the internet at any cost. Though internet education is the key, parents should not depend solely on education since kids are kids, and are prone to get into online predators' trap. What happens if online predators gather information about our child from other kids that happens to be your child's friend? next thing you never know when and where online predator and your child are meeting at some physical place. Point is, children has their own unique way of interpreting situation and facts, and what seems to us as obvious internet threat, but to them it may not.

So what to do? Beside providing basic internet safety education to children, parents must use parental control software - software that not only acts an an internet filter, blocking adult and inappropriate content, but also monitors and tracks children's internet usage, read children's email, record chats and instant messaging. Social networking sites (myspace, facebook etc...) is fast becoming number one place where online predators roams, therefore it is really important to have a software that monitors our children's socializing activity. Monitoring will help parents to stop sexual predators making advancement towards their children.

Online Predators

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