Online Safety Resource
We deliver reasons and resources to help keep your family safe online.

A predator used the popular social networking site called Bebo to groom a 14-year-old girl. A story from stv.tv - “Warning After Internet Predator Jailed”, tells about how a 26-year-old predator groomed a 14-year-old girl for four months before he finally enticed her to his house for sex. Bebo is a site that allows users to create personal profiles, share photos and make new friends. The 14-year-old girl seems to have found a little more than a friend at Bebo.
The part of this story that really got my attention was the fact that the police tracked the predator down and charged him but, but while he was out on bail, he was caught trying to groom another 14-year-old on Bebo again. These Predators are persistent and they are chatting with your kids.
Sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook do not make parenting any easier but they do make it easier for predators to prey on children.

 This story “Man Admits Sex with Girl” from the Edmonton Sun, leaves questioning just how old our kids think they are. A 30-year-old predator met this 13-year-old girl on an Internet dating service for adults. You see, not only can the Internet predators pretend to be teenagers, but also teenagers can pretend to be adults. Nevertheless, they both come with a price.
Apparently, they voluntarily had sex on several separate occasions. So the girl was curious, but the 30-year-old should not have taken advantage of her curiosity. However, he did. The police found dozens of videos and photos of her on his computer. I hope they did not make it on the Internet for all to see for a long time. They also found 15,470 child porn images and over 700 videos.
He is a sick man. His mother said her son was “not a monster”. I bet some people will disagree with that statement. The victim’s mother said that she was disappointed with her daughter. The mother could have known that her 13-year-old daughter was chatting on an adult dating site.

Sometimes the Internet isn’t as big as you think it is. On a search about chat stories, I ran across a rather amusing story “Couple Cheats in Online Chat Room, with Each Other” at appscout.com. Apparently, a couple from Bosnia were having marital problems and decided to look to the Internet for some spice in their life. What they did not know was that the spice that they found was actually each other. What a surprise they had when they decided to meet in person.
They were both quite upset that the other would cheat. They filed for a divorce since both of them were caught being unfaithful. Although the Internet is a legitimate source to meet people, it isn’t the place to cheat. Just remember that story one if you decide to stray

Online Safety Tips

• Get to know the services your child uses. If you don't know how to log on, get your child to show you. Find out what types of information the service offers and whether there are ways for parents to block out objectionable material.

• Try to make Internet use a family activity. Consider keeping the computer in a family room rather than the child's bedroom. Get to know their "online friends" just as you get to know all of their other friends.

Online Safety Resource recommended Monitoring Program - Spector Pro  

This version of the Spector computer monitoring program also specifically monitors MySpace activity. Spector AUTOMATICALLY takes hundreds of screen snapshots every hour, very much like a surveillance camera. With Spector, you will be able to see EVERY chat conversation, EVERY instant message, EVERY e-mail, EVERY web site visited and EVERY keystroke typed. Wouldn't you feel safer knowing what your family is doing when they are online?

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