A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety
Dear Parent:
Our children are our Nation's
most valuable asset. They represent the bright future of our
country and hold our hopes for a better Nation. Our children
are also the most vulnerable members of society. Protecting our
children against the fear of crime and from becoming victims
of crime must be a national priority.
Unfortunately the same advances
in computer and telecommunication technology that allow our children
to reach out to new sources of knowledge and cultural experiences
are also leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and harm by
computer-sex offenders.
I hope that this pamphlet
helps you to begin to understand the complexities of on-line
child exploitation. For further information, please contact your
local FBI office or the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.
Louis J. Freeh, Former Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Introduction
While on-line computer exploration
opens a world of possibilities for children, expanding their
horizons and exposing them to different cultures and ways of
life, they can be exposed to dangers as they hit the road exploring
the information highway. There are individuals who attempt to
sexually exploit children through the use of on-line services
and the Internet. Some of these individuals gradually seduce
their targets through the use of attention, affection, kindness,
and even gifts. These individuals are often willing to devote
considerable amounts of time, money, and energy in this process.
They listen to and empathize with the problems of children. They
will be aware of the latest music, hobbies, and interests of
children. These individuals attempt to gradually lower children's
inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content
into their conversations.
There are other individuals,
however, who immediately engage in sexually explicit conversation
with children. Some offenders primarily collect and trade child-pornographic
images, while others seek face-to-face meetings with children
via on-line contacts. It is important for parents to understand
that children can be indirectly victimized through conversation,
i.e. "chat," as well as the transfer of sexually explicit
information and material. Computer-sex offenders may also be
evaluating children they come in contact with on-line for future
face-to-face contact and direct victimization. Parents and children
should remember that a computer-sex offender can be any age or
sex the person does not have to fit the caricature of a dirty,
unkempt, older man wearing a raincoat to be someone who could
harm a child.
Children, especially adolescents,
are sometimes interested in and curious about sexuality and sexually
explicit material. They may be moving away from the total control
of parents and seeking to establish new relationships outside
their family. Because they may be curious, children/adolescents
sometimes use their on-line access to actively seek out such
materials and individuals. Sex offenders targeting children will
use and exploit these characteristics and needs. Some adolescent
children may also be attracted to and lured by on-line offenders
closer to their age who, although not technically child molesters,
may be dangerous. Nevertheless, they have been seduced and manipulated
by a clever offender and do not fully understand or recognize
the potential danger of these contacts.
This guide was prepared from
actual investigations involving child victims, as well as investigations
where law enforcement officers posed as children. Further information
on protecting your child on-line may be found in the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Child Safety
on the Information Highway and Teen Safety on the Information
Highway pamphlets.
What Are Signs That Your Child
Might Be At Risk On-line?
Your child spends large
amounts of time on-line, especially at night.
Most children that fall victim
to computer-sex offenders spend large amounts of time on-line,
particularly in chat rooms. They may go on-line after dinner
and on the weekends. They may be latchkey kids whose parents
have told them to stay at home after school. They go on-line
to chat with friends, make new friends, pass time, and sometimes
look for sexually explicit information. While much of the knowledge
and experience gained may be valuable, parents should consider
monitoring the amount of time spent on-line.
Children on-line are at the greatest
risk during the evening hours. While offenders are on-line around
the clock, most work during the day and spend their evenings
on-line trying to locate and lure children or seeking pornography.
You find pornography
on your child's computer.
Pornography is often used in
the sexual victimization of children. Sex offenders often supply
their potential victims with pornography as a means of opening
sexual discussions and for seduction. Child pornography may be
used to show the child victim that sex between children and adults
is "normal." Parents should be conscious of the fact
that a child may hide the pornographic files on diskettes from
them. This may be especially true if the computer is used by
other family members.
Your child receives phone
calls from men you don't know or is making calls, sometimes long
distance, to numbers you don't recognize.
While talking to a child victim
on-line is a thrill for a computer-sex offender, it can be very
cumbersome. Most want to talk to the children on the telephone.
They often engage in "phone sex" with the children
and often seek to set up an actual meeting for real sex.
While a child may be hesitant
to give out his/her home phone number, the computer-sex offenders
will give out theirs. With Caller ID, they can readily find out
the child's phone number. Some computer-sex offenders have even
obtained toll-free 800 numbers, so that their potential victims
can call them without their parents finding out. Others will
tell the child to call collect. Both of these methods result
in the computer-sex offender being able to find out the child's
phone number.
Your child receives mail,
gifts, or packages from someone you don't know.
As part of the seduction process,
it is common for offenders to send letters, photographs, and
all manner of gifts to their potential victims. Computer-sex
offenders have even sent plane tickets in order for the child
to travel across the country to meet them.
Your child turns the
computer monitor off or quickly changes the screen on the monitor
when you come into the room.
A child looking at pornographic
images or having sexually explicit conversations does not want
you to see it on the screen.
Your child becomes withdrawn
from the family.
Computer-sex offenders will work
very hard at driving a wedge between a child and their family
or at exploiting their relationship. They will accentuate any
minor problems at home that the child might have. Children may
also become withdrawn after sexual victimization.
Your child is using an
on-line account belonging to someone else.
Even if you don't subscribe to
an on-line service or Internet service, your child may meet an
offender while on-line at a friend's house or the library. Most
computers come preloaded with on-line and/or Internet software.
Computer-sex offenders will sometimes provide potential victims
with a computer account for communications with them.
What Should You Do If You Suspect
Your Child Is Communicating With A Sexual Predator On-line?
- Consider talking openly with
your child about your suspicions. Tell them about the dangers
of computer-sex offenders.
- Review what is on your child's
computer. If you don't know how, ask a friend, coworker, relative,
or other knowledgeable person. Pornography or any kind of sexual
communication can be a warning sign.
- Use the Caller ID service to
determine who is calling your child. Most telephone companies
that offer Caller ID also offer a service that allows you to
block your number from appearing on someone else's Caller ID.
Telephone companies also offer an additional service feature
that rejects incoming calls that you block. This rejection feature
prevents computer-sex offenders or anyone else from calling your
home anonymously.
- Devices can be purchased that
show telephone numbers that have been dialed from your home phone.
Additionally, the last number called from your home phone can
be retrieved provided that the telephone is equipped with a redial
feature. You will also need a telephone pager to complete this
retrieval.
- This is done using a numeric-display
pager and another phone that is on the same line as the first
phone with the redial feature. Using the two phones and the pager,
a call is placed from the second phone to the pager. When the
paging terminal beeps for you to enter a telephone number, you
press the redial button on the first (or suspect) phone. The
last number called from that phone will then be displayed on
the pager.
- Monitor your child's access
to all types of live electronic communications (i.e., chat rooms,
instant messages, Internet Relay Chat, etc.), and monitor your
child's e-mail. Computer-sex offenders almost always meet potential
victims via chat rooms. After meeting a child on-line, they will
continue to communicate electronically often via e-mail.
Should any of the following situations
arise in your household, via the Internet or on-line service,
you should immediately contact your local or state law enforcement
agency, the FBI, and the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children:
- Your child or anyone in the
household has received child pornography;
- Your child has been sexually
solicited by someone who knows that your child is under 18 years
of age;
- Your child has received sexually
explicit images from someone that knows your child is under the
age of 18.
If one of these scenarios occurs,
keep the computer turned off in order to preserve any evidence
for future law enforcement use. Unless directed to do so by the
law enforcement agency, you should not attempt to copy any of
the images and/or text found on the computer.
What Can You Do To Minimize The
Chances Of An On-line Exploiter Victimizing Your Child?
- Communicate, and talk to your
child about sexual victimization and potential on-line danger.
- Spend time with your children
on-line. Have them teach you about their favorite on-line destinations.
- Keep the computer in a common
room in the house, not in your child's bedroom. It is much more
difficult for a computer-sex offender to communicate with a child
when the computer screen is visible to a parent or another member
of the household.
- Utilize parental controls provided
by your service provider and/or blocking software. While electronic
chat can be a great place for children to make new friends and
discuss various topics of interest, it is also prowled by computer-sex
offenders. Use of chat rooms, in particular, should be heavily
monitored. While parents should utilize these mechanisms, they
should not totally rely on them.
- Always maintain access to your
child's on-line account and randomly check his/her e-mail. Be
aware that your child could be contacted through the U.S. Mail.
Be up front with your child about your access and reasons why.
- Teach your child the responsible
use of the resources on-line. There is much more to the on-line
experience than chat rooms.
- Find out what computer safeguards
are utilized by your child's school, the public library, and
at the homes of your child's friends. These are all places, outside
your normal supervision, where your child could encounter an
on-line predator.
- Understand, even if your child
was a willing participant in any form of sexual exploitation,
that he/she is not at fault and is the victim. The offender always
bears the complete responsibility for his or her actions.
- Instruct your children:
- to never arrange a face-to-face
meeting with someone they met on- line;
- to never upload (post) pictures
of themselves onto the Internet or on-line service to people
they do not personally know;
- to never give out identifying
information such as their name, home address, school name, or
telephone number;
- to never download pictures from
an unknown source, as there is a good chance there could be sexually
explicit images;
- to never respond to messages
or bulletin board postings that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent,
or harassing;
- that whatever they are told
on-line may or may not be true.
Frequently Asked Questions:
My child has received
an e-mail advertising for a pornographic website, what should
I do?
Generally, advertising for an
adult, pornographic website that is sent to an e-mail address
does not violate federal law or the current laws of most states.
In some states it may be a violation of law if the sender knows
the recipient is under the age of 18. Such advertising can be
reported to your service provider and, if known, the service
provider of the originator. It can also be reported to your state
and federal legislators, so they can be made aware of the extent
of the problem.
Is any service safer
than the others?
Sex offenders have contacted
children via most of the major on-line services and the Internet.
The most important factors in keeping your child safe on-line
are the utilization of appropriate blocking software and/or parental
controls, along with open, honest discussions with your child,
monitoring his/her on-line activity, and following the tips in
this pamphlet.
Should I just forbid
my child from going on-line?
There are dangers in every part
of our society. By educating your children to these dangers and
taking appropriate steps to protect them, they can benefit from
the wealth of information now available on-line.
Helpful Definitions:
Internet - An immense, global network that connects
computers via telephone lines and/or fiber networks to storehouses
of electronic information. With only a computer, a modem, a telephone
line and a service provider, people from all over the world can
communicate and share information with little more than a few
keystrokes.
Bulletin Board Systems
(BBSs) - Electronic
networks of computers that are connected by a central computer
setup and operated by a system administrator or operator and
are distinguishable from the Internet by their "dial-up"
accessibility. BBS users link their individual computers to the
central BBS computer by a modem which allows them to post messages,
read messages left by others, trade information, or hold direct
conversations. Access to a BBS can, and often is, privileged
and limited to those users who have access privileges granted
by the systems operator.
Commercial On-line Service
(COS) - Examples
of COSs are America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe and Microsoft
Network, which provide access to their service for a fee. COSs
generally offer limited access to the Internet as part of their
total service package.
Internet Service Provider
(ISP) - Examples
of ISPs are Erols, Concentric and Netcom. These services offer
direct, full access to the Internet at a flat, monthly rate and
often provide electronic-mail service for their customers. ISPs
often provide space on their servers for their customers to maintain
World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Not all ISPs are commercial enterprises.
Educational, governmental and nonprofit organizations also provide
Internet access to their members.
Public Chat Rooms - Created, maintained, listed and monitored
by the COS and other public domain systems such as Internet Relay
Chat. A number of customers can be in the public chat rooms at
any given time, which are monitored for illegal activity and
even appropriate language by systems operators (SYSOP). Some
public chat rooms are monitored more frequently than others,
depending on the COS and the type of chat room. Violators can
be reported to the administrators of the system (at America On-line
they are referred to as terms of service [TOS]) which can revoke
user privileges. The public chat rooms usually cover a broad
range of topics such as entertainment, sports, game rooms, children
only, etc.
Electronic Mail (E-Mail) - A function of BBSs, COSs and ISPs
which provides for the transmission of messages and files between
computers over a communications network similar to mailing a
letter via the postal service. E-mail is stored on a server,
where it will remain until the addressee retrieves it. Anonymity
can be maintained by the sender by predetermining what the receiver
will see as the "from" address. Another way to conceal
one's identity is to use an "anonymous remailer," which
is a service that allows the user to send an e-mail message repackaged
under the remailer's own header, stripping off the originator's
name completely.
Chat - Real-time text conversation between
users in a chat room with no expectation of privacy. All chat
conversation is accessible by all individuals in the chat room
while the conversation is taking place.
Instant Messages - Private, real-time text conversation
between two users in a chat room.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - Real-time text conversation similar
to public and/or private chat rooms on COS.
Usenet (Newsgroups) - Like a giant, cork bulletin board
where users post messages and information. Each posting is like
an open letter and is capable of having attachments, such as
graphic image files (GIFs). Anyone accessing the newsgroup can
read the postings, take copies of posted items, or post responses.
Each newsgroup can hold thousands of postings. Currently, there
are over 29,000 public newsgroups and that number is growing
daily. Newsgroups are both public and/or private. There is no
listing of private newsgroups. A user of private newsgroups has
to be invited into the newsgroup and be provided with the newsgroup's
address.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Crimes Against Children Program
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Room 11163
Washington, D.C. 20535
Telephone (202) 324-3666
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