Empowering you to protect your family & students…

1. Empowering you to protect your family & students… WBOE & Directive of the Governor’s Internet Safety Task Force

2. Our Goal • Bring the issue of internet safety to the forefront • Educate middle school children and teenagers on how to remain safe online • Educate parents and teachers about online safety • Initiate a dialog between Parents/Teens and Teachers/Teens

3. What we have been doing… • Grade 6 students w/ SRO • Grade 7 students – refresher • This year – Grade 8 students Unique challenges in each grade!

4. We’ve been asked to… • Increase awareness as new challenges present themselves, • Schedule Parent Presentations, • Expose all students to an Internet Safety presentation.

5. The Need for an Internet Safety discussion and plan… • Internet has the potential for good, but it also provides predators with unhindered/ unchecked access to teens with Anonymity. • People online who deliberately target teens and expose them to inappropriate material. • Kids are often tricked or manipulated to look at, leave home, join gangs or engage in behaviors and more.

6. What is the Internet? • Started in the mid-1960’s by government and Universities “think-tank's” to share info • Gradually grew as part of the National Science Foundation Grant

7. But there is no governing body in control and our laws have not caught up with technology! • It is NOT a company or corporation, • It is ONLY a Worldwide network of computers, • No one person or corporation is in charge of the Internet, • Organizations have set standards for the Internet,

8. To Catch A Predator

9. Frightening Statistics from WebWiseKids.org • "87% of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 currently use the Internet, representing about 21 million youth. Of those, approximately 11 million teens go online on a daily basis." (Pew Internet and American Life, "Teens and Technology," July 27, 2005.) • The size of the wired teen population surges at the seventh grade mark. While about 60% of sixth graders use the Internet, by seventh grade the number jumps to 82%." (Pew Internet and American Life, "Teens and Technology," July 27, 2005.) • 47% of children have received e-mails with links to pornographic websites. (Symantec market research report, June 9, 2003) • Over half (51%) of parents either do not have, or do not know if they have, software on their computers to monitor where their teenagers go online and with whom they interact. (Cox Communications and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "Parents’ Internet Monitoring Study," February 2005).

10. Frightening Statistics from WebWiseKids.org • 57% or more of parents were unable to correctly decipher the meanings of several common instant messaging abbreviations. (Cox Communications and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "Parents’ Internet  Monitoring Study," February 2005). • In late 2004, teachers at Montevideo Middle School in Virginia, surveyed 178 sixth grade students at their school. The resulting data was alarming: 1 in 4 had become friends with a stranger online and 1 in 10 had attempted to meet an online friend face to face. (Montevideo Middle School, "Sixth Grade Computer Survey," December 9, 2004) • Some 57% of parents worry that strangers will contact their children online. These worries are well grounded. Close to 60% of teens have received an instant message or email from a stranger and 50% report emailing or instant messaging with someone they have not met before. (Pew Internet & American Life, "Teenage Life Online," June 20, 2001)

11. Frightening Statistics from WebWiseKids.org • 30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7 %, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment, as they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online. (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002) • 86 % of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents e-mail, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship. (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002) • 81% of parents and 79% of teens state that teenagers aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online. 65% of parents and 64% of teens say that teenagers do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about. (Pew Internet and American Life, "Protecting Teens Online," March 17, 2005.)

12. Frightening Statistics from WebWiseKids.org • 27% of teens said that they have known a friend to actually meet someone whom they only knew online (Teen Research Unlimited, "Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research," October 2005.) • Online teens admit that they frequently communicate with people they have never met: 54% have Instant Messaged a stranger, 50%have emailed a stranger, and 45% have participated in a chat room discussion with a stranger(Teen Research Unlimited, "Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research," October 2005.) • 28% of teens said they use code words on a daily basis to hide their online conversations from their parents – example: "PIR" means "parent in room" (Teen Research Unlimited, "Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research," October 2005

13. Potential Dangers • Social Networking • Personal Websites • The World Wide Web • Chatrooms • Instant Messaging • E-Mail • Cell phone dangers • Emerging technology

14. Why Teenagers? • High level of autonomy & independence • Tech Savvy (far beyond their parents and teachers) • Little “Worldly” Wisdom and experience • Don’t differentiate between “virtual” (online) friends and “real” friends • Online – won’t be dismissed based on appearance; feels safer than ‘real life’ • Online Relationships – lack of social constraints; loners communicating and no one is watching, Leads to self-disclosure and a strong sense of intimacy • Highly curious about romance & sex • They feel nothing can happen to them • They’ve become Desensitized to the subject matter

15. How they do it? • Predators are highly intelligent, • Meek and mild personality, • Driven by ‘need driven’ behavior, • Groom children for 3, 6 to 9 months and more Which makes them… Master Manipulators !

16. PRIVATE

17. Suggestions for any social networking site • MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Xanga and others. Can often be viewed by anyone with access to the Internet. • Minimum ages is usually 13, • Ask to see your child’s page, • Be wary of other identifiable information, • Encourage your child to mark their page PRIVATE, • Sign-up for a free account and check it out, • You can call these sites and have them remove your child’s page.

18. Colleges and Employers are employing ‘cyber investigators’ as part of background checks. Digital is forever!!!

19. Protect Your Virtual Resume • Don’t post anything obnoxious, lewd or risque, • Switch your Facebook or MySpace to Private, • Edit what friends write on your ‘wall’. You will be held accountable for their idiocy, • Don’t write anything on the internet that you can be held accountable for, • Avoid crazy email addresses, • Google yourself and your family regularly, • Anything on the Internet is very public display of you

20. LOL MUSM A/S/L NAP BF OLL LULAS PIR POS WTGP LMIRL Laughing out loud Miss you so much Age, sex, location Name, Age, Phone Boyfriend Online love Love you like a sister Parent in Room Parent over shoulder Want to go private Lets meet in real life IM and Text…beware Check their phones/IM logs

21. Cyber-bullying “Cyber bullying is different from face-to-face bullying because the bully is removed from the immediate and tangible feedback of the victim. They don't "see" the harm they have caused or the consequences of their actions, which minimizes any feelings of remorse or empathy. This creates a situation where kids do and say things on the Internet that they would be much less likely to do in person.” – The MindOH! Foundation Research has shown: More than 40% of teens have experienced some form of cyber-bullying. If you wouldn’t say in person, why say it online?

22. Cyber-bullying • Cyber bullying harmful application of technology by students wishing to extend the reach and impact of their bullying behavior during and beyond school hours. • It can be the use of E-mail, cell phone text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal Web sites, defamatory online personal polling Web sites, and digital photography, to support repeated acts by an individual or group, that are intended to embarrass, humiliate or intimidate their victim.

23. Cyber-bullying • What can WE do? • Talk to your child/student • Ignore It • Restrict who they communicate to • Google your child/self • Block the sender • “Warn” the sender • Report to ISP • Report to School • Report to Police • Take Legal Action

24. Sexting?! • Sexting’ Teens – teenagers’ habit of distributing nude self-portraits or pic’s of private parts. • Check their cellphones and social networking pages

25. "the best defense is a good offence" What’s a parent to do??

26. Get Involved…ask your child to: • Share the programs and websites they use for instant messaging such as Yahoo, AOL IM or Messenger and any social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace. • Share all your screen names you use for instant messaging. More than one? Why? Away messages? • Share with me your buddy list for each of these screen names. What is the real name for each? • Have you ever shared your password with a friend?

27. Suggested Guidelines… • Encourage your child to teach you what they know about the Internet, • Public Location - Put the computer in the living room, kitchen, or family room so you can monitor activity, • Encourage your child to share his or her Internet experiences with you. Don’t blame, be open, discuss, • Discuss rules and CONSEQUENCES with your child,

28. Suggested Guidelines… • Do install safety software and monitoring software and keep it updated • Do NOT hesitate to get help if you think a predator may be targeting your child • Do get to know your child’s online ‘virtual’ friends as you would their real-life friends • Do NOT overreact or threaten to take away the Internet if your child tells you about something bad that they experienced online

29. Parental Control or Filtering Software • CyberPatrol (http://www.cyberpatrol.com) • Cybersitter (http://www.cybersitter.com) • Net Nanny (http://www.netnanny.com) • We-Blocker (http://www.we-blocker.com) • Spector Pro 6.0 (http://www.spectorsoft.com/) – key logger program, will email you detailed reports

30. MySpace Agreement announced • On Jan. 14, 2008, 49 state attorneys general announced an agreement with social networking giant MySpace to "better protect children on its Web site." • MySpace agreed to: • create a task force to develop age and identity verification technology to keep underage kids off its site; • set up a registry of blocked e-mail addresses of minors, supplied by parents; • make the profiles of members ages 14-17 "private" by default, meaning they can be seen by friends only; • establish a "high school" section of the site for users under-18; • respond within 72 hours to complaints about inappropriate content; and • hire more staff to police such content as photos and discussion boards.

31. WE ARE ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE

32. Resources www.ryanpatrickhalligan.org

33. New Places as reported by students… • www.miniclips.com • XBOX live

34. QUESTIONS

35. Resources • http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/ - great video’s by Frontline • www.zabasearch.com – check it out • www.google.com – yourself, your kids • www.WebWiseKids.org – great information

36. Check it out… www.zabasearch.com Can search for anyone with an open public record…it’s that easy! www.google.com Google yourself and kids “name in quotes”