This week’s article looks at a report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force that assessed technologies for protecting children from unwanted contact online. Their findings did not please everyone. Go to the link below and read the article. Write a reflective comment that shows you have read the article, expresses your views, and addresses my questions.
Do you know anyone who has been approached online by a predator? How reliable are age-verification technologies? The report said that "Parents, teachers, mentors, social services, law enforcement and minors themselves all have crucial roles to play in ensuring online safety for all minors." How should these groups be involved?
Task Force Report Article
9 comments:
I have not known anyone who has been approached by any predator online. I personally feel that the age-verification technology does not do its job. It's extremely easy for someone to lie about their age on the internet. The person merely has to put the year lower in order to appear older online. I think that the Parents, teachers, mentors, social services, law enforcement and minors should all get together at some point in order to discuss the problems at hand. Maybe the law enforcement could come to the minors school to dicuss the dangers of predators.
I don't think the web will ever be a place that is truly safe for children. Lying about one's age over the internet isn't difficult at all. Neither is finding a picture of someone older or younger than yourself to put on a website as your own picture. Law enforcement and school officials could get together to discuss a way to protect children over the internet, but I can't imagine it will ever help. I think the ideal thing to do would be to teach children proper internet safety and ban certain sites on their home computers. This could only be a temporary answer, however, as a child could find a different website with internet predators to sign up for without their parents knowing.
I agree completely with the writer when he says that there is no way to completely be protected when on the internet. You can always be the one to protect yourself by making sure you know exactly where you are going when on the internet, but no program you can download can protect you from sexual offenders on the web. These ‘predators’ can get past age limits by simply changing their birthdates online, or by changing their name, you can’t outsmart millions of internet users when they keep finding new ways to get past “online protection programs”. To help increase awareness about this problem, the Parents, teachers, mentors, social services, and law enforcement enforcement officers could get together and organize events to tell about the dangers of online predators.
Most of the children in the world these days use the internet on a daily basis. I agree about what the article said that children can’t be protected 100% from the internet content. I have not known anyone who was attacked by online predators. In my opinion, the age verification technology is not effective due to people changing their names, date of birth and pictures. A good way to teach these children is to let the parents, teachers and law of enforcements to discuss with them the dangers of online predators and their effects on us. In conclusion, by claiming that the factor influencing children by going onto the internet is his/her parents, because these are the people letting or accepting their kids to be the victims of this kind of danger.
I don’t know anyone who has been approached by an online predator. The age-verification technologies are not reliable at all because you can easily lie and say you are over 18 when you are only 10 years old. Parents and teachers should help by putting a firewall on all inappropriate sites. Social services and law enforcements should make age-verification more reliable. Minors should not allow themselves to go to on to sites they should not be at. I have never had someone I know go through this so I do not know about it as much however I have heard of it and its consequences.
I know someone who was approached by a predator, that same person also didnt fall for the predators tricks. Age verification is often a system of goodwill, trusting the user to be honest about their age, it isnt very effective. Internet safty needs to be approached the way so many safty hazards are, just like children are drilled to look both ways before crossing the street, so they must also be drilled on internet safty.
I don’t know anyone who has been approached online by a predator, but I do know people who talk online to people who they haven’t met, via Facebook, Myspace or MSN Messenger, however none of them were violent or sexual encounter, at least to my knowledge. I think it is difficult to make age-verification technologies on casual accounts like Facebook or Myspace, without making it seem more official, as it is lying about one's age is extremely simple. I agree with the statement of other groups helping ensure online safety. My parents have told me again, and again to not talk to anyone I don’t know online, or give out any personal information etc, and that advice has definitely served me well, and I have never gotten myself into a dangerous situation online, nor (as a general rule) do I befriend people I haven’t met on Facebook. Teachers, especially computer science teachers, should also enforce online safety for their students, perhaps by way of classes or just along with other general computer lab safety rules. Although I agree that mentors should stress online safety I think that it is difficult for the government or individual organizations can enforce that. I don’t know how the law could implement online safety, and how they would define certain terms, because if minors want to meet new people online, I don’t know if it’s the law’s place to stop them, if it is truly their choice. Personally, I would, and do, strongly discourage my friends from talking to strangers online.
I completely agree, the web is a dangerous place for kids. So many incidents involving sexual predators who end up stalking the kids they meet online, why should we wait for more to happen?
My sister was approached b a predator online. My mum got so frightened she doesn't allow my sister to join any o the online kids clubs anymore as she was approached by the predator on club penguin.
In my opinion age verification is a complete waste, it doesn't work, it's just to prevent panic and seem like people are trying to make a difference. People can always lie when it comes to age verification, the protection they have online will never be enough.
Parents should make sure their children don't talk to strangers, teachers should inform the kids of what dangers lurk in the web world. Mentors should convince children to be extra careful when on web, like a parent would. Social services and law enforcement should talk about the importance of web safety today, and the gravity of the situation. Minors shouldn't talk to strangers, its no use warning them if their making themselves easy vulnerable targets for predators.
i think people should be more careful about which websites they enter and even tho they are kids they are not supposed to put in any password or their home address or such personal information unless it was a popular safe website that doesn't ask for any personal information. kids should ask their parents that if the website they have never been on is safe. kids tend to lie about their age and its inevitable and the internet will never be safe because the hackers in the world can gather any information they want about anyone. I've hear about a girl that had her address on Myspace and then she got stolen by some sick lonely person. No matter how many people talk about this situation and make decisions, it will never help.
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