Many of you will recall the well publicized murder of a woman from Hempstead, Maryland, whose North Carolina e-mail correspondent killed her when she went to visit him. Newspapers quoted a North Carolina prosecutor as saying that he had no intention of a llowing his children anywhere near the Internet. Many other parents that I know have expressed the same sentiment. While their position is perhaps understandable, they have mistaken the nature of the thing to fear. It is not the Internet. The Internet is merely a computer network. But just as every parent should watch over their children in the real world, so should they watch over their children in virtual worlds, because there are real people in those virtual worlds. As a family in Hempstead now knows , sometimes “virtual reality” becomes all too substantial.
Among other things, a home computer may be considered a power tool for information and learning, and many parents have purchased computers for their children, feeling that they might be left behind if they don’t have access to a computer at home. Additio nally, in many schools children are using computer BBSs, online services, and the Internet, the worldwide network of thousands of computers. Local BBSs, most run by hobbyists, cover a wide range of topics. Online services such as America Online, CompuSer ve, Prodigy, and others offer an easy -to-use interface and paid support staff. Collectively, these resources are valuable to any student, from elementary school to Ph.D. candidates. BBSs, online services, and the Internet offer information; fast, easy communication with employers, friends, and family; and thousands of games and niche market software titles.
This paragraph may be seen as sacrilege coming from a computer user-group member, but if you do not already have a computer and are considering buying one solely for a young student’s use, consider whether you really need one. The rate of depreciation on a PC is appreciable, perhaps outpacing that of a new car. Also, wha tever interface you use with it will probably be replaced by something else in 2 to 5 years. Does your young student really need to expend the time and effort to learn Windows 95 right now? If all you want the machine to do is word processing for school papers and the like, and nothing more, think about a dedicated word processor. They are one -quarter to one-half the price of a computer alone, and you won’t have to buy any software. Most also offer data storage on diskette and a small dictionary and thesaurus. But, of course, you give up the power and flexibility that makes a computer so useful, including on line resources.
Children using a standalone home computer without a modem are in the safest possible computing environment, roughly equivalent to playing or reading in the protected confines of the family room. There you limit them to the software and CD -ROMs you have chosen to allow them to see. But you also limit them to only those resources.
Connect a modem, however, and while the child’s physical environment remains identical, the computing environment changes dramatically. Make no mistake - with a modem, the child is out in the real world. What other people say or show to him or her, or wh at the child sees, reads, and does is no longer under parental control. The child is talking to strangers on the telephone, and that calls for at least some parental supervision. This raises the bar of parental performance because it means that the paren ts must know how to use the computer too. As if parents didn’t need to know enough already!
The vast majority of BBSs, online services, and Web sites are legitimate and benign, but as one Internet user put it, “In any community of 20 million people, there’s going to be a red -light district.” Additionally, there is little law enforcement in cyberspace. Few agencies have many computer -literate investigators, equipment is scarce, and legal jurisdictional issues compound the matter.
For the most part, individual system operators (SYSOPs) police their own systems. They may or may not do a good job. Few claim to read every message or view every file that passes through their systems. This is not negligence by the SYSOPs - the volume o f messages and files makes such a task humanly impossible on all but the smallest BBSs, and SYSOPs must consider privacy issues for users as well.
On the Internet, of course, there is virtually no law enforcement at all. There have been and will continue to be instances of people using online services and communications to commit various frauds and scams, and to initiate contacts with children. Gen erally, the risks do not justify avoiding the Internet or online services any more than one would avoid going to the library for fear of being robbed en route. The benefits of “going online” are large, and the risks are small.
There are some risks for children using online services. Teenagers are especially susceptible because they use the computer alone and are more likely than younger children to look for adult topics and material. One concern that many parents have is expos ure to adult-oriented pictures and sexually explicit text. Another is online harassment, or being continually bombarded with unwanted messages or overtures. Or a child might arrange a meeting with a stranger, or provide enough information to risk his or her safety or that of family members. A Web page purporting to offer a contest for prizes may instead be a subterfuge to collect personal information. And, of course, there have been and continue to be instances of pedophiles using online communications to gain a chi ld’s confidence and then to arrange a personal meeting.
Easily available material on the Internet may induce children to commit acts that they otherwise might not have. A particularly tragic event occurred in Bethesda, Maryland, a few years ago when four high school students, using “instructional” material th ey found on the Internet, made and detonated a series of explosive devices. The last device they made detonated inside a garage, killing two instantly. The other two died the next day. More recently, four teenagers built a bomb and were transporting it i n a car when they were stopped. The fire marshal discovered that the bomb was too unstable to move further and detonated it where it was, which was inside one parent’s car. And even after the headlines from that event, a few weeks later a junior high sch ool student was suspended from school when he was discovered distributing diskettes to other students with bomb -making instruction files. Less deadly material includes “how to” manuals and software for forgery, credit card fraud, telecommunications fraud, and counterfeiting.
If you would not leave your children on their own in public for hours on end, it is not a good thing to do the same thing with a child and a modem-equipped PC. Without exception, all of the parents whose children were contacted by on-line pedophiles, who se children constructed home-brew explosives, or whose teenagers attracted the attention of our office did exactly that. Most parents were utterly astonished to learn that their child or teenager could get into serious trouble from a keyboard in the bedroom, either as victims of cri me or as possible law breakers themselves.
It is important to understand that none of these risks is new. Only the method of communication is different.
What You Can Do
The best way to look after your children’s online safety is to learn how to use the computer yourself. You are a member of a computer user group - take advantage of the experience and knowledge that our members offer. User -group members can help guide you through this new online world and help interpret what is normal and what is not. The MIX (BBS) is an excellent vehicle for this. Read an entry-level book about computer communications (using an online library catalog, do a keyword search on the words “computer” and “online” or ask the librarian for help).
If your children are already using BBSs and online services, have them show you what they are doing and explain the concepts. The object is to be able to recognize what is going on online, even if your child does not, or so that your children cannot “sno w” you about what they are doing. You don’t need to become a technical wizard, but you do need to understand the concepts and vocabulary.
Caution your children to never give out identifying personal information such as age, gender, address, school, telephone numbers, and the like in public messages, or in private messages to someone they don’t know. (That isn’t bad advice for adults, eithe r.) Remember that people online may not be what they represent themselves to be: Someone claiming to be a 12 -year old girl may be an adult man.
Also caution your children against meeting anyone, especially at anyone’s home, yours or theirs. If your children do want to meet an online acquaintance, never allow a face -to-face meeting without your advance knowledge and approval. When meeting for the first time, have the meeting in a public place. Be absolutely certain that a parent goes along also.
Consider keeping the computer in the family room instead of a child’s bedroom. While that may conflict with the need for a quiet place to read and write, doing so allows you to observe what they are doing once in a while. Again, bear in mind that simply because your child is physically alone in his bedroom, if a child has a modem equipped PC in there, he or she is not really alone. Whether that is good is the parent’s call. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing; at least be aware of how much time your children spend online and what they are doing.
Parents should be alert to certain behavior that might indicate problems with a child’s use of a computer:
·Excessive late-night computer use
·Secretive behavior about the computer or online associates
·Password-protected files
·Files or directories hidden for no apparent reason
·Password-protected BIOS (computer requiring a password even for startup) and a child who is reluctant or refuses to divulge the password to parents
Although a home computer is a valuable, some say essential, tool for students, there have been instances of children being victimized by people using online access. The best prevention is to understand how online services, computer BBSs, and the Internet work, and supervise what your children are doing with the computer. Given appropriate parental guidance and similar precautions, using computer access to online services is no more dangerous than talking on the telephone. A comparison might be to think of it as sending children to the library alone, knowing that without parental guidance, on the way they will pass by and be accessible to some very disreputable characters.
“Censorship” Software
For those who already have Internet accounts, several software companies offer “censorship” software that allows parents to limit access to certain times of the day, limit total time spent online, block access to preselected and/or user specified Interne t sites, or keep a log of what a user did on the computer. One program allows parents to enter a child’s personal information, and if any of that information is later typed on the keyboard, the computer shuts down. The references to these products do not constitute endorsements or recommendations. I just wanted to make you aware that software products like these exist, and to let you know where to find more information. Some product descriptions are available at http:/freenet.macatawa. org/org/ems/ Parents.safety.html. I have not used these products, so I cannot tell you how well they work. A by-no -means-all-inclusive list of Web sites and telephone numbers for “censorship” software follows.
Cyber Patrol, http://www. cyberpatrol.com,
Cybersitter, http://www.solidoak.com
Net Nanny, http://www.netnanny
Net Shepherd, http://shepherd.net/
Safesurf, http://www.safesurf.com/
Surfwatch, http://www. surfwatch.com/
Bess, the Internet Retriever, http://bess.net/
As the demand for filtering systems increases, many online services and Internet service providers offer limited access accounts for children or ways for parents to control what children see online. These accounts attempt to screen out material that many parents feel is inappropriate for children. Be aware that there are workarounds for virtually all of the censorship programs or “screened” services - so none will make a PC as innocuous as TV - and using one of these programs does not relieve a parent o f responsibility. My own “take” on these programs is that they are best suited for young children.
Recommended Reading
Bandits on the Information Superhighway, by Daniel J. Barrett. A good, nontechnical, common sense user’s guide about personal security issues arising from using computers connected to the Internet or networks of any type.
Silicon Snake Oil, by Clifford Stoll. No luddite, Clifford Stoll is the fellow who traced a 75 -cent accounting discrepancy to a KGB plot to hack Pentagon computers. An alternative view on the rush to place a computer on every school desk and wire them to the Internet.
Walt Moore is a police officer in Montgomery County, Maryland. He works in the Fraud Section, Computer Crime Unit, investigating financial crimes and assists other investigators in cases in which microcomputers are a component. He can be reached on the M IX in the CPCUG Conference or at (301) 840-2595 weekdays.
Reprint from Monitor, the Magazine of the Capital PC User Group. n
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