Internet Safety

While the Internet does have its hidden dangers such as online predators, it also has very helpful sites that help to counteract them. Among these sites are:

Perverted Justice is a website that pledges to bring online predators to justice. This site recruits volunteer contributors who pose as underage children in chatrooms. These recruits often pose as children between the ages of 10-15. They enter chat rooms with fake screen names and essentially wait for online predators to initiate conversation which often does not take too long. The site even invites their visitors to make a fake screen name of their own and try it out in a chat room in order to experience what exactly their recruits see on an everyday basis. However, the site strongly discourages their visitors from pursuing anything more than initial conversation with potential predators. Their recruits on the other hand take it one step further and and engage in lengthy conversations with them. The potential predators typically range between the ages of 25 and 60 years.

During these conversations, the site's recruits look for signs that the chatter is soliciting the "youth" for sex. Once a clear intent or interest to go beyond chat is established, the recruits obtain what is surprisingly the chatter's real name, address and phone number along with a meeting location. After careful verification of authentic information, it is then posted on the site's database. Public exposure to these chatters' identities is an important step to the site's goal of ultimately trying to stop them.

In a strange but satisfying way, the tactic that online predators use to lure in young children is backfiring on them. While the predators are posing as children, they are unaware that the "child" they are trying to plan a meeting with is also using a fake persona. Through this strategy, the freedom and anonymity of the internet is not so negative after all.

i-SAFE which prides itself on being the leader in internet safety education. It is a non-profit foundation across the Untied States whos mission is to educate tand empower youth to make their Internet experiences safe and responsible. They aim to educate students on how to avoid dangerous, inappropriate or unlawful online behavior from Kindergarten to 12th grade. The foundation uses community outreach programs and the school curriculum to also reach the parents, law enforcement and community leaders. They provide laerning modules for education. These modules are:

    - i-Learn program for other educators

     -i-Fifty+ for adult computer users and the potential dangers they face on the internet

     -i-Parent for parents wjp wamt to protect their family from potential online dangers

     -i-Mentor for students in order for them to be able to educate their family and friends

     -i-Shield is geared towards the law enforcement officials and educates them on how to proactively fight internet crime in their communities.

PrivoLock is a secure, third-party service for companies who attract kids to their websites. With this system, parents can manage their child's online identity and their website and feature access. They offer a number of parental consent verification methods that simplify their ability to complete the registration and permission process. Parents and children create a sign-on name and password that enables interaction at all PrivoLock enabled websites. This site is also available to teachers and educators who can register their students to safe internet sites. PrivoLock will assist educators in finding acceptable websites for safe internet surfing in the classrooms.