Protect Your Child Online

If you’re using Vista, you should learn about its Parental Controls feature.  Microsoft’s latest operating system provides parents tighter control over internet settings and gives children better protection online.  Here are some of the features of Vista Parental Controls that you should learn about:

The Control is centralized.
Meaning, you don’t have to go to another drive or location in your computer just to access information or change the settings on your Parental Controls.  All you have to do is go to this panel and create your child’s user account.  Make sure this account is configured as ‘User’ and not as ‘Administrator’, otherwise, the controls will not work.

You can then use Vista Parental Controls to configure the settings for that user account.  You can also monitor your child’s online activities through this panel.  Simply toggle on or off or use the other toggle to come up with an activity report for that account.

Why use activity reporting
Knowing what your child does online is key to keeping them safe.  This is what Vista Parental Controls can give you – the information about the programs they used, the sites they visited, the games they played and even programs they ran.  Vista Parental Controls will also let you know what e-mail or instant messages your child has sent or received, which files he/she downloaded, which videos or movies were played and other such information.

Restricting usage
Another key feature of Vista Parental Controls is that you, the parent, are allowed to pre-set restrictions about usage, including the time and manner with which your child uses the unit.  Here are some restrictions you might want to use:

- Time limits
Lets you determine at which times your child can use their computer or for how long.

- Application Restrictions
Allows you to set a limit on which applications your child can use.  Before using this control, familiarize yourself with these applications so you will know which ones are safe for your kids.

- Web restrictions
For this, you will have to go online to use a service to allow you to set a limit on the kind of sites your child is allowed to visit.  You can choose sites by category (porn sites, gambling sites, sites containing violence, etc.) or type in a specific URL to prevent your child from accessing that website. 

- Game restrictions
This setting allows you to control the kind of online or computer games your child can participate in or play.  Games are rated, so you will have an idea of what they contain.  Simply decide if they are appropriate for your kids.

A caveat:
Windows Vista Parental Controls is not compatible with all programs.  That means the restrictions won’t work if the program isn’t a match.  If you want to make sure the controls work, test the application yourself.

As the dangers of the internet become even more apparent, it has become mandatory for parents to ensure their children’s safety by being more active in using safety features and controlling online access.  This is especially important because children are highly vulnerable because of their trusting nature and are more likely to offer personal information online that allows unscrupulous and dangerous individuals to track them down.  To help protect your children, here are some things you should know about Verifiable Parental Consent and online services targeting kids:

What is Verifiable Parental Consent?
The VPC is part of compliance provisions designed by COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).  This statute requires site owners to notify parents should they need to collect personal information about the child.  The site owners should also state how and for what purpose the information will be used and whether or not it will be shared with third parties.

Furthermore, the Verifiable Parental Consent should be stated in a clear language that is easy to understand.  It should not include confusing information.  The notice may be received through e-mail or regular mail. 

Using Verifiable Parental Consent, parents and guardians can decide whether or not allowing their child to provide his personal information for use by a website is safe and appropriate.  Although the consent is in place, it doesn’t cover each solicitation of information, such as when the information is deleted, or in response to legal regulations or if parental consent is being sought.

Online Services for kids
If you need help beyond what you can do in your home computer as a parent, there are many online services you can use.  Some of these include:

NSPCC or the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
This is a free online safety resource targeting kids.  Parents and children alike can log on to the site and check out the information about child safety policies and programs, along with advice and guidelines on what to do to ensure online protection.  Recent news are also posted, along with information about related conferences.  Contact information is also included in case parents or concerned individuals want to report child abuse.

GetNetWise
This site is the product of organizations and private corporations who want to promote internet safety for kids.  The site is rich with resources for both parents and children, including news, advice, tips and recommendations regarding safety products.

Your local agencies
In the U.S. and the U.K., there are states and local agencies that offer online services targeting kids’ safety.  Check your local government or perform an online search to find out what your particular state or county has to offer.

The U.K. figured recently in a pedophilia-related case involving Timothy Cox of Suffolk.  Cox, a 27-year-old man, was arrested as he presided over a pedophile ring online.  Police were able to collect evidence from his computer and use it to monitor other suspected pedophiles.  Cox’s operations were so widely spread that police had to use anti-terrorism techniques in order to put him under surveillance.

This incident has focused the world’s attention on the cases of pedophilia in the U.K., where about 30,000 sex offenders are registered. 

Although the arrest of Cox was subsequently followed by apprehension of other pedophiles, U.K. police acknowledge that there is more to the situation than meets the eye.  Consider for example the figures below related to pedophilia in the U.K.:

- More than 25% of the rapes reported to the police involve children younger than 16.
- 75% of children who have been sexually abused did not inform anyone about the incident; a third will still not talk about their sexual abuse after they reach early adulthood.
- over 32,000 children are registered on child protection as of March 2003 and nearly 80,000 are under the care of U.K. authorities.

Add to that the sobering information that 1 to 2 children in Wales and England dies weekly because of cruelty, with one child dying in the hands of his parent or guardian.  On average, there is an average of 80 homicides involving children each year in the same locations.  Violent deaths are also common to babies younger than 1 year – that’s four times the likelihood that an average person could get killed in Wales and England.

What is being done?
The U.K. government recognizes the extreme need to ensure that children’s rights and lives are protected.  Organizations are operating in the U.K. to work with government agencies to provide online and offline safety for children.  Some of these include the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), the NSPCC, the Internet Watch Foundation and Operation Ore, among others. 

Some agencies promote advances and government statutes involving online technology to help block inappropriate content and access while others are police operations that work to indict pedophiles not just in the U.K. but also around the world.

By September of 2007, the U.K. police have successfully arrested 700 pedophiles from around the world after cracking open an ultra-tight pedophile ring, which also led to the shutdown of the operation.  Of these, 200 men were from Britain.  Through these arrests, 31 babies and children were rescued.

Additional references:
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Exploitation_and_Online_Protection_Centre )
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation)
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Global_Taskforce)

You’d think that catching online sex offenders of children will be easy considering the available technology.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.  As ways to track sex offenders have become more sophisticated, online predators have also become smarter.  Police and technology experts, however, continue their efforts in catching these predators.  Here are some of the commonly used surveillance techniques used to track down online sex offenders:

Entrapment
Police officers and detectives pose as a young girl or boy in a chatroom.  This will often elicit a response from child sex offenders who are cruising the internet looking for their prey.  Detectives and police experts will often use screen names and language that young teens or children often use.

The screen name used by online sex offender is tracked and his appearances are monitored.  Once the expert strikes an online relationship with a sex offender, these predators may be lured into agreeing to meet in person, not knowing that they will be meeting with the authorities and not a child.

Partnering with social networking sites
Some experts, along with police, are working with popular social networking sites to help track and identify known sex offenders of children online.  Recently, eight U.S. states have requested MySpace.com to provide the names of all registered child sex offenders who are members of the site.  This is part of an ongoing project with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. in an effort to create an information database of sex offenders, particularly those in the U.S.

Use of a profiling system
Another surveillance technique used by experts in tracking down online sex offenders is through the use of profiling.  The OPPS or Online Predator Profiling System, developed by Adzone Research, is a database that contains a list of the chatrooms that are frequented by pedophiles. 

Experts can also track a sex offender’s history and learn about acronyms commonly used when luring children.  They can then find out who used these acronyms and the screen names of children these sex offenders have been communicating with. 

The OPPS software will also be available for use by private citizens for a fee.

Use of seized materials
Whatever evidence that may be seized from the home of a sex offender will be used in surveillance by forensic experts.  These people often examine all hard evidences they find for clues in order to track down online sex offenders.  In the case of Timothy Cox of Suffolk, England for example, the son of God online predator was identified after the chatroom he was using was tracked to Britain.  Cox was later arrested.

The statistics showing the abuse of children on the internet can be shocking.  If you’ve heard of only one or two cases, you haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg yet.  According to some reports, millions of children are being abused online all over the world and there are various ways to do it.  Here are some disturbing statistics related to the internet abuse of children that any concerned parent should know about:

Approaching children
According to estimates, there are about 24 million young kids and teens using the internet at present.  About 20% of them have been approached online for sex.  Over 700,000 children have also been pursued aggressively for sex, with child sex predators and abusers offering kids to meet up face to face.

Exposure
About 34% of children or teens have had unwanted or unsolicited exposure to materials containing pictures of nude individuals or graphic images of sexual activities.

Internet-related abuse of children is also not limited to rape by the predator.  It can also include luring children to child prostitution, child pornography or becoming turning them into victims of child sex tourism.  The analysts of CVIP (Child Victim Identification Program) have already identified more than 1,100 victims featured in child abuse images using the Child Recognition Identification System.

The danger
Of the millions of children being approached for sex online, only about 25% have told their parents or guardian.  The number of children who inform their parents of these episodes of solicitation will increase only if they felt upset or scared.

The problem is even confounded by the fact that about 75% of young children and teens provide their personal information either on their profiles or in chatrooms, making it easier for predators to locate them.  Furthermore, less than 20% of children and their parents know which authority to approach in order to report a crime on the internet.

Another scary statistic related to the internet abuse of children is that 1 in 5 females and 1 in 10 males will become victims of sexual crimes before they become adults.

A percentage of that, we can only surmise, may be done using the internet.

More than meets the eye?
According to some experts, the statistics showing the internet abuse of children may show less than the actual numbers.  This is because in many areas around the world, the term child abuse is not clearly defined.  There are also those who have never been reported or discovered and many children become neglected and abused without being noticed by government authorities.

Probably one of the best ways to monitor your kids’ activities online is to use… well, a monitoring software.  Although your kids won’t like it, this type of software will help you keep them safe by knowing which sites they go to and what content they see.  One of these monitoring programs is the SpyAgent Software from Spytech. 

The SpyAgent monitoring software is more commonly used by employers to track their employees’ online activities, but it is also very helpful for parents who want to use software to keep their kids safe online.  What it does is basically to act as a snoop – finding out what your kids do on their computers, recording these activities and letting you know what they are. 

Even if you’re not around, you can use SpyAgent to log all activities involving your kids’ computer use.  Simply check the report later on to find out where they’ve been and what they have done.

SpyAgent provides you with the following information:
- Each keystroke your child uses – what they type on the keyboard, including usernames and passwords.
- Online conversations – what type of communications they have exchanged with whom using chat and instant messaging features by Yahoo! Messenger, AOL, ICQ and MSN Messenger.
- Site activities – a record of all websites your child visited using IE, AOL, Netscape and Opera.
- Mail content – a record of all your child’s webmail messages and all data they have received.
- Files and document access – a log of all the documents and files your child has opened using Windows Explorer
- Application and activity logging – a record of all the applications used on the computer, plus all activities such as user log-ins, changes in options, system shutdowns, etc.
- Password logging – will record passwords that your child used, such as chat, e-mail and log-on passwords.
- Screenshot captures – can take snapshots of the image of the desktop at your preferred time interval, so you can see exactly what your child saw when he/she was using the computer.

Using SpyAgent monitoring software
Installing the software is easy and since the program is user-friendly, you can simply click on the instructions to start using the program.  Once you register, you can get in touch with a SpyAgent staff for help.  A troubleshooting page is also included in case you need a guide on your own. 

SpyAgent also allows you to protect your settings using your own password, so no one else can tweak the configuration and change the options.  Once installed, simply tweak the options to change the settings to your liking.

Help in protecting children online from child sex predators can sometimes come from unlikely sources.  Just recently the Internet Watch Foundation has begun encouraging men in the 18 to 35 age group to report any incidents of pedophilia they might encounter online.  According to IWF, this is the age group that more often finds images of child abuse on the internet, mainly by accident.  These images are often seen when men surf the internet for adult porn.

The problem, according to IWF, is that men who find these images will often choose not to tell the authorities, either because they are too embarrassed or too afraid they might be charged.  It is considered an offense to store images of child sex abuse in the computer.

However, by encouraging these young men to report the images, the IWF hopes to track down sites where these images are posted and then work with concerned ISPs to delete the images.  To protect the identity of those who choose to report, no personal information will be released to the police.

Fighting crime from the sidelines
With this news, a new weapon has just been added to the arsenal of private individuals to help stop child abuse crimes and protect children online.  Some graphic images depicting actual child abuse may show up on websites that offer mostly adult or legal porn.  People inadvertently access these images even without the intention of finding them.

Today, the job of finding, identifying and catching criminals and helping their victims fall mainly on government authorities, concerned agencies and private organizations.  This is unfortunate, because just recently, attention was called to certain laws against child sex offenders being too harsh on the human rights of the offenders themselves.

According to Human Rights Watch researcher Sarah Tofte, the realities involving child sexual violence is ‘complex’.

Some of these laws may not always cover certain gray areas that appear as a result of prosecution and public access to information about child sex offenders.

An example of this is the danger that some individuals who access information from child sex offender registries might use that information for illegal means.  Some individuals might find it easy to locate a registered offender and harass, blackmail or even threaten him.
 
One chance
They may not realize it, but young men who come across images of child abuse and ignore them may just lose their one opportunity to save a child’s life.  This is why internet watchdogs like the IWF are using some unconventional methods to help eliminate these images, make them harder for child offenders to find and help protect children online.

Most homes in the United States, Canada and the U.K. have access to broadband connection, which allows families to surf the internet, communicate with friends and join social networking sites.  Although these activities are harmless per se, many parents are worried that their children may be spending too much time online.

How much time is too much?
The internet can be an incredibly informative and entertaining place.  Anyone who finds just one website to his liking will be enthralled enough to spend hours and hours reading, playing games, participating in interactive content, etc.  The problem begins when a simple case of liking the internet turns into an addiction. 

With children, internet addiction can even be more of a concern because they are less capable of making their own informed decision.  So how much time spent online is enough?

According to a study conducted by Harris Interactive, about 1 in 10 children aged 8 to 18 have become addicted to computer games, specifically online gaming.  Young children can spend hours and hours in front of the computer non-stop.  The problem here is that it affects them academically, emotionally and socially.  Schoolwork takes a backseat, grades plummet, kids become more reclusive and difficult to communicate with.

Keeping time
To prevent kids from becoming addicted, the best thing to do is to set limits.  Here are ways how:

Don’t allow your kids to use a computer inside their rooms.  Keep the computer in a publicly accessed area such as the family den or living room.  If they spend more than one hour on the computer, you can immediately check why.

Agree on a set of priorities first.  Allow your kids to use the computer for browsing or gaming only after homework or household chores are done.  Never allow them to miss dinner, an important family or school event just because they want to play online games or surf.

As for how much time you should allow your kids to spend online, that will depend.  For gaming, browsing, chatting, e-mailing or updating their blogs, 30 to 40 minutes a day should be enough.  After that, it’s homework, dinner or bedtime.

If kids have to use the internet for research, find out what topic they need to work on.  Allow them a few hours to do this, probably 2 to 3 hours at a time, depending on the subject.  For younger kids, be there when they do their search.  Use software to help block access to inappropriate sites and check the computer’s browser history to find out which sites have been viewed.

The process of criminal profiling is basically to derive an average description of an online predator of children.  This average description or criminal profile will be used as a reference or guide by criminal investigators and police to narrow down the suspects in case of a sex offense incident involving a child. 

What is criminal profiling?
Basically, criminal profiling is a technique used in police investigations that attempts to produce a descriptive portrayal of a suspect in a crime, such as a child sex offense.  Using forensic and behavioral sciences, the identifying marks of a criminal may be inferred based on his or her actions prior to, during and after the commission of a crime. 

This initial profile is compared to other characteristics exhibited by certain personality types and psychological or mental abnormalities.  Forensic proof collected from the crime and other physical evidence are also included.

Criminal profiling is commonly used for cases involving serial murders, although it is also used in other crimes, including child molestation.  The criminal profiling unit of the FBI is a branch of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. 

How is criminal profiling performed?
In the beginning, a forensic profile of known criminals was used, mostly for CST or Competency to Stand Trial.  It was discovered later that the profiles can be used to create a generalized portrayal of a criminal.  In effect, it produced a picture of the ‘average’ perpetrator of a certain crime.

For example, it has been shown that offenders who were witnesses to abuse as children were more likely to perpetrate abuse themselves as adults.  Offenders who were victimized at a young age were also more likely to be involved in family violence later in life.

Other identifying characteristics such as age, race, status, nature of work, etc., were also determined.

Profiling an online predator of children
For online predators of children, investigators begin with what can be examined – the evidence, such as screen names, favorite quotes, type of victim, the suspect’s MO, etc.  This will help police determine essential information such as the suspect’s age, behavioral tendencies and preferences, what he does to lure a child, where he goes, etc. 

The investigation will also try to derive his ’signature’ or what he does that makes him unique from other child sex offenders.  This behavioral profiling coupled with forensic evidence helps investigators track down the predator or at least identify him or his next victim.

As always, careful research is necessary in order to zero in on a criminal, especially an online predator of children.  Criminal profiling may have helped solve crimes but it is in no way a perfect science.  It is still possible that certain factors might affect a profiler enough for him or her to make an erroneous criminal profile.  As such, the investigative skills of the police force is still key to catching a criminal.

It’s a sobering part of reality, but online child sex offenders are becoming smarter.  These days, detectives can’t just search pages from social networking sites and hope to stumble upon a predator.  Online child sex offenders are being careful now, preferring instead to use private messages and carefully deleting any messages on their page’s comment boards that might point authorities in their direction.  This is why decoders are needed to help track these online predators and bring them to the attention of the police.

Computer smarts help
Aside from tracking an online predator’s ISP address, authorities need solid evidence in order to make an arrest.  These include e-mail messages, chat messages and photographs that will prove a person’s crime. 

Most police work regarding child molesters involve surveillance of these child predators’ online activities.  When it comes to peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and distribution of child abuse images, it’s often necessary to rely on laws, initiatives and computer smarts.

In order to track down online predators of children, computer forensics will often rely on decoders to identify the routes where the images have passed through.  This is regardless of how many addresses are involved.  Decoders can then backtrack to find out how a child abuse photograph or video finally landed on a person’s hard drive.

Using software
A computer program designed to combat copyright infringement may just be the next new weapon in the war against online predators of children.  The software, developed by BayTSP.com, was originally intended to track stolen images and photographs online.  It was only a matter of time before the developers realized that it could be used to hunt down pornographic images involving children.

What makes the software a fit for this purpose is that it is capable of identifying specific images and tracking their background information.  The software can do this, even if the image has been altered electronically or renamed.  It is also capable of finding hidden files, no matter how well hidden.

The software can then find the match on the internet and track the e-mail address and ISP of the individual who posted the image.  According to BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa, the software is capable of tracking down a file that had been posted 5 years before and determining every location where it was posted.

Depending on the amount of data a hard drive contains, the software can take from a few minutes to several hours in order to conduct a complete search.

Although the skills of computer decoders remain invaluable in the fight to protect children against online predators, there is still a need to produce and use better and more sophisticated software.  These, coupled with public vigilance, should be able to help apprehend online predators and stop the abuse of children.