The Internet is used by millions of people all over the world. Recently it has come to the attention of a few of the mostly widely used networks that their safety measures are not up to par. More and more children are being found on networking websites by sexual predators without parents knowing and without children understanding the dangers of becoming part of a network. Facebook is one of the largest networking sites in the world with more than seventy million users; children and adults. Let’s take a look at the safety deal reached by facebook in order to protect kids and other users from predators.
The Kansas Attorney General Steve Six announced that Facebook has a new safety agreement for better protection against potential predators. Under some of their changes facebook has agreed to monitor any of its users requesting a change of age on their profiles and will further look into whether or not the change is appropriate. Facebook has also agreed to provide automatic messages when a child appears to be in danger for giving out their personal information to an unknown user.
Social networking web sites have become tools for many criminals today and can be extremely dangerous for underage users, especially young children. Facebook along with MySpace have both decided to raise the bar on their safety measures to protect all users. And although these worldwide social networking sites have agreed to take further measures in safety, parents still need to be responsible for their child’s behavior when it comes to using the computer and the Internet.
Here are some preventative steps to keep your child safe and to teach them how to occupy space on social networking web sites safely:
•Always take caution when sharing your personal information with other users online. Some personal information that is online can be used offline, such as phone numbers and addresses. Other personal information that can be harmful is screen names, pictures, credit card numbers, and social security numbers.
•Make sure you use the privacy settings to restrict access to unauthorized users. If you have young children using social networking web sites you need to teach them how to use the privacy settings as they can keep unknown individuals from getting into their accounts and misusing their information.
•Teach your kids to never respond to unsolicited emails and download attachments they are not expecting to get from anyone. There are many predators out there that will trick young network users into an unwanted relationship.
•Parents should install safeguarding programs that can monitor and filter their child’s capabilities. Your Internet provider may offer services like this or you might have to purchase them yourself. Monitoring your child’s whereabouts on the computer is like standing behind them watching every move they make, without actually doing it. The computer program will do it for you. If something does happen this can help collect evidence against a predator.
This is a brief look at the safety deal reached by facebook, and as technology becomes more advanced, their safety measures will be updated and hopefully keep more of its users safe from potential predators. Until then, it’s extremely important for parents to take measures of their own to protect their children from sexual predators.
