CyberWatch Column

Pedophiles on the Internet

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP

Professor of Computer Information Systems

Norwich University, Northfield, VT

This is the opening column in a series devoted to how ordinary people can protect themselves against threats involving the Internet as a mechanism for abuse.

Children, parents and teachers face a new area of danger: the Internet.  This course will review the dangers that people can meet on the Internet and then examine some of the technology that is helpful in preventing harm.

Let's start with pedophiles.  Pedophilia is defined as sexual arousal in response to contact with or images of prepubescent children.  Some pedophiles misrepresent themselves as youngsters in chat rooms or via e-mail and trick children into forming friendships with what they believe are peers.  In one notorious case, a 47-year-old man misrepresented himself as a 15 year-old boy in e-mail to a 12-year old girl in New Jersey.  The victim's mother stumbled onto a package from her daughter to a man she didn't know  because the child had put the wrong postage on it.  On the video tape inside, she found that her little girl had been cavorting naked in front of the family video camera. 

In June 2000, child safety experts warned the U.S. congressional committee on child online protection that with the average of age of online users declining (children between the ages of two and seven are among the fastest growing user cohorts on the Internet), children increasingly are put at risk by their careless or ignorant online activities.  The committee heard that 3,000 children were kidnapped in the U.S. last year after responding to online messages posted by their abductors.  A recent survey of teenage girls found 12% had agreed to meet strangers who'd contacted them online.

Practical recommendations for parents and others for protecting children against online pedophiles:

• Explain the dangers of communicating with strangers via the 'Net in the same terms that you discuss the dangers of talking to strangers anywhere else.
• Alert children to the questionable identity of anyone they meet exclusively through the 'Net or via e-mail.  Discuss the possibility that people are not what they claim to be in their online persona.
• Establish a calm atmosphere so that kids will not fear your reactions if they are troubled by what they encounter online.  Worst of all would be to punish a child for reporting a disturbing incident.
• Tell children not to give their address or their pictures to strangers they meet electronically.
• Discuss online relationships in a friendly and open way at home.  Show interest in the new friends without expressing hostility or suspicion; ask to participate in some of the online chats and e-mail correspondence.  Invite your children to sit in with you during your own online interactions.
• Parents should talk to the their child's new online friends’ parents by phone and, eventually, in person before allowing contacts.
• Any attempt to induce a child to meet the correspondent alone or secretly should be reported to local police authorities for investigation.
• Suggestions that children engage in virtual sex play or sexual fantasies should be reported to parents right away. 
• Making, transmitting and storing child pornography is a felony; report all such cases to local police authorities at once.
• Children receiving a request for anything unusual (for example, a request for a piece of clothing) should immediately report the incident to their parents. 

"Child pornography." < http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/detroit/crimes2.htm >