A teen's scheme to arrange some fun away from her family's prying eyes could have ended in tragedy.

  Luckily, her wary Hanford parents put a stop to their 17-year-old daughter's plans to meet someone she had met online at a local motel. That "someone," who made friends with the teen through an online computer game, turned out to be a 30-year-old Arizona man who was then booked on several charges, including arranging a sex act with a minor.

  "We want this to serve as a warning to parents," said Hanford police Investigator Darren Matteson after the September incident. "Parents need to be aware of what their children are doing online. It's important to note that any online activity, even playing a game, can lead to something like this."

  Pretending to be a teenager interested in online multiplayer games is just one of the ways predators can lure children into a sense of false security, experts say. Matteson said the man, Brandon Arthur Grebel, of Glendale, Ariz., had maintained an online relationship with the unidentified Hanford minor for several months before arranging the meeting. It's incidents like these that led the national Department of Homeland Security to establish National Cyber Security Awareness Month in October 2003. In a world where face-to-face communication is dying and online social sites like Facebook and Myspace reign supreme, the threat of cyber danger seems to grow and become more sophisticated by the day. As those threats from Internet sources grow, the importance of security measures increases. Parents are urged to monitor their children's online activities and not just rely on filtering devices.

Driving that point home, President Barack Obama recently made a proclamation about cyber security: "A key measure of our success will be the degree to which all Americans educate themselves about the risks they face and the actions they can take to protect themselves ..."

According to a study conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology, 48 percent of students as young as 6 and 7 interact with people on Web sites through kid-friendly games. And while 50 percent of those indicate they are supervised by their parents when they use a computer, another 50 percent are not -- exposing them to predatory behavior or other threats posed by online strangers who want to victimize them.

In a separate study in 2008 by Harris Interactive-McAfee, 63 percent of teens said they know how to hide what they do online from their parents -- 32 percent said they clear the browser and 43 percent have closed it at the sound of a parent coming.

The study also found that 11 percent of teens have been able to unlock or disable filtering controls.

"Our Shared Responsibility" was this year's theme for the safety month, to reinforce the message that all computer users "have a responsibility to practice good 'cyber hygiene' and to protect their families at home, at work and at school."

Local school officials say they are doing everything they can to ensure students' safety.

In the Hanford Elementary School District, where computers are used in the classroom every day, extreme precautions are taken to protect youngsters. David Goldsmith, director of information systems for the district, said not only are school computers up to date with software designed to protect kids, they are also programmed to block the more popular sites among young people.

"We are able to select Web sites and categories of Web sites -- we block Myspace and Facebook as well as YouTube -- which are just some of the more common social networking sites that can harbor dangers," Goldsmith said. "We also have our own content filter on top of the Internet filter we get through the county, so we are doubly protected."

Among these protections the district also employs "tech coaches" to inform teachers and students on safe Internet use.

"We have these coaches at each school site to provide information and resources to the students and teachers on how to responsibly use the Internet."

Goldsmith said there are also plans to provide Internet safety classes for both parents and students.

At Central California Connections Academy in Visalia, a virtual public school, preventive measures are already in place.

Stephanie Lusk, a teacher with the academy, said that although the students' class work is all Internet-based, measures are taken to ensure students' safety while they do their schoolwork.

"We start off each student with a technology education course," Lusk said. "They go through the first unit, which is cyber security, and gives them rules to follow; we educate them on the proper ways to communicate in this new cyber environment."

Along with teaching students how to properly communicate over the Internet, Lusk said the school also supplies a safe Web site resource list.

"We provide the students with a list of safe Web sites so both they and their parents can feel safe about their Internet usage," she said. "Also, while the students are logged into our school management system, they are unable to speak with anyone outside of the school."

At home, Matteson recommends physically walking in and checking on what kids are doing on the computer, and also not leaving the machine in an isolated spot where their activities can go unmonitored.

"Parents can also purchase monitoring programs which will show what Web sites their kids are going to and what phrases they are typing into the computer," he said.

"If we can avoid these kind of online interactions," Matteson said of the relationship established between the Hanford girl and the 30-year-old predator over the game "World of Warcraft," "we can avoid a lot of emotional turmoil further down the line."

Staff writer Joe Johnson contributed to this story. The reporter can be reached at 583-2424.

Steps to protect children using the Internet

- Keep your computer in a central and open location in your home and be aware of other computers your child may be using.

- Discuss and set guidelines/rules for computer use with your children. Post these rules by the computer as a reminder.

- Use the Internet with your children and become familiar with their sites.

- Use parental control tools that provided by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and available for purchase. Remember: No program is a substitute for parental supervision. You can set some parental controls within your browser and you can protect these settings with a password.

- Consider software that can monitor your children's e-mail and Web traffic.

- Consider partitioning your computer into separate accounts -- most operating systems (including Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux) give you the option of creating a different user account for each user.

- Know your children's online friends and supervise their chat areas.

- Teach your children never to give out personal information to people they meet online such as in chat rooms or bulletin boards.

- Know who to contact if you believe your child is in danger. Visit www.getnetwise.org for detailed information. If you know of a child in immediate risk or danger, call law enforcement immediately.

Source: www.staysafeonline.info

(Nov. 7, 2009)