Social Networking Dangers

Imagine an innocent 12-year-old girl talking to a 20 or 30-years older person who they've never met, planning a meeting in a secluded place. Does that disgust you? It happens all the time.

With the explosion of Instant Messaging in 1996 (ICQ) and the beginning of social networking sites such as MySpace (in 2003) and Facebook (in 2004) many doors to internet predators have been opened.

According to The Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1 in 5 children are sexually solicited online. One example was when a 14-year-old began recieving IM messages from a complete stranger seeking sex, asking her if she was ok with him being 38. As of September 1st, 2008, Perverted Justice has dedicated itself to tracking and convicting creeps like that, and have helped to convict 291 perpetrators since the beginning of their cause in June 2004. They've worked with Dateline NBC to create a series called "To Catch a Predator" which highlights the work that they do to get the criminals in jail.

However, the dangers don't stop with IM predators. Profile pages on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are a gold mine for internet predators. This problem has gotten so big that a law was passed called the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006. Although both MySpace and Facebook "require" users to be 14 or older, many people don't heed that suggestion - a few years back, many of my 11-year-old friends created MySpaces due to the increasing popularity sites - they entered information saying that they were 101 years old. Although that may not seem like a big deal at first, many people don't realize that social websites are public places when they use the site. "When they think MySpace, they think other teenagers. They don't think there are adults pretending to be teenagers on there." Students have been denied their degree and turned down when applying for jobs because of content on their MySpace pages.
People have been raped, and others killed after agreeing to meet with a stranger online.

There are also some less as serious but potentially damaging holes in the privacy of some social networking sites as well. According to CNET, a way to access "private" comments from user to user was found - in other words, messages meant only for one person to see could be shown to the entire world.

The best thing to do to keep yourself safe is to simply keep in mind who's potentially watching. Think before you put your cell number, full name, or address up on your profile. Don't post pictures that can show where you reside, or racy pics/pics of illegal/harmful activities. Remember that anybody, anywhere can see these. Don't "friend" people you've never met, and don't give any private details online. If there's something you're dying to tell your comrade, tell them by telephone - or the old fashioned way: by word of mouth.