Do you know who your children are talking to on the Internet?
Clearly many parents do not, as evidenced by a group of parents who learned just how powerful social networking can be - in a negative way - last week in Halfmoon Bay.
Armed with names, family photos and all sorts of information on Halfmoon Bay, quickly collected through a random Google search, Vancouver-based speaker Jesse Miller outlined a startling tale of online dangers parents should be aware of.
Miller is with MediatedReality, a group dedicated to social media education and awareness. He came to the school and met with parents and students in Grade 6 and 7 to talk about the dangers of sites like Facebook and how sharing information and photos could potentially put children at risk.
Did you know that if your child is playing Xbox or Playstation and is on-line communicating with others they are playing with, that those people can easily reference who they are and exactly where they are? We didn't.
Did you know that a simple iPhone picture file is linked to a GPS location of where it was taken? So that means that anyone who has access to that photo can find your location on-line with a simple search. We didn't know that either - nor did many of the parents who were in attendance.
Then Miller presented probably the most shocking bit of information about a chat network called chatroulette.com - a website that links people from all over the world for random video chats. Seems pretty harmless on the surface, but after spending 20 hours on the site, for five days at different times, Miller saw disturbing images and pornographic material on many occasions. The kicker to the story was almost all the students Miller spoke with earlier in the day knew about the site because they had all been there.
Most parents at the meeting didn't have a clue about the site.
Miller's presentation was quite eye opening for us. It showed just how easy it is for someone to get access to personal information. And even if you are on-line using fake names or providing false information, that's clearly not enough to stop someone.
Parents need to openly discuss with their children the dangers of what and who could be lurking on-line. That photo of you at a party with your friends may look funny and harmless, but it's an open invitation for a predator.
Educate yourself and educate your children before it's too late. Once your data is on the 'Net, you can't retrieve it. Why give the freaks in our society any more ammunition?
Keep your family safe.
