PARRY AFTAB, ESQ.

Executive Director

parry@aftab.com

 

 

 

 

 

VIA E-MAIL

Office of Policy Analysis and Development

National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Room 4716 HCHB

14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20230

Attention: Sallianne Fortunato Schagrin

 

 

Re:      Request for Comments on the Effectiveness of Internet Protection Measures and Safety Policies, Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)

 

 

As an Internet lawyer, author, child Internet expert, and safety and privacy advocate, as well as Executive Director of WiredSafety.org (formerly known as Cyberangels), I submit these comments about the effectiveness of existing Internet protection measures and the Children’s Internet Protection Act.  My remarks on content issues and risk management for children online are based in large part on excerpts from my book, The Parent’s Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace, McGraw-Hill, 2000, (UK edition and Spanish US editions as well as a Singaporean adaptation), my legal expertise and upon our work in protecting people online for more than five years.

 

The WiredSafety family of sites and programs are the largest online safety and help group in the world, run entirely by unpaid volunteers. We handle all aspects of online safety, privacy and cybercrime prevention. I receive more than 1000 e-mails daily from Internet users ranging from 7 to 86 years old. My Ask Parry column responds to hundreds of questions from parents, grandparents and educators every month. We work closely with law enforcement worldwide to investigate crimes against children, as well as all aspects of cybercrime. I was named by UNESCO in 1999 to head up its online child exploitation program for the United States. WiredSafety, and its WiredKids.org program serve in such a capacity, as well as being a 501c3 under U.S. law. For more information about our efforts to protect children around the world, please visit www.wiredsafety.org, www.wiredpatrol.org, and www.wiredkids.org.

 

The essence of this comment is that technology can be very important as a tool to help protect children from being exposed to inappropriate and disgusting materials online, but there is far more to protecting children online than installing a filter.

 

What Kinds of Things Can Technological Tools Do?

 

A Quick Overview of Features

 

There is a lot of variety in what the technology can do these days. Most blocking products or features work by classifying sites. They review sites and include them in either a good or white/clean site list (which contains kid-friendly sites) or a bad or black/banned site list (which have been reviewed and found to be inappropriate for children based on certain criteria). Children can be limited to only the good sites, or prevented from going to the bad ones.

 

But since the Web is growing by more than a hundred thousand registered sites a month, no bad-site list can hope to keep up. That’s why most products also filter words and phrases, and some even filter them in context to prevent blocking innocent phrases. (The difference between blocking and filtering is this—blocked sites are reviewed and categorized in advance, and filtered sites are reviewed as they are accessed by the child.)

 

When children attempt to access a site that is blocked or filtered, they can’t access it. Some products tell you why you can’t access it. They provide announcements or “alerts,” informing the child that the site is “blocked by ——— [name of product].” Others work in stealth mode. That means that they don’t tell you they’re blocking (and may not even

tell your child that they are working). When a site is blocked in stealth mode, you merely get an error message.

 

Many products monitor and report on online use: where the children have been, how long they were there, and what they did online. (Some even take periodic snapshots of their screens or give you a log of everything your child said or your child heard online.)

 

Certain products can also monitor offline computer usage as well, such as how many hours (and which hours) the child spends on the computer or playing computer

games, and can restrict them from using certain software offline.

 

A few online services (such as America Online) provide their own proprietary products that work only on their systems. (AOL’s parental control is by far the most used parental control product in the world.) These are provided without charge to members. Some of the other software products can be used with online services (such as AOL and  CompuServe), and others are designed only for the Internet and work with ISPs (such as

AT&T, Earthlink, and MCI/Worldcom). Many ISPs are making free software available for their members as well.

 

You can also use software to block certain incoming information (such as e-mail and instant messaging) entirely, to filter incoming information (to block those irritating pornography links contained in the e-mail), or to prevent certain information from being sent by your children to others (such as their names and your telephone number).

Online searches can be blocked as well, or limited to preapproved kidfriendly

search engines, such as Yahooligans and Ask Jeeves for Kids.

 

The programs are either customizable or preset by the manufacturer of the software. The more they can be customized, the more time they take to install and set up. Some allow you to set different levels of protection for different children, so you can set more restrictions for your younger children than for their teenage sibling. Many of the better

systems combine these various options, giving you the greatest protection

and maximum flexibility.

 

We have reviewed and tested more than 160 different filtering, blocking and monitoring products. A very good search engine for viewing the claimed features of each product can be found at www.getnetwise.org. Some products work better than others, some are free and others quite expensive and charge for updates and some work only to track your children online while others will filter out or block known sites. But bottom line, filtering without educating the children about how to protect themselves online is worthless. None of the products work flawlessly, and the children can often by-pass the products and may be surfing unfiltered at the homes of their friends, libraries and in school. The attached Exhibit A hereto describes all of the risks our children face online and will provide a sense of where filtering may be helpful and where it is not.

 

Exhibit B hereto shows test results on the big four filtering and blocking products and how well they filtered or blocked various kinds of inappropriate content. The tests were conducted for my book, and need updating. The new testing will be redone with a much larger test pool of products shortly and we will be happy to provide this information to Congress.

 

Finally, tying filtering to funding is, in my humble opinion, a mistake. Teachers and school administrators know what works in their environment, which will differ from school to school. Trusting them to decide whether filtering is useful, or necessary, or whether they would prefer to use an acceptable use policy or Internet policy, or a combination of the two is preferred to mandating filtering when the products are not yet up to par, and may limit the students’ access to approved content, necessary for their school work. (A copy of two very helpful acceptable use policies are attached as Exhibit C hereto.)

 

We owe it to our children to improve the filter between their ears that will help them know whom to trust, how to click the “back button” to avoid inappropriate content and how to enjoy the wonders of the Internet, safely and privately. Internet safety education is key to this, and should be mandated, not filtering. Our online safety videos for children, for teens and for parents are going to be released in early Fall, online without charge. We have already produced these videos for the U.K. (I am part of the Home Office Task Force on Child Protection, and am the only US member, to my knowledge.)

 

Lastly, our TeenangelTeenAngel program educated special teams of teens in all aspects of Internet safety and privacy. They then develop their own programs and share them with their local media, schools and community groups. Teens are very effective in communicating the risks and solutions to other youth, and can start this from the bottom up, protecting children today from the real risks online. (You can learn more about our TeenAngels program at wiredkids.org.)

 

It’s a matter of setting priorities and trusting our educators to do their job, and giving them what they need. That may or may not involve filtering, but will certainly involve Internet safety education and responsible surfing education for our children. We will assist in providing that, and welcome the opportunity to work with others in this area.

 

I hope that these comments will help the National Telecommunications and Information Administration evaluate the effectiveness of existing Internet protection measures, and make sound recommendations to Congress on how to foster technological developments in that direction.  I’m available for testimony or further comments on this topic.

 

 

Very truly yours

 

 

 

Parry Aftab, Esq.

Executive Director

The WiredSafety Family of Sites and Programs

(formerly known as Cyberangels)

WiredKids.org, Cyberlawenforcement.org and

WiredPatrol.org

 

 

Exhibits A,B and C attached

 

 

Exhibit A:

Attachment to Comment by Parry Aftab, Esq. (WiredSafety.org, WiredKids.org, WiredPatrol.org and Cyberlawenforcement.org)

Copyright 2000

 

 

The Internet’s Dark Side

There’s a lot of offensive information on the Internet, no matter how you personally define “offensive.”  Regardless of race, color, or creed, the Internet is an equal-opportunity offender.  To overcome it, however, it’s important that we keep things in perspective.

 

Are We Being Cautious Parents . . . or Paranoid Wrecks?

 

Everything in life has risks.  I remember years ago when I was watching Sesame Street with my children, and Grover appeared in a piece where he was afraid of everything. He was even afraid that the ceiling would fall in on him. (Los Angeles earthquakes aside. . . .) He had to be taught how to put his fears (and the dangers) in perspective. It was a good lesson. It taught us that when we don’t understand the risks, how things work, or the likelihood of things going wrong, even ceilings can become the object of terror. It might help to know what other parents worry about.

 

According to surveys taken by Jupiter several years ago, 72 percent of parents in 1998 were concerned about danger from strangers coming from e-mail and chatrooms. That figure rose slightly to 76 percent in 1999. For dangers from adult entertainment, the 1998 and 1999 figures are 68 percent and 75 percent, respectively —again, not a significant change. Parents seemed to show the most increase in concerns when dealing with marketing and advertising. Privacy issues concerned only 55 percent of the parents in 1998 but 68 percent in 1999, and concerns about advertising aimed at kids jumped from just 18 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 1999. (Note that different surveys give different percentages, but all show increases in concern about commercial risks.)

 

The more recent surveys show an even higher concern by parents with privacy and commercial issues that affect their children online. Interestingly enough, when we have polled teens recently, privacy is their number one concern, even over online predators. These opinions are a result of both heightened awareness and an increase in Internet use among parents and youth alike.

 

To parents who aren’t familiar with the Internet, everything is equally frightening and dangerous. But as we learn more, we can  distinguish between real and imagined dangers. This allows us, as Grover did, to weigh the benefits of being shielded from the elements against the risk of the ceiling falling in.

 

Our children know this, and remind us of the necessity of protecting privacy online. That, more than what they see online is far more dangerous in their opinion. I agree.

 

All Risks and Dangers Are Not Equal in Cyberspace

 

Part of the challenge we face in trying to keep our kids safe online is knowing the difference between what’s only annoying or offensive and what’s dangerous and even illegal. But whether it’s illegal or merely annoying, we need to remember that we have the right, as parents, to decide what our children should see and what they shouldn’t. And we have to be realistic about the risks. There’s a fine line between being a cautious parent and being a paranoid wreck. We shouldn’t see monsters under every cyberbed and in every cybercloset. We need to recognize where the real risks are, and remember that many things are only annoying, not dangerous. Finally, as our children mature and demonstrate improved judgment, we have to keep moving the bar higher, to give them more freedom and choices online. A big part of parenting is teaching our children to exercise their own judgment. The training wheels have to come off sometime.

 

Information Doesn’t Hurt Children—People Hurt Children

 

There are two kinds of risks our children face in life. One relates to our children’s sensitivities, emotional well-being, and intellectual growth. The other relates to their physical well-being and safety. While no one wants their children’s feelings hurt, or their being exposed to disgusting and hateful information, I think if given a choice we would prefer that to their being physically molested or hurt. It’s people who pose the greatest risks to our children online, not information.

 

But that doesn’t mean information can’t be a problem. We just need to recognize that not all information is created equal. The information our children can access ranges from information you may consider inappropriate, disgusting, or even dangerous for them emotionally, to how they can buy dangerous substances and guns online. Some parents believe that their children should have access to all information, no matter how outrageous they personally might believe it to be. They believe that it helps their children handle things they face in life and is a matter of  intellectual freedom and free speech. Other parents believe that all information should be prescreened for their children since they—not the U.S. Constitution—are the final arbiters of their children’s intellectual freedom. There’s no right answer for all children, just a right one for your own children. Whether you decide that your children should have unlimited access to all content online, be limited to only preapproved content, or something in between, remember: It’s your choice. It’s not a political issue; it’s a parenting one. One of our few prerogatives as parents is to decide what information is appropriate for our own children.

 

What Kinds of Risks Are We Talking About?

 

There are two kinds of risks I’ll discuss in this chapter—risks to our children and risks your children pose to others. (Parents with perfect children may ignore the section on risks your children pose to others, as long as their perfect children also have perfect friends.)

 

Risks to Our Children

 

There are six types of risks our children face online:

 

1.      They can access information that might be inappropriate for them. This includes pornography, hate, intolerance, bigotry, gore, violence, hoaxes, misinformation, and hype.

2.      They can access information, do things, and purchase products that might be dangerous to them. There are sites that offer bomb-building recipes, sites that sell guns, alcohol, poisons, tobacco products and drugs, and sites that offer gambling online.

3.      They can be stalked and harassed by people (often other children) who are rude, insulting, and make threats, or may send them viruses or hack their computers.

4.      They can give up important and private information by filling out forms and entering contests online, and, as a result, be targeted by irresponsible marketers using unfair marketing techniques.

5.      They can be scammed or defrauded when they buy things online, and risk disclosing our important financial information to others, like credit card and pin numbers and passwords.

6.      They can be lured by cyberpredators who want to meet them face-to-face.

 

If you look over the list, you’ll see that all but two of the risks are within our children’s control. Except when they stumble inadvertently on certain content, they can avoid information that is either inappropriate or dangerous. They can also refuse to fill out forms and registrations online or make sure the information they provide is okayed by their parents and is being treated responsibly by the entities that collect it. Only cyberstalkers, harassers, and cyberpredators are outside of their control. And until someone develops the “Beam me up, Scotty!” technology or ways to shrink our children so they can pass through the modem lines, your child has to agree to meet them, or has to give them information about where they can be found offline, to be really at risk. I’ll give you tips on how to avoid these risks online, but you need to deal with the fact that children might be intentionally accessing inappropriate sites, doing dangerous things, and putting themselves at risk. That’s the nature of children. (It’s especially the nature of teenagers!)

 

Stuff You Might Prefer Your Children Not See

 

For the most part, kids are quickly bored with adult sites and other inappropriate information. So, other than their first journey to the dark side to see what it holds in store, most of our kids and teens will wander back disappointed with what they found. (Not that they don’t wander back and forth a bit—especially when they are in groups and out to impress others, their hormones are raging, or when violence and gore sites are concerned.) But the dark side may hold more of a lingering lure to a troubled child or teen. (We’ve seen that with Littleton and other tragedies.) It’s a parent’s job to know if their child or teen is troubled. While some of these tips might help you understand more about their surfing habits and control their activities online, helping troubled teens with their pain and anger takes more than using a filtering software. It takes caring and professional advice.  So while I’ll help you spot the risks online, you’re the one who needs to understand your child.

 

And, the best filter is the one between their ears. Make sure you upload to it often, teaching yourYour family’s values. That “filter” will work reminding them of your values whether they are online or offline, for the rest of their lives.

 

Sexually Explicit Content—Adult Pornography

 

Spicy Girls! XXX-rated! Hot Teens and Bouncing Blonde Bombshells! Very few of us haven’t been exposed to this information online. There’s no question that there are hundreds of thousands of sexually explicit websites. It’s no wonder that Internet sex sites seem to get far more attention than any other content online. These adult-content sites range from the Playboy-type (which some parents may not strongly object to) to lurid hard-core and sexually deviant sites that even the most liberal parents would not want their kids to see. Fortunately, many responsible adult sites do what they can to keep your kids out by requiring a credit card or other adult-verification system to access their content. But much of this content is legal. Content on the Internet can’t and shouldn’t be limited to what is appropriate for only six-year-olds. There are many things that adults can legally do and access that may not be appropriate for children. That’s our prerogative as adults. But whatever our tolerance level is and whether it’s legal or not, we don’t have to allow our children to view what we consider inappropriate for them. As parents, it’s also our prerogative to decide what is appropriate for our children and what isn’t.

 

True Confessions

 

When I did a segment for Good Morning America a few years ago, I worked with a group of eight- to ten-year-olds in a suburban school assembly. I asked the kids what they did online that they knew their parents wouldn’t like. One nine-year-old timidly raised his hand and shared with us (and potentially the national television audience) that he looked at “naked people.” Gradually, the entire class raised their hands, admitting that they, too, looked at “naked people.” I joked that they were probably just studying biology, and convinced GMA not to use the confession in the piece. But nine-year-olds (and younger) can see naked people and far more with just a click of the mouse.

 

Children don’t have to find a retailer that will sell them an adult magazine. They don’t have to scrounge up the money to buy one. They don’t have to smuggle one out of a friend’s house (or your bathroom). The stuff they can see online is home-delivered, largely free, very easy to find (just use a regular search engine), and in many cases far more graphic than they would be able to buy even under-the-counter. Although many parents agree that graphic sexual content isn’t the most serious danger our children face online, few of us want our children exposed to images of bestiality, rape, or sadomasochism.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Plenty! But, first and foremost, we need to sit with our children and teach them that while they may have a healthy curiosity about naked people (and more), it’s not worth getting obsessed about and after the first thrill may be pretty boring. This is an important time to teach them about your attitudes toward sex, pornography, and degradation and why you consider this stuff a waste of their time. You have to constantly improve the filter between their ears—their judgment!

 

Hatred, Intolerance, and Bigotry

 

Ideas repugnant to many people have found a global audience in cyberspace. We need to make sure that our children become an informed, skeptical, and unwilling audience where hate, intolerance, and bigotry are concerned. The range of hate, intolerance, and bigotry sites is pretty broad. There are many sites that question whether the Holocaust ever happened. Others mock racial minority groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, and those with different sexual preferences. Some indirectly promote intolerance by promoting racial supremacy. In-groups make fun of those outside their groups—everyone who wants to promote hate can do so online.

 

Unfortunately, it took the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and before it the Littleton tragedy to make many people understand how much hate exists online (and offline). And most of it is legal. Hate laws in the United States regulate hate speech only when a certain group or individual is targeted in a way that promotes violence against them in a legally protected environment.

 

It’s ironic that the one medium that should promote equality and tolerance is so often misused to promote the opposite. The Internet strips away everything but how well you communicate your ideas. The Internet is blind to gender, age, physical disability, race, and religion. When you meet people online, you don’t know how old they are, whether they are male or female, what color their skin is, what accent they speak with, or how they pray. It’s the most egalitarian environment in the world. No geographical borders—seamless global communication. That’s the beauty of the Internet. Biases online can be pretty illuminating, though. For example, people are often surprised to learn I’m a woman, because I have an unusual name and because I’m a lawyer. I’m amazed that their tone online often changes after they find out I’m a woman. Why that should be the case, especially in this day and age, I don’t know. But we all do it. We all treat people differently based on their gender, age, or where they’re from. It’s part of how we’re trained.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

We have to teach our children that many people on the Internet have biases and prejudices that clash with our values. It’s a good time to explain what your values are and to explain why you believe what you do. A solid grounding like this is your best weapon against others trying to sway your children’s opinions. When our children are exposed to outrageous bigotry and hatred online or anywhere else, we can help them understand the dangers of prejudice and the importance of diversity and tolerance. The more they have a chance to talk and share ideas with other children around the world, the more they will learn how alike we all are.

 

Mark Twain put his finger on it when he said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” On the Internet, our children travel the world every day. We need to make sure that they understand that they are truly part of the global community, and learn to celebrate the differences and diversity the global community represents rather than mock them.

 

Parents should discuss these topics with their children:

 

 

Once the discussion starts, be prepared for some hard questions and even tougher answers.

 

Violence and Gore

 

Kids and teens aren’t as interested in the sexually explicit sites as parents think they are, but they are much more intrigued by gory sites filled with amputated body parts and people clubbing baby seals and beached whales than any of us would have dreamed. Kids see them as horror movies rather than real life. I suspect the best thing we can do is hope they grow out of it.

 

One particularly savvy library media specialist I know told me that when the kids are grouped around the monitor with their faces pressed up against the monitor screen, she knows that it’s a gory site they are viewing.

 

Our Teenangels (a special team of teenagers I work with who are trained in online safety) tell me that their friends visit gory sites whenever they can. Many teenagers have shared with me the names of sites that purported to show body parts at famous accident scenes. I don’t understand the attraction, but it seems to be pretty universal among teenagers in particular. The sites range from just gross to very disgusting. (Some even show human corpses being cut into pieces or posed in grotesque ways.) The violent sites also often try to provoke violence. But given the recent events since the Littleton tragedy and the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, most of us understand these as “hate sites.”

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Trying to educate our children not to “go there” might work. (I have no faith that it will, though.) But here we need education to teach our children that these aren’t horror movies, that the whales and seals being clubbed to death are real, and that the accident victims are someone’s loved ones. Filtering products also block and filter violence and gore sites.

 

Misinformation and Hype

 

The Internet is an inexpensive and easy method of publishing information. Anyone can be a publisher, and everyone is an expert. Separating the truth from fantasy in cyberspace is one of the hardest tasks we have. Con artists, scam artists, cultists, and just plain nutcases thrive in this free atmosphere.

 

How can you tell marketing hype from fact? What information is reliable and what is pure bunk? How do your kids separate Elvis sightings from scholarly discourse?

 

Robin Raskin a well-respected Internet expert, sees misinformation as a big problem, too, one that the latest technology can’t provide a quick fix for. “Most parental control software,” she states, “while it does a decent job of blocking pornographic material, does not do a very good job of blocking kooks, pyramid schemes, racism, or outright lies. These are subtleties that no technology can easily block.” I guess that leaves it up to us. Whether we like it or not, the buck stops here. It’s our job as parents to teach our children the difference between hype, misinformation, and quality sources wherever they find them. We also need to teach them that not everyone is what he or she seems to be. Most of us have already started teaching them that. Unfortunately, our children have to learn these things early. Every time I used to wheel my kids through the supermarket checkout aisle, supermarket tabloids would blast outrageous headlines at them: “Men from Mars Father Children in Indiana,” “Four-Hundred-Year-Old Woman Shares the Secrets of Long Life,” and so on. Once they could read, I would have to explain the truth (although I could rarely explain it well enough, since I’m not sure I understand how they can get away with saying these things—and I’m a lawyer).

 

Every time a publishing company’s sweepstakes envelope would arrive addressed to them and heralding that they had won umpteen million dollars, I would have to explain the small print. But whether we’re in the supermarket or handing out the mail, we’re there to answer any questions. That’s why it’s important that we be there when they have surfing questions, too, especially when they are getting online for the first time. But that’s the easy part. When our kids are surfing alone, we need to teach them how to do it for themselves. That’s much harder.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Teach them to be smart information consumers. Try to get them to share what they learn and read in cyberspace with you, so you can do a reality check. Surf with them and point out outrageous sources that should be approached with skepticism. You also have to teach them to exercise their judgment. This is the most important thing we can teach our children, but it takes a special twist online. Other than the professional look of a site, there is very little a child can go on to judge a site’s credibility. Terrific groups like the American Library Association (ALA) and others have compiled recommended and safe-site lists, but these amount to no more than maybe forty thousand websites collectively (the size of a typical high school library). There is no Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval yet for Internet sites. (But some are coming! The WiredKids site, www.wiredkids.org, will be giving a “safe and fun site” seal of approval to qualified sites and WiredKids.org gives a safe site seal of approval to sites approved by WiredKids’ WiredMoms.)

 

So, what about the remainder of the millions of sites on the Internet? How do children judge site credibility when most adults can’t? What can they believe? The Teenangels have told me that we should teach younger children never to believe anything they see, hear, or read online. Perhaps that’s a bit extreme. But we do need to teach them to be skeptical. How do we teach children to measure the credibility of a site? How can they tell who’s behind the site? Is it a historian or a hate group? Is it sharing facts or fiction? How can we create smart Internet information consumers?

 

Trusting a Brand Name

 

Sometimes, until children have developed solid critical thinking skills, it’s often best to rely on the judgment of someone you trust. You might try to guide your children to school- and library-approved site lists. The ALA’s list of safe and approved sites is one of the best (www.ala.org/parentspage/greatsites). So is the Children’s Partnership list and  our own WiredKids.org, Star Approved Sites list.

 

Either way, whether you use someone’s site list or trust their directories to screen out the kooks, you’re relying on a recognized name brand to help you select credible and worthwhile sites. We can teach our children how to exercise their own information literacy skills by making sure they talk to their librarians and teachers about how to evaluate the credibility of information. I’ve also set out a few tips in the “Kids Online in Schools” chapter, too. But whether they rely on trusted experts (or you) to help them evaluate information, or develop their own method to measure credibility, we should teach them to always question the source and use their best judgment, online and off. Our children have to become critical thinkers.

 

Cyber Hoaxes, Rumors, and Urban Legends

 

We aren’t strangers to urban legends. The crazed stalker of couples in lovers’ lane. The baby alligator brought back as a souvenir from Florida that, when flushed down the toilet, lived and hunted in the sewers. Some legends live on from one generation to the next. (Do we even have lovers’ lanes anymore, and aren’t alligators a protected or endangered species?)

 

Remember Mikey, the kid who wouldn’t eat anything? Well, you may also remember the rumor (totally unfounded) about twenty years ago that he died while eating Pop Rocks (the effervescent candy) when he drank a can of soda and his stomach exploded. (I wrote my senior thesis on that and other business rumors.)

 

Rumors, especially those that sound believable, have abounded for centuries. It isn’t any different in cyberspace. In fact, they move faster online than they ever could offline. Someone went to a movie and sat down on a hypodermic needle that had been left on the seat. She then contracted AIDS. Someone else was drugged by a beautiful woman and woke up in a bathtub filled with ice to find a kidney missing. (Apparently it had been removed and sold to someone who needed a kidney transplant.) Real or hoaxes? You be the judge.

 

But most good hoaxes and rumors have three main ingredients—they could happen, they touch something we know about or think is true (people can get HIV from an exposed infected needle, and people are desperate for transplant organs), and they feed on fear (getting HIV/AIDS, being drugged by strangers, dangers of having sex with strangers, etc.).

 

The difference between a rumor and a hoax is that while hoaxes are planned fakes, rumors may be believed and innocently passed on. But since once a hoax is passed on by people who believe it, it becomes a rumor, who cares anyway?

 

Computer Virus Rumors Are Just the Latest Fad of Cyberhoaxes

 

E-mail hoax messages warning me about some new virus hazard arrive in my mailbox daily. One night a few years ago, my son, Michael, sent me a list of supposedly infected files that someone had sent to him at college. The list included the upgrade for AOL, among many other unlikely virus-carrier candidates. This is the typical virus hoax that attempts to frighten people who have already installed popular programs, like AOL.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Luckily, there are several great websites you can refer to when you get your next e-mail announcing Armageddon, especially e-mails announcing the latest viruses. These sites will help you decide what to pay careful attention to and which to just ignore. If you want to check and see if the “latest news breaking horror of the week” e-mail is a hoax, you can go to the experts. Symantec, the maker of Norton AntiVirus (www.symantec.com/avcenter), IBM hype alerts (www.av.ibm.com/BreakingNews/HypeAlert), Carnegie

Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Coordination Center (www.cert.org), and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability page (ciac.llnl.gov) are the places you can trust to help you separate fact from fiction.

 

Before you forward any e-mail proclaiming the latest virus, check it out. It’s good Netiquette and a good way to preserve your credibility. And if you know someone who’s rumormongering in cyberspace, tell them, too. (Otherwise, ignore anything they send you, or tell them to remove you from their rumor mailing list.)

 

The Riskier Stuff: When Kids Do Dangerous Things and Buy Illegal or Dangerous Products Online Mom . . . How Do You Build a Bomb?

 

There are plenty of harmless books available on the Internet, but The Big Book of Mischief isn’t one of them. Don’t be fooled by its innocent name—the “mischief” it refers to is serious injury and death. It teaches violence, and gives our kids the tools they need to get the job done. To give you an idea of its tone, Part I is subtitled “The Terrorist’s Handbook.” Of course it comes with the requisite disclaimer: that serious injury or death could result from any attempt to make the recipes it contains, and that the book is being provided merely for your reading pleasure. (Apparently, everyone has a lawyer these days.)

 

Then there’s The Anarchists’ Cookbook, which explains how you can buy whatever you need at your local grocery, hardware, and farming supply stores to build a bomb. (It even includes a recipe to make nitroglycerin.) And who are the terrorists armed with this deadly and easily accessible information? Judging from recent tragic experiences and other, lesser-known cases from around the United States, these “terrorists” include our kids and kids who go to school with our kids. The really frightening part is that thousands of teenagers have told me that they might try to build a bomb just to see if it works. Girls and boys, inner -city, suburban, and rural teens seem to agree on this. So even your good kids may be a bomb threat if they get bored one afternoon.

 

An illuminating pre-Littleton account of online bomb-building dangers appeared in a Ladies’ Home Journal article in March 1997 about a mother, Cheryl, whose thirteen-year-old son, Michael, suffered burns over 25 percent of his body when he and a friend were building a smoke bomb from instructions they had found on the Internet. It turned out that while Cheryl didn’t have a home computer, her son’s friend had Internet access at home, and the boys would go online unsupervised. Learning how to build a bomb turned out to be as simple as typing the word “bomb” into their favorite search engine.

 

At first, understandably, Cheryl was furious and blamed the Internet. Her anger that this type of information was available to children online, however, softened when she realized that her son could just as easily have found the bomb-building information at their local library. (Although teenagers tell me that they’d never bother to research this in a library. It’s the ease of accessibility that makes looking for this information online so appealing . . . and so dangerous.)

 

But Cheryl didn’t overreact. Recognizing the importance that computer literacy plays in a child’s life, the family bought a home computer four months after the accident, and subscribed to an online service. But they vowed to protect themselves and their son online.

 

What did they do to protect themselves and Michael while online? They put the computer in the family room, not in Michael’s bedroom. They also set rules for him, such as going online only when a parent is home. They also monitored him closely. They chose not to use any parental controls or filtering software, deciding instead to trust Michael to follow the rules. This is one family’s way of dealing with Internet risks, and a good one. Trust and education go a long way with the right child.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Most of this information is perfectly legal, and protected by the First Amendment. So, what can you do? You can take certain measures to make sure your children understand the dangers of these kinds of things. Let them know that kids can be disfigured, or lose limbs, fingers, and sometimes their lives from bomb-making accidents. Their appreciation of the dangers has to outweigh their teenage curiosity. You can also keep a lookout for signs that your kids may be getting into trouble.

There are several things parents should look out for if they’re concerned that their children may be getting into the bomb-building business: pails or buckets, soda or bleach bottles, pipes, ammonia, glycerin, or paraffin. Unfortunately, items like these aren’t likely to even raise our suspicions. That’s how easy it is for kids to gather what they need to build a bomb.

 

Parents should also be on the alert for children who collect empty containers or unusual-looking containers, nails or sharp screws, metal pellets, and shotgun shells that may have been broken open and emptied of their powder. Parents should also call the police if they find anything that looks suspicious, rather than attempt to deal with the “bomb” or bomb ingredients themselves.

 

In addition to education and keeping an eye out for suspicious activities, technology may also be a big help in making sure your kids aren’t accessing this kind of information online. You can filter incoming content and websites that use certain words, like “bombs.” You can also block sites that have been reviewed and found to contain this kind of information. Restricting younger children to prescreened sites is another way of avoiding this kind of content.

 

Bomb-building Information, Violence, and Responsibility— Post-Littleton

 

Especially since the Littleton tragedy, there has been a lot of interest in bomb-building information online. It’s significant that the number of questions I receive from parents about filtering products has increased tenfold since Littleton. While sex rarely moves parents to consider filtering, bomb building, violence, and hate seem to have tipped the scale for many parents.

 

But the filtering products don’t block these sites as completely as they do sites with sexual references.  Be sure to review the product’s test results for the types of information you’re seeking to block or filter. And remember, all children should be educated about the risks as though you weren’t using a parental control product, even if you intend to use one. All children have to be able to handle information “unplugged.”

 

Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco, Guns, and Poisons

 

There are two different kinds of sites out there that deal with these topics. One group of sites promotes their use. The online risks of this information really aren’t any greater than the offline risks of anyone promoting their use by minors (although there may be more of this information online than is easily accessed by our children offline). The other group of sites sells these things online to anyone who wants to buy them, including children.

 

Sites That Promote Their Use

 

Some alcohol, tobacco, and gun sites are set up by the manufacturers of these products. Other sites, such as those that promote drugs and poisons (generally for assisted suicides), are set up by people who advocate their use.

 

Many manufacturers have stated that their sites are directed at adults who may legally consume their products, and not at children, but we need to recognize that these sites are often accessed by children.

(Many child-protection groups believe that children are even being targeted by some of these companies.) But whether these companies intend to attract children to their sites or not, our children need to be educated about the dangers of drugs, guns, poisons, alcohol, and tobacco.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Education and values enforcement are the best defense against this kind of information—online and off. You may already have educated your children thoroughly on these topics. Ask them. You might be surprised how much they already know. If you think you need more help than education can provide, most of the filtering products block access to drug, alcohol, and tobacco sites.

 

Sites That Sell These Things to Kids

 

There are thousands of sites that sell alcohol online. You can do a quick search on any search engine that isn’t a filtered or kid-friendly search engine (alcohol sites tend to be filtered at these search engines) and pull up hundreds of sites that sell wine and other alcohol online. Selling online has become a popular mechanism for small wineries thatwho can’t afford large distribution networks to market across the country.

 

While it’s very easy to find sites that sell alcohol and tobacco online, it’s a bit harder to find those that sell drugs (usually these sites sell only prescription drugs being sold over-the-cybercounter, like Viagra and weight-loss medications, although some sell drug paraphernalia) or guns online. It’s even harder to find controlled substances and illegal drugs and poisons, such as cyanide (although one site that facilitated suicide in Japan was selling some), for sale online. But they’re there, and kids armed with money or credit cards can buy them as easily as adults can.

 

A couple of years ago, a mother opened a package shipped to her son and discovered a semiautomatic weapon he had ordered online. He had charged it to his parents’ credit card. (I have no idea what he thought would happen when the bill arrived.) And your children could do the same.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

You need to recognize that the alcohol and drug sites, unlike some of the other riskier content sites, aren’t targeting kids. They are targeting adults—for example, wine connoisseurs looking for smaller and unique vineyards, and patients with erectile dysfunction or weight problems looking for prescription medicines.

 

For the most part, kids aren’t buying these products online. Alcohol and tobacco products tend to cost far more online than the over-the-counter alternative (assuming the kids can get some adult to buy it for them or obtain a fake ID).

 

But in order to make sure children aren’t buying anything from any of these sites, parents should check your credit card and bank statements closely, and make sure you are there when packages are opened (or, make sure your kids show you what they have ordered).

 

Are We Raising Future Riverboat Gamblers in Cyberspace?

 

There is no doubt that the Internet is an equal opportunity vice provider. And gambling hasn’t escaped cyberspace any more than the other vices have. In fact, gambling is thriving in the Internet arena, even while facing strict governmental controls elsewhere. (The sites are illegal in the United States if they offer gambling to U.S. residents without being properly licensed.) Most of the gambling sites are hosted offshore, which makes law enforcement more difficult. They require prepayment in the form of credit card advances, debit card advances, or wired funds. A simple search on any of the search engines will result in thousands of gambling sites. And your teenager’s money is as good as anyone else’s.

 

Frankly, I was surprised that kids are using the gambling sites as much as they reportedly are. But with more and more children having their own credit card on our accounts for emergency purposes, as well as generous allowances and access to savings accounts that hold their birthday cash, baby-sitting earnings, and paper route money gathered over the years, it’s apparently easier than ever for them to gamble it away. Sometimes they’ll even use our credit card and hope we don’t notice when the statement arrives. (And, surprisingly enough, we often don’t.)

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

Keep an eye on your credit card statements and on your children’s savings account balances. Blocking their ability to send out credit card information over the Internet might make it harder for them to gamble online. (Some of the filtering products allow parents to block certain outgoing information.) In addition, if the computer is centrally located under your watchful eyes, you may be able to keep them out of the gambling dens entirely.

 

Also, teach them that the only people who make money on gambling are the gambling site operators themselves. (I represented casinos for years, and I know how profitable gaming can be for the gambling establishment.) Let them also know that many of the gambling sites are scams, and many hold on to your winnings under the guise of international currency laws. Gambling online is a no-win game, especially for children and teens.

 

Flaming, Harassment, and Cyberstalking

 

Sometimes, largely because they feel that they are anonymous (hiding behind their computer screens) and because they have a captive audience, people say things online they would never dream of saying to someone’s face. They also do things they would never dream of doing in real life. When these messages are directed at our children, we are understandably concerned, and our children may have their feelings hurt—deeply. They range from insults (flaming), to creating fear (harassment), to credible threats of actual harm offline (cyberstalking).

 

Flaming

 

Flaming is cybertalk for when people say mean, insulting, rude, or provocative things online to others. Sometimes these are just rude people; other times they are people who want to incite arguments online with others or among others. Some people will post an insulting or provocative remark in one group while pretending to be a member of an opposing group, just to create an online fight. It’s interesting to note that many flamers would never dream of behaving this way offline. They often consider it harmless fun.

 

What Can Parents Do About Flaming?

 

Many parents who have been online for a while have worked out ways of dealing with abusive or vulgar messages (flames) that are sent to their children. One of these parents, Bill Bickel, has several personal websites where he highlights stories about his children. (His websites can be found at www.bickelboys.com.) He posted the message below at his site to help other parents deal with flaming directed at their children. Bill wrote it referring to messages received in connection with his children’s sites, but it applies equally to e-mail messages or chatroom flaming. It is reprinted here, with his kind permission. It’s good advice, and I suggest following it (whether your child is on the receiving end or on the sending end):

 

“[Sometimes people send our children] inappropriate, vulgar, or even abusive messages. Aaron’s received one of each. Of course, we all prescreen our kids’ e-mail, but it’s still upsetting to think that somebody’s sending our child this sort of thing. The fact that it’s probably just another child doing it isn’t much comfort, because it isn’t a physical threat we’re worried about. (The abusive mail Aaron received came from Australia. We live in New Jersey.)

 

My suggestion is: Don’t ignore it, and don’t wait for a second message. The next message will probably get sent to another child. This sort of thing should be stopped immediately. Send a copy of the message to POSTMASTER@whatever.com, adding, simply, “Please do something about this.” I did this twice, and one account was shut down and the other was suspended (the account holders’ little darlings had done this sort of thing before). For good measure, I cc’d my messages to the account holders, leaving the subject blank (so the kids wouldn’t be alerted and try intercepting them).

 

For the message that was merely inappropriate, I just sent a copy of the original to the account holder, again deleting the subject. We received an apology within 24 hours, and a promise that their teenage daughter would not be sitting in front of the computer for some time.

 

Your older children and teens should be taught to report the flame or ignore it. They shouldn’t get involved in a flaming war, no matter how tempting it may be. These things escalate fast, and get out of control quickly. Even if you don’t take the action that Bill Bickel did, you should try to screen e-mail so that you can intercept hurtful messages to your younger children. Then make sure that your child doesn’t take the insults to heart. Let them know, and help them remember, that what this person says to them or others online isn’t worth paying a second’s attention to. It’s not easy, but we have to help them develop thicker skin if we are going to allow them to spend time online.”

 

Harassment and Cyberstalking

 

But many people don’t stop at just insulting you or your children. They may make death threats, hack your computer, or send you viruses. They may track your children online, using buddy lists and ICQ technology, and say nasty things about our children to others in chatrooms our children frequent. They may post terrible things in guestbooks on our children’s sites, or sites our children visit. They may pose as our children, by using remailer and alias technology (that allow people to appear to be someone else or mask their identity online), and say and do things that get our children into trouble.

 

It can get really ugly. Sometimes we have to get their ISPs involved, and it might even warrant getting law-enforcement agencies involved, especially if there are threats relating to offline dangers. Always take these things seriously.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

I’ve written an extensive analysis of cyberstalkers, and what to do if your child is stalked or harassed, in the “ ‘Leave My Kid Alone!’—Cyberstalking and Harassment” section of WiredPatrol.org and WiredKids.org. But teaching your child to follow the rules of online etiquette (“netiquette”), and to stay out of more volatile chatrooms and discussion boards, may prevent most of these problems. Not including a guestbook or personal information in their personal websites can be a big help, too. They should also be taught never to respond to harassment or threats they receive online. Ignoring them is often the best way of getting them to go away. You can also use software or parental controls to block incoming e-mail from unknown senders, or to filter out e-mail from a particular sender.

 

Cyberpredators

 

One of the biggest problems with cyberpredators is that they operate in your home. But improving your alarm system and adding better locks won’t keep them out. They enter your living room (or your child’s bedroom if you ignore my tip to keep their computer in a public place) through your computer. Your children feel safe in their pajamas and slippers, with you seated a few feet away watching television or reading. Therefore, people who converse with them while they are in this “comfort zone” are safe, too—as safe as any invited guest in your home.

 

Cyberpredators count on this sense of security in lulling your children into letting down their guard. There is a sense of intimacy online that cyberpredators take advantage of to convince your children that they are not strangers at all.

 

What Can Parents Do About It?

 

It’s your job to teach your children that these people are strangers, no matter how friendly they sound. If you’re close at hand when problems arise, and make it a point to get to know their online friends, the cyberpredator’s task will be much harder.

 

Protecting your children online is like buying an antitheft device for your car. Although it can’t completely prevent thieves from stealing your car if they really want to, you may have made it hard enough that they go somewhere else. (And if all parents do the same thing, the cyberpredators will be out of luck everywhere.)

 

Our children too often believe what others tell them. And when they want to check it out, they go to online profiles posted by the cyberpredator. It’s like the old adage “you l