Beware of Online Predators!
Do not think that online predators are a kind of remote danger that is exist but won’t touch anyone from your family. In fact, this threat is more than real and closer than you think. Sexual predators take an advantage of the anonymity and are searching for tech savvy kids unsupervised by their parents or emotionally vulnerable kids that face some issues with their parents or at school.
Due to the lack of knowledge considering personal information security kids can share too much personal information that can be used against them by sexual predators. Number of school or favorite sports is a hitch for a predator and even innocent photos without innuendo can be used as an invitation for the sexual predator.
When predator defines the victim, he will try to communicate with it via IM chats or chat rooms and after creating a kind of trust-based communication start sending pornographic pictures or harassing messages and sometimes blackmailing their victims that they will tell their parents about their actions to force the victim to continue communication.
Laws will never fully cover the whole problem, so parents should do whatever they can to secure children from this peril starting with usage of Pumpic iCloud monitoring service, for example, that can monitor any kid’s online activity.
Here are some ways used for online predators to search for their victims. Check them and warn your children about the possible danger:
- Interest-based chat rooms
- Select the victims according to the childish nicknames
- Look though the profiles on the social media
- Gain trust by supporting a child and listening to the problems
- Build friendship
How to distinguish warning signs of your kid being a predator’s victim:
1. The kid spends too much time online
2. She receives messages and calls from person you don’t know
3. You found porn stored on the computer or porn links in the browsing history
4. The kid has several accounts on the social media and IM chats
5. In your presence kid changes screens