Topic : Safeguarding Your Kids from Internet Predators

Don't know if I can be much help, but I can try.

First off, would it really be a good idea to allow him to dictate whether or not you, your husband( if  applicable) or his siblings ( again if applicable), should be allowed to access the internet because he has a problem ? Probably NOT.  To me that is like my Alcoholic relations telling me I cannot have a drink if I want to, I don't have the problem, they do, hope you can see what I'm getting at here.

How about locking the doors with computers in them, or cutting down the number of computers in your home, if you need one for work, keep it locked up, yeah I know how crafty and computer literate kids are (sigh) I have a couple of teens myself, then maybe keep a second one for the kids in a PUBLIC AREA of your home, restricing access to only IF a parent is home and watching.  I had resorted to taking the MOUSE and KEYBOARD to work with me when we had the same problem.

Unfortunatly, there is nothing you can do outside your home, but if its happening at a friend's home, are the friend's PARENTS aware of what their kids are doing online ? Maybe a friendly phone call ( not always successful I know, but worth a try ) to the other parents might help, call the school and let them know or the library if these are other places he might be accessing the internet, the web is EVERYWHERE these days and there are countless places where it can be accessed, be vigilant of where he goes, and check up on him, until they sign the lease on their first apartment, they have no right to REAL privacy, your home, your rules.

But, all that being said, this young man NEEDS HELP, professional HELP, find someone in your area, and don't give up, he seems to be BEGGING for it and as much as we hate to admit it, they aren't always comfortable talking to us, PLEASE don't let this escalate into something worse, get his father on board, if possible, but PLEASE find a professional and get him the help he needs, you sound like you two have a good relationship, that's a good start.

Good luck to you.

first why would you want to? you can view his accounts without the passwords too. If you see something you don't like then you can let him take it off. There is no advantage in knowing the passwords in my opinion.

Then from a legal standpoint I don´t know. If I look at dutch (medical) law he has the right for instance to deny you access to his medical file from age 16 onward, but there is a high probebility doctors wouldn't show it to you if he didn't want you to at age 15 either.

Hello,

I would like to add a little information to your question. I have 2 daughters and I am married. We tell our children that everything they own we let them. for example my oldest daughter says things like this is her room. We say as long as it is in our house ,and u r not  paying the bills, then we lend it to u. I also, check up on them if the r going someplace, I stop by at any given time and they know this. Trust has to be earned in our home.I know this my sound harsh however, we feel that to many parents let their children have to much freedom and feel it is wrong to know what ur child is doing. we believe that it is a parents responsibility to know who our children are with, where they  r going, who they  r going to be with and when will they like to be home. If more parents did this , less children would be running the streets and using drugs.

My husband is an I. T. admin. I must tell u most employers have a person reading every email that is sent out in comes in at the work place. There is software in which u can buy that will "hack" all passwords on that network. I felt that this was a violation of privacy. My husband says its not only because u r not suppose to send personal emails at the work place and they have the right to read them if u do. Plus if someone is send child porn or  planning to give discounts to family members  or anything that is questionable the employer could be held responsible. The FBI has the right to pull any activity on any IP address they want for however many years they need. I think that all Internet providers need to have the ability to do this by May 2008, I could be wrong about the date. So in reality we as adults have no privacy because they randomly pull IP addresses and  see what activity is going on. So , if there is a person in the house hold looking at porn or anything questionable then the person who pays the bill could face heavy fines or jail time.

 I was thinking about this and I decided that if our children wanted email accounts then we would know the passwords, if they didn't want to give them to us then no email. the reason I feel this way is because with the Internet selling everything and all the "crazy" people out there we have to protect our children as parents. I have never looked into the email accounts as of yet, but if my daughters ever came up missing I would have them. I have checked to make sure the passwords are valid t from time to time to and that is it!

 But, I wouldn't think twice, about reading the emails if she changed in a negative way.

One last thing my space is NOT safe for any child or adult in my opinion. My sister in law children have pages. Their page is set up like this. In order to see the page u have to know the last name, once u enter that the page owner will either accept or decline ur permission. My husband was able to by pass this process in the matter of 5 mins. he said that anyone who knows about Internet and computers could do this, this became a huge concern for me. I spent a little bit of time looking at my space and there are a large amount of pre-teen and teens who have these pages, they didn't have the blocked pages for people who don't know them. If u have noticed that more children are getting in trouble or becoming missing have had a my space page. This even goes for adults. I only hope that more parents say no to my space. I know it is a lot harder to be a parent verses a friend but ,our children need us to provide a safe and loving homes. I believe that if ur child never gets upset with u for saying no or asking to many questions then u r not doing ur job.

first why would you want to? you can view his accounts without the passwords too. If you see something you don't like then you can let him take it off. There is no advantage in knowing the passwords in my opinion.

Then from a legal standpoint I don´t know. If I look at dutch (medical) law he has the right for instance to deny you access to his medical file from age 16 onward, but there is a high probebility doctors wouldn't show it to you if he didn't want you to at age 15 either.

first, if a profile on myspace or anything else is set to private, u cannot always check out the profile unless u r a friend of that person.  so knowing the passwords to these accounts is a necessity.  especially when u have a vulnerable daughter who is prone to believe anything anyone tells her. 

second, if my daughter want to have an account on these sites, she will supply me with her passwords, or she won't have one.  that is the easiest way for me to keep her safe, along with having family that r on her friends list check it every now and then so if i forget.  it is not always easy to keep track of these sites if u do not have their passwords for their accounts.