Blog Blocker : The Blog

Two teens were arrested for posting pictures of people on Bebo.com and adding offensive comments to those pictures. (full article)

I think this raises some interesting topics for debate.  Should bullies be criminally prosecuted for poking fun at others?  How hurtful does the bullying have to be in order to get arrested?  Can we take this to the next step and arrest REGULAR bullies, instead of just cyber bullies?

Personally, I know a few a**holes from my highschool who should have been arrested, if for nothing else than to scare them straight.

First child predators, now this. MySpace is now being used by drug dealers to sell their stash to children. Marijuana and crack cocaine - now available on your local drug dealer’s MySpace profile.

From the article:

Officers with the Punta Gorda Police Department say the popular website MySpace is quickly becoming the new street corner for drug dealers.

In Charlotte County alone, there have been seven drug busts in the last three days and nine in the last two months - all of which the people were found trying to sell drugs through their MySpace page.

Charlotte resident Rosemary Serafino, 54, was busted for trying to trade hundreds of dollars worth of pills for crack.

During a simple search for the word “marijuana” on the MySpace site, there were 212,000 hits. For “crack cocaine,” there were more than 10,000 references.

Police also recommended that parents remain vigilant and keep an eye on their children’s MySpace usage.

Police say want to make sure parents know what their kids are doing on MySpace.

“If you’re not monitoring them and they’re getting with the wrong crowd, they’re going to be doing things and possibly come into contact with us,” said Lewis.

Check out the full disturbing article here.

A recent InSafe survey shows that a whopping 57% of all teens post private, sensitive information on their MySpace and Bebo profiles. Of those teens, 33% of them didn’t even know if their profiles were public or private.

Kids under 10 years old were the most oblivious to privacy issues. Privacy awareness increased for kids 10 to 13 years old, and steadily decreased for teens 14-18.

Parents: The best thing you can do is to have a talk with your kids, and it’s never too early to have that conversation … unless your child is really, really young. Once they start using the computer, it’s best to set some ground rules and use monitoring software to keep an eye on them.

A quick Google search brings up some helpful tips from Microsoft: A Parent’s Guide to Online Safety. All ages from 2 to 17 are covered.

MySpace isn’t the only site with sexual predators anymore.  Last Wednesday in north suburban Fox Lake, Illinois, authorities arrested a 23-year-old man who used Facebook to pose as a teenage girl in order to lure a 15-year-old boy from Evanston to his home for sex.  The predator’s name is Michael Macalindong.

The reason Facebook has not had the predator problem MySpace has had is because until recently, Facebook only allowed college students to create a profile.  They enforced this by requiring new users to sign up using their school .edu email account.

Facebook has now opened up their site to all users, allowing anyone with an email address to sign up.

I think there is something to be said about having a “kids only” network.  Facebook WAS unique in creating a student-only ecosystem, and until they opened their doors to everyone, the site effectively stayed predator-free.

The arrest of mortgage processor Michael Macalindong came one day after Congress introduced legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and make them available to social networking sites. It also would make it a crime for adults to lie about their age in pursuit of sex with a minor.

View the full article here.

Justice was served today as Bret T. Lepore was sentenced to one to two years for arranging sexual encounters with two 14-year-olds he met on MySpace.com in December 2005.

Beltrami also ordered Lepore to serve five years of probation, maintain full-time employment, perform 70 hours of community service and read the book “Every Man’s Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time.”

Lepore had sex with both girls at his apartment and again with one of the victims in his car while it was parked behind the Schoeneck Moravian Church in Upper Nazareth Township.

(Full article)

A 12 year old girl with a Bebo profile received numerous graphic photos of men posting on her profile. The girl also had posted her cell phone number on her profile and recieved several text messages from different men.

From the article:

Karen, who has asked not to have her last name used, was called on Wednesday morning by a friend to tell her to check her daughter’s Bebo profile.

One man had sent six photographs of his penis, another had sent a photo of himself with an erection. There were a total of 134 messages from men posted to her account.

But she was concerned there was nothing parents could do to stop men prowling the website for children.

Once again, Senators with little knowledge of how the Internet works are writing flawed legislation.  John McCain (R-AZ) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) are pushing a “feel good” bill to the senate floor that would require sex offenders to submit e-mail addresses, instant-message names, and other identifying Internet information to federal authorities.

Sure, who doesn’t want to protect children online from sexual predators?  The problem is that the legislation is difficult to near impossible to enforce, and would require nearly every website that has social interaction to link to a sexual predators database.  The blog MyCrimeSpace has a good posting on this as well.

From the article:

As for the bill’s intent to stop age misrepresentation, Internet safety experts say nice try, but hardly enforceable. Parry Aftab, a cyberspace attorney and executive director of the 8-year-old WiredSafety.org, said only “the stupidest” online predators would use their registered online monikers. And “while there’s a lot of stupid sexual predators, it’s easy to get around (the proposal).”

“I love the idea, but who’s going to comply?” Aftab said. “I don’t want to dismiss the efforts of anyone who’s trying to help, but what we’re coming up with is a lot of knee-jerk legislation.”

Monitoring software is an important tool for any parent.  Since it is near impossible to keep a constant look over the shoulder, software can be your “digital eye” that allows you to keep an eye on your kids even when you’re not around.  One county sheriff is spreading the word, and some free software:

 A new computer software offered to parents for free might make it easier to better monitor and possibly prevent sex crimes and cyber-bullying against children, law enforcement officials said.

ComputerCOP, a monitoring software distributed by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office scours a computer’s hard drive — searching for every photo, e-mail, web activity, Internet chat log and more than 1,000 buzzwords, like “sex,” — every time a child logs onto the computer.

The Sheriff’s office will distribute 43,000 copies of the software, which cost about $127,000 and was paid for using money seized from drug dealers and money launderers, DeMarco said.

“It’s not enough anymore to put computers in high traffic areas,” said Laura Ahearn of Parent’s for Megans Law. “What we’re saying is violate their privacy, look over their shoulders, read their IM’s, check their Web browsers.”

Check out the full article here.