Basic rules help ensure kids' safety

It took about two seconds to figure out where I could find a Seattle teenager showing her cleavage to the world at MySpace.com.

When I searched the site for people near my ZIP code, her picture was at the top of the list, one of thousands of teens revealing too much about themselves at the hugely popular site.

Her Web page said where she works. It also told me where she goes to school and when she's graduating. She also wrote that she likes to get drunk and act wild.

No wonder people think MySpace and other "social networking" sites are magnets for sex predators.

The sites let teens or anyone else create Web pages where they can post photos, list interests, chat with friends and meet new people. They're sort of like yearbooks, but they're open to anyone on the Web.

MySpace — part of the same corporate family as Fox News — has become one of the top 10 Web sites, and big players like Microsoft are chasing it with similar services.

Outrage is building, but I wonder if it's aimed in the right direction.

The sites are only partly to blame. They should be stricter about registration and proving identity, but by keeping it loose they'll get more users and sell more ads.

The scary stuff shouldn't be surprising, either. Teens always gravitate toward cool new hangouts where some may act inappropriately, and creeps will be there, too.

What's new and startling is how few parents monitor what their kids do online, even after all the publicity around MySpace and online predators.

It's actually easier for parents to follow kids around MySpace than at the mall, as long as they establish a few simple rules for Internet use. Parents could also figure out how to navigate these places in less time than it takes to watch a video.

But most parents have given up control of the family computer to their children, who are probably more knowledgeable about how the systems work, said Seattle police Capt. Greg Ayco, commander of a regional task force of local, state and federal agencies working on Internet crimes against children.

"It's all about parenting, making sure we guide our children," he said.

Ayco also leads a Seattle police unit that trolls for predators at sites like MySpace. They get bites as soon as they drop a lure.

The day before I visited, a detective posing as a girl placed a personal ad on Craigslist and drew responses from 37 men in just a few hours. Two men set up meetings with the "girl," who is actually a towering sergeant with a crew cut. The team was ready to arrest them, but neither showed up.

Last month, they arrested men who flew from Missouri, Texas and Ohio after arranging trysts with detectives posing online as girls.

Yet Ayco doesn't believe parents should pull the plug on computers. He said they're valuable tools as long as they're used properly.

Driving is a good analogy. Cars are complicated, potentially dangerous machines, but kids will eventually drive them. So parents have to be sure their children have the skills and smarts to drive safely.

"Parents know how to parent in real life, but they don't know how to parent their kids on the Internet," said Malinda Wilson, a detective in Ayco's unit.

I asked them for some basic rules families could use.

First, parents must have all the passwords their children use online. That way they can access anything the children are doing. It's also helpful if they go missing.

Second, make a household rule that the Internet browser history is not to be deleted by anyone other than parents. Parents should set the browser to maintain at least 10 days of history. It's a deterrent, whether the parents follow their children's tracks or not.

"If you have a precocious child who doesn't follow the rules, you need to lock the computer down," Wilson said.

Parents must also talk with children about what a stranger is, and make it clear that you can't tell who is who online, she said.

If teens have a MySpace account, they shouldn't post their name, age, hobbies and e-mail address, and never a home address. Wilson said only real-world friends and family members should be added to an online friends list, and children should communicate online only with people they know offline.

It won't go over well with half the startups in Seattle, but Ayco advises against posting any photographs on the Internet. "I think you have to let them explore it but you never have a picture — I would never let them post a picture on there," he said.

Even more abhorrent to the Web 2.0 crowd is the perspective of Wilson's 14-year-old son. "His concept is he already has a real life — he doesn't need a cyberlife," she said.

He'd be a great influence on that girl I came across, if I could figure out a way to get them together.

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. During the week, he blogs at seattletimes.com/brierdudleysblog. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.