If you want to protect your child from Internet predators, all you have to do is follow the old adage, “Be your child’s buddy.”
But that little nugget of pop-psychology has a different connotation in the World Wide Web.
It means be a member of your child’s “buddy list,” so you can keep tabs on who he or she is talking to on a regular basis.
It was one of a host of precautions members of the 63rd Precinct Commu-nity Council learned they should take as they sat through a sobering presentation by the Kings County District Attorney’s office on how to combat Internet predators.
Assistant District Attorney Chris LaLine of the Kings County District Attorney’s Sex Crime Bureau explained that if parents take the simple step of being linked to their child’s buddy list, then they would have a pretty good idea who their child is talking to online.
“It will identify the screen names of the people your child connects with regularly,” LaLine explained. “From there you can identify who those screen names belong to and then go about getting as much information as possible about them.”
It’s very possible that one of these “buddy’s” is not who he claims to be. The buddy could be an Internet predator looking to harm your child.
“One out of five children are sexually solicited online,” LaLine said, adding that sex predators are a savvy lot who can pretend to be teenagers, soul mates, best friends
