Officials: Craigslist Doesn’t Protect Kids
Detroit News
February 27, 2009

An undercover investigation shows Craigslist is not protecting children from predators, Attorney General Mike Cox said Thursday in a letter to the Web site’s CEO.  Cox said when investigators posing as children, parents and teachers wrote Craigslist complaining about suspected child predators encountered on the Web site, their e-mails were either ignored or received only an automated response.

 
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NJ Poised To Enact Tough Internet Predator Bill
February 26, 2009

New Jersey is aiming to increase Internet safety and punish abusers of all kinds: child predators, cyber bullies and writers whose cruel posts lead to mental or physical harm.  Lawmakers – urged by the attorney general to keep pace with the advancing digital age – backed a package of bills designed to update laws covering online sex crimes.

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Most kids are tech savvy. But, being plugged in comes with its own set of problems. Kids face dealing with cyber bullies who post threatening messages online and child predators that lurk on the internet every time they log on.

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YOUNGSTERS have been given tips on how to stay safe as they spin a trail across the world wide web.  Children at Caversham Primary School were taught by Microsoft employee and parent Cate Hunt about how to keep private details safe and avoid unwanted attention while using social networking websites on national Safer Internet Day.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Stacie Rumenap

February 9, 2009 (202) 234-0090

srumenap@stopchildpredators.org

Groups also aim to increase awareness for Safer Internet Day

WASHINGTON – To help raise consumer awareness for Safer Internet Day, a day which promotes safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones among children and young people, Americans for Technology Leadership (ATL) and Stop Child Predators (SCP) encouraged Americans to follow five easy steps to help families stay safer online. The recommendations come on the heels of a major study published by the Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which found that one of the greatest threats children face online comes from peers who bully or harass.

Randy Skoglund, the executive director of ATL, said, “Safer Internet Day is the perfect time to encourage all Americans to take a more active role in protecting our children from the dangers that exist online. The Internet is a great tool, but we need to inform our youth about the dangers they face from themselves, their peers, child predators, identity thieves, as well as threats from spam, viruses, phishing scams and privacy issues.”

Stacie Rumenap, the executive director of SCP, was especially concerned about the increase of cyberbullying and the use of mobile phones to carry out the bullying. “According to the National Crime Prevention Council more than half of American teens are affected by cyberbullying. Unfortunately, many parents are largely unaware of this problem, as very few teens report incidences of bullying to their parents or other adults. We owe it to our kids to talk to them about interacting with their peers through these new technologies and providing ways to help secure a safer environment for them.”

To help protect youth online, ATL and SCP recommend that families follow these five easy steps to help ensure their children’s safety:

• Make sure kids respect one another online and abide by good behavior. They should not write or post anything that could bring harm to themselves or someone else. The web is a lot more public and permanent than it seems.
  

• Talk to your children about the responsibilities of being online and how their own behavior might put them and the family at risk. Make sure kids know they can come to you when something makes them feel uncomfortable without fear of losing their Internet privileges.

• Place the family computer in a common place in your house and use family safety software so you can restrict the websites your children visit, monitor who they contact, and limit the time they spend online.

• Tell your children that they should never physically meet with anyone they have only become “friends” with online. Kids may think they know them well, but they may be fooled.
  
  
• Make sure children know that they should never share personal information online, including their address, phone number, social security number, current school or when they will be on vacation. All of these things create a personal profile that a predator could use for nefarious purposes.

Both ATL and SCP have a record of educating the public about online threats and finding ways to combat them through several different initiatives. ATL works with elected officials to host their “Take Back the Net” events, which are community forums where citizens can learn how to stay safe online. In September ATL also staged a month-long “Back to School” campaign to help educate parents on ways to make sure their kids stayed safe online. SCP has a federal and state-by-state campaign to educate and inform the public about concrete policy changes that will enhance public safety by protecting America’s children from sexual predators.

Safer Internet Day takes place across the world on Tuesday, February 10, 2009. The initiative started in 2004, and last year over 120 organizations in 56 countries took part in the Safer Internet Day events. The global awareness day was created by Insafe, a network of national organizations that coordinates internet safety awareness in Europe. The network is set up and co-funded within the framework of the European Commission’s Safer Internet Plus Program.

To help consumers learn more about safer online practices and issues of importance to ATL and SCP visit www.techleadership.org or www.stopchildpredators.org.

Americans for Technology Leadership is a broad-based coalition of technology professionals, consumers and organizations dedicated to limiting government regulation of technology and fostering competitive market solutions to public policy issues affecting the technology industry.

Stop Child Predators brings together an influential team of policy experts and community leaders with the real-world experience and a track record of proven results to achieve these goals. Numerous organizations and individuals across the country are motivated by the shared goal of protecting children and holding their victimizers accountable. Stop Child Predators seeks to harness their work and expertise by making one concerted effort to produce meaningful and immediate results.

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he Lee County School District is trying to determine the prevalence of bullying in schools as it implements a new bully policy modeled after the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up For All Students Act.

Of course, school officials are not the only ones trying to get a true reading of how prevalent bullying is in schools.

Fabianna Pergolizzi, a 17-year-old student at the Community School of Naples, created “Project Anti Bully” in 2005 to determine the pervasiveness of the issue. She sent out a survey from Child Abuse Prevention Services across Southwest Florida and parts of the United States asking students how often they experience bullying and about their reactions to being bullied.

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MySpace provided two state attorneys general the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders it had banned from its site in response to a subpoena.

The figure is 40,000 more than the amount previously acknowledged by MySpace, according to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who along with Attorney General Roy Cooper of North Carolina are among officials pressing social networking sites to adopt more stringent safety measures.

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For Immediate Release: Contact: media@StopInternetPredators.org

February 3, 2009

Mayor proclaims the city’s dedication to protecting children from online predators

Manchester, NH – Yesterday, the Mayor Manchester, N.H., Frank C. Guinta, issued a proclamation urging all citizens and community organizations to join in being vigilant to ensure that emerging technologies do not violate local privacy or child safety laws within city limits, and declared that February 3, 2009 should be Stop Internet Predators Awareness Day.

“It is encouraging to see cities such as Manchester adopting the mission of Stop Internet Predators to increase awareness about the possible dangers of new online applications and not to passively accept them as non-threatening,” said Stacie Rumenap, Executive Director of Stop Child Predators. “We hope that Stop Internet Predators Awareness day will encourage the community to be proactive in protecting the safety and security of children.”

“I am happy that Manchester is the first New England community and the second nationwide to recognize the efforts of Stacie Rumenap and the Stop Internet Predator national organization in playing an important role for the protection of our youth online. Mayor Guinta said. “Protection from online predators is an important facet of an overall public safety effort to make our society safe for children, and the hard work by Stop Internet Predators does that.”

Stop Internet Predators, a project of Stop Child Predators, has a special focus on new Internet technologies that pose a risk to children’s safety. New applications allow users to view high resolution images of homes, schools, playgrounds, and other places where children gather. In some instances, pictures of children are captured, memorializing minors’ images with physical addresses online.

Stop Internet Predators seeks to limit the potential for child predators to abuse emerging technologies to prey on children by recommending that safeguards be put in place. This would include removing all images of children and places where children gather, as well as the promise to not capture such images during future deployment. Technologies that provide an opt-out policy put the burden on parents and upload images of minors without prior parental consent.

By empowering families with education and resources, parents can take an active role in their children’s safety and privacy. For more information please visit www.StopInternetPredators.org.

About Stop Internet Predators

Stop Internet Predators is a project of Stop Child Predators, launched to educate parents and communities on emerging online child safety issues and empower them to protect their children’s privacy and safety. Stop Internet Predators has a special focus on new internet technologies that pose a risk to their children’s safety.

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Since emerging from the primordial ooze, parents have wrung their evolving appendages over ways to shield their offspring from hungry predators, lurking maniacs and strangers from without.

Again and again, they’ve learned, the threat to their children lies uncomfortably closer to home: Lion fathers would sooner eat their unprotected young than hunt wilier quarry; children pictured on milk cartons were more likely to have been snatched from home by a parent than by a stranger.

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