Wendy Fical likes to start her middle school presentations about Internet safety with a story about a teen who scored the winning touchdown at his latest football game. The boy loves online gaming, and tells one of his online partners that his team won 21-20 in their division championship game. That doesn’t seem like excessive personal information, right?
But from just that little amount of information, the teen’s male online gaming partner used the Internet to search for that particular game. From the story in the local newspaper, the man found out the boy’s full name and the town in which he lived — both of which were in the sports story from his local newspaper’s coverage of that championship game. From there, the man used the Internet to find the boy’s home address.
And then he showed up at the boy’s house.
That is just one of thousands of examples that Fical, a program director with the national Center for Exploited and Missing Children, has told middle schoolers about how even the most basic of personal information they put out onto the Web can be used unsavory and dangerous people.
Most kids who don’t know any better re tricked by people online and tricked into meeting strangers in person. “I’m here to teach you about thinking twice and making smart choices,” Fical told students at Cazenovia Middle School during a presentation there she gave on Internet safety on Sept. 25.
Fical spoke to students in grades five through seven, with the maturity content of each program increasing with the students’ ages. Speaking to seventh graders, she asked for a show of hands of how many students used the online apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Kik, Vine, Youtube and Pinterest. About 80 percent of the kids in the entire grade raised their hands for each successive app she announced. And even those who did not raise their hands probably have one or more friends who do, she said — and this is why kids need to be educated about Internet safety and make smart choices.
Smart choices include going into the controls and making your accounts on sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter private — which is not something that site does automatically. And even if your account is private, your followers can still copy and keep photos of you that you post — and they can even see the geographic location of where those photos were taken, unless you go in manually and turn off the location services on your devices that have a camera.
“No matter what the app is, or what game you are on, you want to set your profiles to private,” Fical said.
She said anyone can be an online predator: young or old, male or female. According to the CEMC, one out of every five girls and one out of every 10 boys will have a stranger reach out to them on the Internet. While the organization disseminates 18,000 posters every week of anywhere from seven to 12 kids who go missing.
She gave another example of a young girl who was befriended online by another teen girl, and they chatted online for two years. Eventually the girl was asked by her online friend to meet in person at a concert coming to her town. The girl was not sure if she should do it, but she was afraid to tell her father about it and ask his advice because she thought she might get into trouble. She told a friend, who got her to talk to a teacher, who contacted the dad. They told law enforcement about the issue and the girl’s online “friend” turned out to be a 40-year-old man — that she had thought for two years was a teen girl.
“No matter what, no matter who it is, you never want to meet someone offline that you met on the Internet,” Fical said.
Strangers finding your photo, name and address online is unsafe but, more than that, people who give out too much personal information on the Internet can end up having their social security numbers, financial information and account passwords discovered by Internet predators as well, Fical said.
Another safety tip she gave was about profile photos. If kids feel the need to post any profile photos of themselves online at all, they should only be head-and-shoulders shots – never full body photos. Research and investigations have shown that online predators typically skip over head photos and are more interested in full body photos; when they find one they like that’s when they start digging, she said.
Understanding Internet safety is important because “we want kids to have the knowledge and the desire to think twice as they go through life on the Internet,” Fical said. “A lot of parents don’t even know what’s out there for those kids to be up against.”
Eliza Collins, school psychologist at Cazenovia Middle School, said this is exactly why the Cazenovia district invited Fical to talk to students every year.
“The Internet is a great tool, but it can also be a great danger,” Collins said. “I’ve found this [program] makes a difference to our kids.”
Collins said she has not been informed of incidents of Cazenovia students being stalked by online predators, which does not mean it cannot happen. But once or twice a year she does get involved in incidents of cyberbullying where students create fake profiles or impersonate their classmates online, typically as a way to humiliate someone or to find out personal information about someone.
And this is one reason that Fical will return to Cazenovia on Friday, Oct. 9, to give a second middle school program, this one on cyberbullying.
The message that Collins said she and the district administration want Cazenovia students to learn from Fical’s visits is to stay safe online and always inform parents or other adults of what they doing online. “If something inappropriate comes up, or a stranger they don’t know reaches out to them, they need to reach out to an adult,” she said.
Parents who would like to find out more information about Internet safety can visit the website NetSmartz.org, which is produced by the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children. The website has a vast array of information, worksheets, workshops and law enforcement contact information that can be used by kids and adults concerning numerous different topics of Internet safety. People can also visit missingkids.com.
Collins also welcomed children to talk to her in school, and said parents may contact her at the school at 655-1315 or via email at [email protected].
