On the hunt for Internet sex predators

What can parents do?
"If the technology is in your house, it’s a parents responsibility to protect their child," says Michelle Collins from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She adds that the problem is so widespread your child could be a victim and you don’t even know it.

Michelle Collins, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: If there are phone calls arriving at your house that you don’t know the person on the other end of the line. Is your child or teenager receiving gifts? Do they have a Web cam in their room that you didn’t buy?

Hansen: These are all warning signs?

Collins: These are all the things that happen quite frankly in the many cases that we view and that we work with law enforcement on.

Collins says it’s important for all of us parents to make certain computers are in open areas of our homes— not in kids bedrooms. We should know who their children are talking to online and Web cams.

Collins: A problem we’ve been seeing recently are Web cams. Many kids are finding themselves in problematic situations after having used a Web cam. A combination of too much privacy, too much technology at a sexually curious age can really spell disaster.

Child safety experts agree it’s important for parents to use parental controls available through Internet providers and check into blocking software that prevents a child from giving out personal information. 

And Collins has one other piece of advice:

Collins: The one single most important piece of advice to give to parents is to keep the communication lines open with your kids. If something happens online, it’s more important that an adult finds out about it than the child try to handle it on their own, because those cases don’t always end well.

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