The Awareness Advisor

With the passing of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, and the overwhelming support for the fledgeling bill the Deleting Online Predators Act, many parents are breathing a sigh of relief. Both of these laws enforce strict regulations and high levels of punishment for those who prey upon children, and online predators who use the Internet to do so.

And yet, parents are still the first line of defense against the dangers of the Internet.

At americanchronicle.com, it's reported that 71% of 13 to 17-year-olds online report receiving messages online from someone they don't know. And the article goes on to say that today both adults and kids who meet someone online are no longer uncomfortable meeting that same person in the real world. It's become the norm.

These new laws are a wonderful means of punishing online predators and sexual predators, but to prevent the crimes in the first place, parents need to know who their kids are talking to online, and what's being said.

At Awareness Tech, this is exactly why we created WebWatcher. It's easy to use, easy to install, and completely invisible while running.

It's the best in parental control software, and the first line of defense against today's most dangerous predators.

Just this week, President Bush signed a new law that, according to the washingtonpost.com, will close many loopholes that currently exist in the cyber world, and had allowed children to be exploited by online predators.

Here at AwarenessTech, we can't support such measures enough. Since so many pedophiles use the Internet to prey on vulnerable children, it makes sense that not only should this be made more difficult for them to accomplish, but we should turn the tables, and use the Internet to protect our kids as well.

This law, named after Adam Walsh, the murdered child of advocate John Walsh, will establish nationwide databases that will aid law enforcement in pursuing sex offenders and online predators, will establish a federal DNA database to track pedophiles, will provide funding for global positioning devices, and more.

And yet, as always we at AwarenessTech caution parents to stay vigilant. Even as President Bush signed this law into effect, The Houston Chronicle details a sting that led to the arrest of four online predators who tried to use the Internet to meet and sexually abuse what they thought were unsuspecting kids. One suspect had even been arrested for the same crime before.

This is why WebWatcher is still the best tool out there for parents to protect their kids online. Webwatcher allows parents to use web blocking software, website recording software, email recording software, and more. With both parents and legislatures working together to protect kids from online predators, hopefully we can control the epidemic of Internet exploitation threatening our kids today.

The risk of online predators is making more parents aware of the need to know about their children's Internet use. The great news is that some parents are becoming more involved in what their children are doing online, and this is helping keep the Internet safe so that kids can still enjoy searching the web for the things they like.

Parents of the Appoquinimink School District of Delaware attended a workshop on how to protect their children online. According to Delaware Online the workshop panel, consisting of law enforcement experts and technology specialists, stated that blocking and filtering online content is a must for parents who wish to protect their teens from online predators.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports that 48% of 16- and 17-year olds said their parents knew "very little" or "nothing" about their online activity. And teens are more likely to put themselves at risk because they don't have the life experience that adults have, and going online causes their defenses to drop--often because of misperceptions about anonymity and false senses of security.

According to New Castle County Police Detective Christopher Shanahan, 14% of 16- and 17-year olds met in person with someone they knew only from Web chats. Shanahan therefore strongly encourages parents to do their own detective work and know who's on their child's buddy list.

Communication with your children is key, says instructional technology specialist Karen Hartschuh; "Let them know you're going to check on them on a regular basis." We recommend all parents take the same approach as one parent mentioned in the article, Bill Alexander, who has clearly communicated his Internet safety rules to his 14-year old son in addition to monitoring the websites his son visits.

Yes, the Internet can be a fun and safe place for children--as long as parents are vigilant in monitoring what's going on. With parental control software like WebWatcher, parents can monitor and filter computer activities and can even monitor chats, too.

According to Florida's Local6.com, an employee at the Orange County Sheriff's Department was caught engaged in a sex act by a surveillance camera.

The camera was set up to monitor 25-year old Thomas Cockriel after 1,300 illicit pornographic images were discovered on his computer at work. There was some question as to who had downloaded the pornography onto Cockriel's computer, and that's why officers put him under surveillance. Cockriel resigned after confronted with the images caught on film.

What's surprising about this incident is not just that the offender worked in a law enforcement agency, but that he actually committed the inappropriate acts at work, literally right under the arm of the law.

Even though the offender was eventually nabbed red handed, one has to wonder how many accumulated hours were spent surfing the Internet for pornography, wasting taxpayers' dollars, before he was caught?

Employers and taxpayers are paying through the nose for misuse of the Internet during work hours. Inappropriate content appearing on employee computers can be a major liability, and the best solution is to stop it before it begins.

Fortunately, computer monitoring software is now available that is powerful, reliable and easy to use. Now employers, parents, schools, and law enforcement agencies can track Internet use, record keystrokes and more.

WebWatcher, a monitoring program that was originally designed for international intelligence agencies, is now commercially available for organizations or parents intent on keeping Internet use appropriate and safe.

At PInow.com, readers are reminded that "according to statistics, up to 85% of women and up to 50% of men who believe that their lover is cheating are proven to be right eventually." And these days, cyber cheating is how it usually happens.

Cyber cheating can stand alone, meaning that your spouse or partner uses the Internet to meet other people, or can be a symptom of an affair that started in the real world. Illicit lovers often send each other emails, or if they're smart about it, chat online since instant messaging doesn't leave an easily traced record on your computer.

Up to one third of today's vast amount of divorce litigation in America has been linked to cyber cheating. So it makes sense that, like it says in the article, if you think it's going on it probably is.

PInow suggests hiring a private investigator to "find out for sure." However, private investigators can be very costly and time consuming. Not everyone can afford to pay such a high price to know the truth.

This is why Awareness Tech's WebWatcher is such a useful tool. WebWatcher combines website recording, email recording and chat recording options in our software, allowing concerned individuals a full picture of someone's Internet use.

And, it's easy to install, easy to use, and completely invisible while it's running.

It's the fastest and most cost-efficient means of finding out what's really going on when your partner or spouse logs-on to the Internet.

At FortWayne.com, chilling statistics regarding kids and Internet behavior are intended to shock parents into monitoring their child's Internet use.

And these statistics are frightening indeed. According to a survey conducted by The Intelligence Group, "65 percent of males and 62 percent of females between 14 and 18 admitted they had met strangers online who asked to meet them."

That's more than half of the millions of kids who go online and congregate in popular social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook.

The author also makes a good point regarding sex offenders who become online predators. There are around 550,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and many of them are "noncompliant," meaning that we don't know where they are or what they're doing. That is, we don't know what they're doing until they get caught preying on unsuspecting kids who use the Internet.

Like the article says, to protect our children from sexual predators, deterrence must start at home. This is why parental control software should be installed on every parent's computer.

WebWatcher by Awareness Tech is one of the most highly reviewed of them all, and combines standard website blocking with options like email recording, chat recording, and website recording.

WebWatcher provides parents with a full picture of their child's Internet use, and helps keep children from becoming the "easy prey" referred to in the article.

This week in Florida 20 online predators were arrested in a single sting -- all of them had driven to the same county thinking they were going to have sex with a naive kid they'd met on the Internet.

As is always the case, these men cut across any identifying categories; they come from all ages, races, and economic stations in life. Some worked with children every day at Disneyworld, and some were students, railroad employees, plumbers, and more.

This is why it's so difficult to predict the danger when your child goes online. An Internet predator can be just about anyone, from anywhere, and they can masquerade as someone they're not.

And there are a lot of them.

According to the FBI, there are 50,000 Internet predators online at any given time. Which would explain that while 20 men were arrested this week, the same investigating team is still watching 100 more. And after that, there will be 100 more, and on and on.....

While it's wonderful to see law enforcement working to protect kids today, every parent should still install good parental control software on their computer.

Awareness Tech's WebWatcher is the perfect example: it can do website blocking, website recording, email recording, chat recording, and more.

This way, parents can also be working to protect their kids today, even when they can't always be there to do it in person.