Introduction to A Cybercop's Guide to Internet Child Safety
Most likely you picked up this book because you are interested in keeping your loved ones safe while they are using this thing called the "Internet." The other possibility is that you are a child molester who is doing research on what the police know and what they are telling the public about predators and their Internet techniques.
I am going to assume for the moment that you fall into the first category and are truly interested in protecting our children. Cops are by their nature the kind of people who like to keep things short, sweet, and to the point. One may recall the classic television police Sergeant Joe Friday declaring "the facts, ma’am, just the facts." Being the professional police investigator that I am purported to be, I am going to tell you in the next 40 words or so exactly what you need to do to keep your child (or any child) safe from the Internet. This way you can put this book down, go home, and feel good that the Internet will never harm your child.
Ready? Okay, here it is:
"Throw your computer away, and never, ever allow your child to access another computer or the Internet again."
Okay, now the rest of this book is for those people who want to live in the real world, who want to understand the Internet and its hazards, and who want to learn more about the specific solutions that are available to them.
Look at your children for a moment. Do you look at them and see a reflection of yourself? Most likely you see your son or daughter as a young person who has their whole life ahead of them. You may look at your kids and see a future doctor, teacher, or maybe an architect. Take a moment and ask yourself, "have you ever looked at your child and seen a potential victim?" Probably not. In my line of work I often have to do just that. I have had to deal with parents whose child is missing and the fear that their son or daughter is with someone that they do not know or that they are with someone that they may have met on the Internet. In this book I will ask you to look at your child in ways you may not have ever thought about. Have you ever looked at your child and wondered if they might be a potential criminal? Could he or she be an online perpetrator? Think about that for a minute. I have plenty of experience in arresting children for using the Internet to commit crimes. Many people don’t get to see that side of computers and technology until the police come knocking on their door with an arrest warrant for their fifteen-year-old. You need to know that your child can be exposed to things on the Internet that can manipulate your son or daughter into becoming an online victim or even a potential criminal. And to think that this all can be occurring while you are downstairs thinking that your kids were safe and sound in their upstairs bedroom using their computers for "homework."
I have designed this book so that you can go directly to the subject that you wish to learn about and read what you feel is important to you and your particular situation. If you want to know about chat rooms, then go to the chapter that I appropriately named "chat rooms." Want to know about emails? Go to the chapters about emails. Nothing too high tech about that I hope. Scattered throughout this book I have placed many actual cases that I have been involved with and investigated. I am not making this stuff up. These cases run the gamut from the scary to the downright bizarre. I have tried to learn from every case that I have investigated and I believe that by reviewing these real life situations we can learn and take steps to avoid mistakes made by others. In many of these cases I have changed the names of those people and places involved to protect their identities and privacy. In other cases I have taken the liberty to combine some cases for the sake of efficiency and for the conservation of trees. I can assure you however that these cases are real, as are the victims, and the perpetrators involved.
Technology has provided some incredible new ways to learn and to communicate. Technology however brings with it a dark side of which some people in our society will wish to take advantage. Whether you read the entire book or simply use it as a reference, I do hope that you will be able to take from these pages a sense that there are solutions to the fears we have regarding the well-being of our children. Some of these solutions are technical in nature, however, I believe that you will find that most of the solutions that I present here do not require any computer skills whatsoever and cost little or no money. It only takes some time and a little effort to protect our kids while they are on the Internet.
Thank you for taking the time to help protect your family by purchasing and reading this book. While you are learning more about how to protect your loved ones you might like to know that you are also helping law enforcement to catch Internet predators and other computer criminals. Proceeds from sales of this book are going to be used to provide training and much needed equipment to law enforcement officers in their fight against computer related crimes. From those officers like myself who spend their time and lives serving and protecting we thank you for your support.
Oh yes, one more thing. If you are a child molester and are reading this book to learn more about what the police are telling parents then by all means, please read on. I have recovered books about child safety from the homes of child rapists so I know that you will try to "know what we know." Sad to say but there isn’t too much in this book that many predators don’t already know. For all of you out there who would like nothing more than to take advantage of kids on the Internet, I predict that your story and your inevitable incarceration will end up on the pages of books like this someday as another example of a predator who got caught. Until that time however, read on.