child predators

I found an article on msnbc.com about child preditors and hpw it used to be so much harder for people to find the children. It talked about how they used to have to go out in public and try to find kids in parks and entice them with candy or a puppy. Now all they have to do it get on the internet to find them. This has made the internet a scary place. The FBI said that 1 in 5 kids on the internet are sexually solicited. That is scary. 20% of all of the millions of kids on the web are being sexaully solicited. This makes me worry about 10 years from now when i have kids and they get on the internet. Im sure this problem is just going to grow. That is if we do not do anythign about it. This article did not say much about protecting our kids. It did give us advise on what to do and not to do. The article made a great point. It said to think of what you put on the internet as a tatto. Whta you put on there is perminant. Even if you try to erase it it is still kind of there. People can save whatever you put on there and use it against you later. This article is just one of many articles talking about how scary the internet has become. We need to do something about this. I have no clue whta we can do, bu Im sure some smart people somewhere can come up with some sollutions.

AIM

The only thing that came to mind when I read what I was supposed to do this week was AIM or AOL instant message. I am pretty sure it was what every middle school or high school kid used to communicate with friends before myspace and facebook became so popular. I used to use AIM to keep in contact with all of my friends from school. I was not allowed to have a cell phone until I could pay for it myself. I could not just call my friends to set up times to hang out because i could not afford to buy a phone. I had to go onto AIM and see what friends were on and then I could send them messages and make plans.
I had to use AIM a lot to talk to my friends, but sometimes when I would be on AIM random people would talk to me. I would just get a box that asked if I would like to except a message from so and so. I would always click yes because I wanted to see who it was. it always ended up being someone I knew and just did not have their screen name. One time I got a message from a name that I did not recognize, but they ended up saying they were a person I knew. I chatted with this person for awhile and then signed off. The next time I was online this same person sent me some more messages. After a few messages I started wondering if it was really the person they said they were. the messages were getting sexual. This person was a guy and he was asking me questions about things I had done with my girlfriend. this is when I ended the conversation and signed off. I knew it was not the person they said it was, but I did not tell the person that I knew they were not who they said they were.
The nest time I got online that person was online. I decided to trick this person to figure out who they were. The name that they said they were was a guy on my high school football team. So I decided to ask a question that would be answered correctly if it really was my teammate. Myteamate had been at practice that day so I asked this person why they were not at practice. The person said that they had a doctors appointment. WRONG "you were at practice" I said. This person signed off right away. I had caught them. I had proven hat they were not who they said they were. This made me happy, but also made me mad because this random person had been asking me personally questions that I would not tell some one that I did not know. Now I really wanted to find out who this made up person was. I asked everyone on my friend list if they knew who this person was. Half of my friends said no and that they thought it was my teammate. This person had been acting like my teammate for a long time on the Internet and nobody knew who ti really was. I know that everyone reading this wants me to say that I found out who it was, but I never did.
All of this was just to show how easy it is to be someone else on the Internet. It is as simple as saying that you are a different person. You just have to make up a name and your on your way to being a different person on the Internet. I really think that the Internet is a dangerous place and people need to be more careful about who they talk to.