Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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Deanie Wimmer ReportingIt's not just law officers who need tools to fight online sexual predators. There's also help for PARENTS trying to protect against predators. Since you can't always look over their shoulder when they're on line, here's another way.
In this home of ten kids, they barely fit around the dinner table. Apparently there aren't enough chairs around the Internet either.
Britt Wood: "We constantly have a line at the computer. You know, 'I'm on next, I'm on next.'"
Twelve-year old Paige likes to instant message her girlfriends on MSN, so does 13-year old Peter. Fifteen-year old Rhett checks his myspace site and email. With the amount of time their teens spend online, parents Kevin and Britt Wood worry. They've seen the stories about internet predators, heard warnings from law enforcement.
Sheriff Frank Park, Tooele County Sheriff's Office: "Unless they know exactly what their kids are doing on those computers, they can be doing anything and talking to anybody. And it could be very a nice person or a very, very, very bad person."
Hundreds of Utah men are online, luring kids for sex. Detectives working these cases know parents may feel overwhelmed about what to do. One thing they recommend is software. It can be undetectable and able to record chat room logs, instant messages, e-mails, even web sites the kids visit. Mom and dad can track it all.
We asked the Woods to give it a try. Several days later, we went back. With a quick punch of some buttons, they knew what their kids had been up, to word for word -- emails sent and received, instant messages at MSN and Yahoo.com, snap shots of myspace.com -- all sites popular with teens and the men that try to meet them
Kevin Wood: "I didn't see anything that I felt like I needed to jump on, but I'm glad. What if I needed to?"
Britt Wood: "I like it. I'm impressed. It's interesting to see what's really going on."
Kevin Wood: "If you can just check in from time to time, it's a way of catching things before they get out of hand."
A Utah company has offered free filters so kids can't even go there in the first place. I tested another program on a producer's computer. Minutes after she logged off, I knew what she was doing online. Her records were sent directly to my email.
Detectives recommend purchasing software. We found prices between $40 and $100, but free programs can be found on the web.
