It’s important that both children and adults safeguard their personal information. For kids, personal information includes your first or last name, age, gender, e-mail address, the name of their school or sports team, the number on their jersey, likes and dislikes and even the names of siblings and friends.  For adults, personal information also includes credit card information and social security number.

It only takes 3 pieces of personal information for a predator to identify you on the web. An online predator is someone who seeks out victims on the Internet for either sexual or financial purposes.  They start by gaining access to personal information in order to either steal the identity of their victim or to find a way to connect with them.

Kids and adults alike give away personal information on the web frequently without even realizing it.  Any time you create an online account for e-mail, IM, a social networking site, banking online, or any other site that requires a log in, you give away personal information.  Most times this information is only seen by the web hosting group or advertiser, but non the less- your information is out there.

Recently a mother told me a story that she received a phone call from an old friend.  She was surprised that the friend had her number.  Her phone number and address are not listed anywhere that she knew of, however when she asked the friend, she found out that a simple google search provided the world with her phone number and address. I wish I could explain how it happened but I can’t.  There are too many variables.  But what I can tell you is the mother admitted that she has signed up for several promotions over the web in the last year and she freely provided the sites with her phone number and address.

Kids do this too!  When they want to sign up for a gaming website or download a new screen saver they provide the websites with all of their personal information.  They also have a tendency to provide strangers with facts about themselves unknowingly in chat rooms and on forum.

Although identity theft can happen to children as well we are more concerned with predators taking an interest in children and using the personal information to help them connect with the child.  When a predator is able to learn the name of a child, the school they go to or their likes and dislikes, they will use this knowledge to groom the child.  Grooming is the process they use to trick the child into trusting them.  A predator may contact a child and use the personal information to pretend to be someone they met, or a friend of a friend, or someone who has similar interests.  Anything to make the child believe they are a person who can be trusted.
The best practice to avoid predators is two-fold.  It starts with safe-guarding your personal information and ends with teaching your children to avoid contact with online strangers.  It all starts with creating a pseudo-identity.

A pseudo identity is a fake identity.  You start by getting a 2nd email address that is not used with friends and family.  This e-mail address is only to be used when you or your child is in public areas of the Internet.  Use a free service such as yahoo, google, hotmail, or mail.com.  It can be an account the whole family uses!  You create a new screen name that is something like sk49t2@yahoo.com.  Using a random string of letters and numbers that does not identify the user.  Then at the profile page, create an identity that is not your own or lead someone to believe their are talking to a child.  Use a generic name like Johnny Appleseed and say you are 100 years old. This way your child is putting space between their private lives and their public lives on the Internet.  With friends and family they should use their primary e-mail account.  But when they want to play an online game, or download something that requires them to register with a website, they now have a valid e-mail address to send the confirmation to without giving away personal information about themselves. This e-mail address should be transparent.  Sit down with your child and explain this 2nd e-mail account is not for the purpose of lying to get things they are not old enough to have but rather about protecting their identity.  If the whole family uses this e-mail address for the same purpose then you will not only be protecting your family’s identity but sending junk mail that accumulates when you register for things online to someplace other than your personal inbox.  It’s a win win situation!