Be Afraid... Very Afraid!

Wow! Yesterday was one of those days that keeps you awake at night. I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on "Youth and Teen Internet Safety, Predators, STDs and Beyond." Robert Bergamini, M.D., a Pediatrician who specializes in Hematology and Oncology was the speaker. It is interesting that he became involved in this field due to the fact that he noticed that his patients were vulnerable to STDs, sexual abuse and internet predators. Thus, he became an activist for internet safety for young people.

We all know this can be a real problem, but let me give you an idea just how serious it is. In March, he opened one free e-mail account. On day 10, he received 388 e-mails, 143 of these were infected with Trojans. On day 18, he received the first spam that linked to a child porn site. Then 5000 e-mails were analyzed after one month. This revealed the following:
- 3857 identified his origin as St. Louis (his home).
- 916 had pictures of willing partners from the St. Louis area.
- 86 had clear links to child porn.
- 93 downloaded keyloggers through his security.

Now don't think his computer was unprotected. He had a $5000 security system on that computer. It cost about $1000 per year to keep that security system up, and these things still happened.

The predators are on the cutting edge of technology. They are highly motivated. And, they are after our children!

This is just a small sampling of the information given at the workshop. Also, this is not necessarily the most disturbing thing discussed. Parents, you have a responsibility to keep up with what your children are doing on the Internet. Chat rooms, Facebook, My Space and even Instant Messengers are all easy ways for predators to stalk your children. They need to be informed, and you must be vigilant about their online activities. Even adults must be extremely careful on the net.

Someone told me how afraid they were for their children to grow up in today's world. My thought is what about tomorrow's world. What will it be like. As Christians, we always have and always will face challenges in this world. We can't always isolate our young people from this ungodly world, but we can teach them how to live in it (1 John 2:15-17).