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Firewalls are a very big part of being able to search the internet safely. It may seem like old news to still be talking about firewalls but the dangers online are real and true and the spammers are getting smarter with technology.

Computers and users do make mistakes and it’s important to make sure it is on at all times while you are surfing the internet. Otherwise known hackers can get your information and they are professionals who wait for you to have your guard down and then boom they have your social security number, date of birth, bank account information, etc.

You need to be especially careful when you sign up on websites such as MySpace, Match.Com, even AOL, and other email programs. Be careful when you create your profiles. Try not to put your real zip code and such whenever possible.

I have a MySpace account. One day I was checking my messages there and I had one from someone I didn’t know. The message read, “Check my page you might see something you like on it.” I went to this woman’s page and in a banner running across her page was MY social security number and my date of birth. I had never met her in my life!! I didn’t even know who it was!

I sent a several emails to MySpace. I was clearly very upset they never responded to emails. They were all generic responses such as “if someone is bullying you to start a new account.” They have no protection at all for their account holders. That’s what makes it so much scarier that our children search these profiles.

It’s important to remember these days that sexual predators are kept a little better under lock and key. This being a double edged sword now they have become more desperate. All they have to do is go online to Yahoo or Google and look under images for teenage boys/girls. They get a picture, post it and boom your child thinks they are talking to a 13, 14, or 15 yr old little kid. But nope, they are talking to a 40-50 yr old man. Not to mention he has a rap sheet ten pages long of all the children’s lives he has forever ruined.

When creating a profile it asks your child to put their school, city and other such things. Warn your child if they are going to search the internet and be part of these sites it is important to use alias information for their own safety. If you do have a firewall up, you might be protected from someone hacking in to your computer. But you’re not protected from your young children getting on the computer and becoming a victim.

This is a growing problem and it needs attention. Blaming companies who make these sites really isn’t the whole problem, because we as parents need to allot the time to monitor our children’s computer time. As useful as the internet can be for research and many other things it can also create quite a danger zone for your innocent children or even make you a victim of Identity Theft. Be alert, know what’s going on and most importantly make sure your activity on the computer is safe especially if using a public computer.