There are eight mutual friends, the person looks semi-familiar in his/her profile picture and his/her name seems like one you have heard before. With a click of the mouse, that person has been accepted into your friend list.
Accepted seems like such an innocent, happy, welcoming term. In reality, becoming friends with someone and accepting their friend request opens up many more doors for personal information to be shared and for the wrong people to get close.
Online chatrooms and sites like Myspace are a thing from the past and were known for being dangerous places that predators manipulated, but predators are using the same tactics as those old sites in social networks today.
Privacy settings on Facebook and Twitter do not restrict as much as some may think. When a person makes a status or posts a picture, it gives a pinpoint location of where it is being uploaded from. Any of a person’s so-called “friends” can know the exact location of a person.
It is unsafe not exercise the necessary precautions and change privacy settings to stop that and to stop allowing most people to access personal information. Also, posting private information on a site helps predators get to know a person so that they have a foundation upon which to start a conversation.
Teenagers think repercussoions from this will never happen to them, and that is where they are naive because it can easily happen to anyone if they are not careful. An innocent chat on Facebook could turn into an online friendship with someone a person has never met. It is extremely easy to hide behind a false identity and get pictures off of the internet to create a fake account.
Teenagers do it every day by posting things to create the image that they want people to view them as. Just as easily, an adult could pretend to be a teenager to lure in other teenagers. If people filtered more of what they put online it could potentially cut back on teenagers being abducted, sold into sex slavery, and other horrors.
Companies have undercover agents that make accounts as young men and women, and then they entice predators to trick them into getting caught. Predators are there and are looking for ways to get information.
Ignorant teenagers post statuses and tweet about how their parents are gone all weekend and how they are excited for a fun weekend, when, to predators, this looks like a great time to meet up or come to a teenager’s house when they are not expecting it. Scenarios like this seem to be extreme, but they are the reality.
Even new applications such as Snapchat are being used for the wrong purposes. Friends use it as a funny way to send selfies back and forth, but that can get twisted into being a tool for anyone.
It is easy to find friends’ Snapchat names and a person can search for people’s Snapchat name even if they do not know them. Sending one friendly snapchat to someone you do not know starts a relationship that people may not even realize they are starting. A picture shows what a person looks like and what their surroundings are. It is not a stretch to say that predators do research on Facebook on individuals and then use new applications like Snapchat that everyone is excited about to get new victims.
Also, Snapchat has become a sexting application for a lot of teenagers. Sexual predators are using this as a tool because teens are tricked into thinking that the pictures delete after a few seconds. They can delete, but individuals can take screenshots and save these pictures. Just like a social media site, these can be saved forever. Teenagers make themselves vulnerable when they send these pictures and are jeopardizing their safety.
Some people view Facebook and Twitter as aspects of technolgy that are on their way out and will soon become things of the past, but Snapchat and even one of the newest applications, Tinder, brings about new problems.
Tinder is an application where people can set up a profile and see other people’s pictures and decide if they like them or not. If a person likes another person’s picture and they like the person’s picture back, then they can have a conversation and get to know each other.
This application finds the people’s profiles that are within a certain distance of the person. This can be dangerous because teenagers can start conversations and relationships with people that they do not know, but are close by.
When two people talk on this application, it shows that a person is two miles away, for example, because it gives a pinpoint location. The same problem arises with this as the other applications because people can make their profiles to be whoever they want to be and portray themselves in any way to lure people in.
Teenagers are trusting and though these unknown predators are threats, even people you see and interact with on a daily basis can be a threat because they know you so well.
Organizations such as Enough is Enough are working to make families aware and stop online predators.
Enough is Enough is a non-profit organization that has been working to educate the public on the dangers of the internet such as illegal online pornography, child stalking, sexual predation, and other forms of online victimization. It has become a reputable organization among the public, media, and law enforcement because it has helped to cut down on these issues.
Online at www.enough.org and www.internetsafety101.org people can learn tips and important details on how to stay protected and avoid being a victim of an online predator. The first step to using the internet and applications in a safer way is to think through what you post because anyone can see it and read into it.
