[Zak]

Age? Sex? Location? That’s how predators started their hunt.

It's also how teenagers started conversations with each other in chat rooms a decade ago. It may still be, but I haven't been a teenager in a while. I imagine predators open with the same question, but actually using it as a filter would produce an unacceptable amount of noise.

This is a useful story about some of the mistakes one can make dealing with VCs, but it sounds like the product itself was a little questionable.

[mnicole]

In reading the article and thinking back to being a kid who'd create free-trial Juno accounts and dig through drawers to find the Post-It notes that my parents' AOL accounts' passwords were on just to spend hours talking to strangers on the internet because it was exciting, I have to agree with the notion that this software rubs me the wrong way.

This is an issue of parenting; you can't just turn on an app and expect it to do your job for you. Kids won't be dumb if you treat them with respect and show them what can happen if they don't keep their eyes peeled.

Like the ridiculousness of the Dateline conversations, it was always very obvious when someone was creeping on me and it only took one click to block them. Allowing my already-fearful and ignorant parents to read random snippets of messages I was sending and receiving - particularly because a lot of our ASL?? comments were jokes to begin with - is a violation of my privacy and trust. Growing up in an environment like that would have completely shifted not only the way I use the internet today (especially if they'd gone ahead with their plans to implement it in social sites for kids), but would have affected my relationship with my parents in ways that would have left me hesitant to be myself at all.

Worse, when my cousins reached those ages at around the time this company was starting, social mediums had progressed and their problem wasn't talking to people online; it was posting very promiscuous photos and embarrassing YouTube videos showing the inside and outside of their homes and not putting any privacy barriers up. Those are much bigger concerns to me than knowing how to deal with stranger danger in text communications.

[BrandonWatson]

You are absolutely correct about the photos. Explicit photos were going both ways on chats. We were working on a solution to that, and had licensed some pretty cool tech from a small firm in DC.

re: the notion that _you_ would have known about a creep online, that's awesome. It's great that you were so self aware. Not every child can say the same. A favorite quote of mine applies here. No matter how you cut the math, and no matter how much you don't like the answer, 50% of the population is below average intelligence.

All of the content on our site explicitly suggested to parents that they should talk to their children _before_ installing our software. Talk about why they were installing it, and show them how it works. Every kid hated it. Of course they did. I would have. Unfortunately, kids have plenty of time to think about ways to circumvent protections their parents put in place. Parents have jobs, multiple kids, schedules to maintain, etc, and in general were outgunned on the technology front. They are all screaming for help, or suffering in silence, throwing up their hands because they cannot solve the problems for themselves.

When we started IMSafer, we were all in our late 20s or very early 30s. We were all hacker types. We also had young kids. One of our advisors was a police officer (personal friend) who spent a ton of time with us talking about the realities of the bad people out there. It's not Chris Hanson crazy, but there are really, really bad people out there. More often than not, related to the harmed minor.

[Zak]

I don't think it's really unfortunate that kids can circumvent technical measures. It's unfortunate that parents want a robot babysitter.

The primary danger comes from breaking the barrier between online and in-person. The best solution seems to me to be parents being understanding and supportive. Want to meet someone you talk to online in person? OK, fine. The parents come along and meet in a public place. If, instead the rule is "no meeting people from the internet ever", teenagers will do it anyway in a much less safe manner.

[mnicole]

I'd actually be really interested in reading about some of those scenarios if you have any links/blogs available.

Perhaps I was a little more aware of my online surroundings, but as children and pedophiles become increasingly technical and able to overcome these barriers I still think something like that has the potential to do more harm than good. Like you said, I had all the time in the world to figure out how to get around the rules and would have gone out of my way to find ways to bypass your software, potentially finding myself using avenues that were even shadier than the already-risky chat methods we all use and opening up my system to attacks or more in-depth tracking of my/my parents' online activities.

Although the likelihood for abuse/noise is high, the ability to report questionable conversations to support avenues rather than parents and law enforcement (who may try to take things into their own hands too soon without the appropriate amount of proof) seems like it would be the most effective at this point. Maybe something like this already exists?

Anyhow, many thanks for the response and for trying to find a solution! It will definitely be interesting to see what the future holds for online safety.

[altcognito]

Not really. The default mode is to be skeptical today of anyone online, and that there is no need to provide this information in an online conversation.