Staying cyber-safe

Parents often alarmed by coarse messages sent to their children

When Dwight Manghane's 11-year-old daughter, Gabriella, first signed on to PlayStation Home earlier this year, he was amazed at the possibilities of the online virtual meeting space.

There, Gabriella controlled a self-created avatar as she interacted with other users while navigating a 3-D environment on her PlayStation 3 video game console.

She was able to meet up with friends from school to work on homework, take part in a virtual Bible study and hone her jump shot through one of the service's free mini games.

It was incredible, Manghane said.

"I'd never seen anything like it," he said. "My friends and I are still used to the Atari. When she first got into it, I was blown away. I was even telling my friends about it."

After just a few days on the service, however, trouble started.

While logged in one night just days after signing up for the free service, Manghane, 32, said his daughter was approached by another user claiming to be 19 who asked her to send him pictures of herself. When she refused, he threatened to find her, after which she became scared enough to go to her father.

"It blew her mind," he said. "She was like, 'Wow, they're going to come find me if I don't give them what they want.' After that happened, I got involved."

During another session two days later, Maghane said another user, this time claiming to be in his mid-20s, approached Gabriella and began using inappropriate language.

Manghane said he and Gabriella's mother had always been careful about their daughter's online activity. They haven't allowed her to open a personal e-mail account or create a profile on any social networking sites, but PlayStation Home seemed safe, he said.

After incidents, Manghane said he began closely monitoring his daughter's experience. While observing her sessions, he said he has witnessed a near constant series of incidents involving lewd, racist and abusive behavior towards his daughter.

That Gabriella told tell her parents about what was going on sets her apart from her peers, many of whom fail to report incidents of online harassment, cyberstalking or cyberbullying, experts said.

The 12-19 year old age group has the lowest reporting rate for any type of criminal victimization, online or offline, said Michelle Garcia, the director of the National Stalking Resource Center.

When they do report, they tend to tell those who aren't in a position to help in any official capacity, Garcia said.

"It's not that they're reporting to police," she said. "In many cases, they're not reporting to parents. Most often, they're telling a peer, a friend."

Just because an incident of harassment happens online doesn't make it less serious. Online anonymity can add to the stress victims experience, said Jayne Hitchcock, the president of the watchdog organization Working to Halt Online Abuse.

"Many victims don't know the person who is doing it, as opposed to offline cases, and the fear that they don't know how far it will escalate adds to it," she said.

Online services like e-mail, chat rooms and social networks such as Facebook or Myspace haven't created a new kind of harassment or stalking, but it has facilitated those activities, Garcia said.

"Technology has made it much, much easier for stalkers to engage in their behavior," she said. "I think that's why it definitely is a concerning issue, because it gives stalkers more tools to monitor, surveil and threaten their victims."

According to Sony's terms of use for PlayStation Home, the company is "not responsible for the behavior of other users" but asks that users "let us know if [they] become aware of any unlawful or inappropriate behaviour."

"If any user encounters behavior that challenges Home's code of conduct, which expressly forbids harassment, they may submit a grief report which goes directly to PlayStation Home moderators," Sony representatives wrote in an official e-mailed response to this report. "All reports submitted via PlayStation Home's grief reporting system are individually investigated by a team of PlayStation Home moderators. Further action is taken where appropriate."

Manghane said he has called Sony about particularly abusive users about five times. He has also filed complaints through PlayStation Home's grief reporting facility six to eight times, but the users continued showing up online.

It's frustrating, Manghane said.

"You begin to feel like someone on the other end of the line is telling you what you want to hear to make you hang up," he said.

As a result of the continuing problem, Manghane said he has debated disconnecting his daughter from PlayStation Home all together but has stopped short because she argues she shouldn't be punished for someone else's behavior.

From 2007 to 2008, Manghane served with the Army National Guard in Iraq, where he was told to burn all the addresses off any mail he was sent to protect his family. As Gabriella continues to go online, he said he will adapt that real-world training to ensure her digital safety.

"I guess I never really got out of that secure state of mind," he said. "If it's safety first, I'm all for it

"With her being 11 and naive to what's going on in the world, I feel I'm on a 24-hour shift with keeping her protected."


BY THE NUMBERS

According to statistics from 2000-2009 of self-reported incidents of cyberstalking to Working to Halt Online Abuse:

* 36 percent of stalking begins through e-mail correspondence.

* 21.5 percent begins through an instant messenger program or chat room.

* 32 percent of victims didn't report the incident.

* Georgia was one of the top states for self-reported incidents of cyberstalking for five of the eight years that statistic was monitored.


CYBER SAFETY

Worried your child may not be safe online? Here are five tips to a safer online experience from the FBI's "A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety":

* Spend time with your children online and have them teach you about their favorite online sites. If they are on a social network, ask them to help you create a profile and add you as their first friend.

* Find out which computer safeguards are in place at your children's schools, friends' homes and other places they're likely to be online.

* Tell your children to never provide contact information online or upload photos of themselves to people they do not personally know.

* Keep the computer out in the open where you can see it. If it is in a bedroom, don't let them use it with the door closed.

* Take advantage of features in chat programs that block users who aren't on a friends list and add bothersome users to the ignore list.


RESOURCES

* Working to Halt Online Abuse - www.haltabuse.org

* Wired Safety - www.wiredsafety.org

* Cyberbullying Help - www.cyberbullying.org

Upcoming Events