Several children attending Tulsa’s Boston Avenue Church in downtown had their Facebook accounts copied.
Predators copied their posted pictures and made up similar emails to theirs and then created Facebook profiles that looked like theirs.
“Somebody stole her pictures off her Facebook and created a fake Facebook account,” said mother Nicole Young. Young and her pre-teen daughter were told by ministers at the church that they discovered her account had another one that looked just like it and so did other children’s.
“It was almost like a dummy account,” said Operation Aware’s Lead Prevention Educator, Jeni Dolan.
The church asked Operation Aware to help them educate parents and children about Internet safety.
Dolan has been educating about the topic for ten years. She was thankful no one was harmed in this case and the “duplicate” profiles of the children were shut down.
She gave parents listening to her in a Wednesday evening meeting many tips and advice for talking with their kids about setting up accounts and what to check off in privacy setting menus.
She used the acronym “TALK.” Children need to Tell someone what they are doing, Ask for help, Listen, and Know who to go to for help.
She said to always check privacy settings every month to make sure they are the way you want them. She explained that her teenage son’s cell phone number kept popping up on his account even after he removed it three times because the social media website kept going back to it’s default settings.
“I don't think that anybody needs to be a helicopter parent by any means,” said Dolan but she needs parents to pay attention to their kids when they are online.
For more safety tips from Operation Aware, go to:
http://www.operationaware.org/opaw/default.asp
