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Episode Nine: Protect Your Kids from Online Predators
200 Plays10 months ago
We live in a digital world. Our children have access to many devices such as gaming systems, cell phones, tablets and more - leaving them vulnerable to predators online.
In this episode, Dr. Doak-Gebauer, Ambassador for Canada to the United States Presidential Service Center and online child protection expert, shares eye-opening information every parent needs to hear.
Tune in to learn how you can take steps at home to protect your kids and how hackers are using technology like artificial intelligence to traffic minors.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guardians of Hope Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Guardians of Hope podcast, where we bring together parents, nonprofits, legal and medical experts dedicated to positively impacting children's lives. I'm your host, Cynthia. Before we begin, as I always mention, this content should not be used as legal or medical advice. The purpose of this podcast is to inform and unite us, so please
00:00:26
Speaker
Seek advice from your attorney or your doctor to address your own specific needs. The thoughts and opinions of my guests are not necessarily my own. This is a platform for sharing.
Digital Safety for Children Overview
00:00:39
Speaker
Our next topic is about digital
00:00:41
Speaker
protection for our kids. So many kids have access to digital devices, gaming systems, cell phones, tablets, and more. But very few parents supervise just exactly what their kids are doing online and who has access to their kids online.
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If passed into law, the Kids Online Safety Act would require online services like social media networks, video game sites, and messaging apps to take reasonable measures to prevent harm, including online bullying, harassment, sexual exploitation, anorexia, self-harm,
00:01:20
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and predatory marketing to minors who use their platforms. My next guest asks in one of her books, would you give your eight-year-old child the keys to your car and let them drive unsupervised?
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yet they have the key to your router and journey the world unsupervised. Digital supervision is necessary.
Expert Insights from Dr. Charlene Doke Gebauer
00:01:43
Speaker
Ambassador Dr. Charlene Doke Gebauer, an online child protection expert, joins me to discuss how parents are not vigilant enough and how we can keep our kids safe. Dr. Doke Gebauer, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, thank you for having me, Cynthia. It's a pleasure.
00:02:03
Speaker
Of course, this is such an important topic. Why don't you start by telling me about your background and experience in online child protection?
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, first of all, I am a computer science specialist in education and a former network administrator for different secondary schools. So I have the expertise necessary to develop what I call my theory of digital supervision for online child protection to be used by parents and professionals. I started this whole thing because I had a member of my family that was a victim of
00:02:40
Speaker
child pornography or child sexual abuse material when she was four years old. And it was not through the online version, they shared through pictures and so on through mail.
00:02:55
Speaker
And then when she was 22, she was killed by a drunk driver. And I started looking at the crime and how it relates to the Internet, was horrified at the proliferation of the crime and have been studying it and developing my theories of digital supervision and digital sex trafficking ever since. So that's basically a summary of my background.
Challenges in Online Child Safety
00:03:23
Speaker
In your field and with the current legislation out and tech companies testifying right now in the States, what should tech companies and social platforms do about this? That's a loaded question. Tech companies and social media platforms and gaming platforms
00:03:46
Speaker
are doing what they can basically to keep children safe. There is legislation coming in in the United States, in Canada, the UK, trying to protect children. And if people have never managed a computer network, which I have, they don't understand the magnitude of that type of job. Because of international laws, the internet, multiple countries involved,
00:04:15
Speaker
and predation is very prevalent online. So it's extremely difficult for tech companies to get into this. They're doing as much as they can, I believe. And then all of, unfortunately, artificial intelligence has been brought in, which is compounding the whole issue. And because of
00:04:40
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complications of getting everyone safe online, we have to have humanity supervising humanity again.
Parental Roles in Digital Supervision
00:04:47
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And I emphasize that we as parents and professionals have to start looking at what our children are doing online to complete the picture of online child protection, governments, police, educators,
00:05:02
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tech companies, social media platforms, gaming platforms are trying to do their best, but we as parents have to step up to the plate and realize we have a role to protect our children online. Absolutely. What about parents? What can we do to help? There are a number of things we can do. First of all, keep the communications open with our children. Instead of just giving them
00:05:31
Speaker
cell phones and tablets, we have to have rules. And I don't mean just let them play games from seven to nine at night or the cell phones keep them away from the children in the middle of the night. And if you're not doing that, you should be. There needs to be what I refer to as a digital supervision contract with our children so that both sides are aware of what is going on
00:06:01
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when children are on the internet and then have rules surrounding that, discussing, having conversations with people, discussing, sharing pictures,
00:06:13
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and what the role is of the parent. And I tell parents that we have to realize that we have to give our children the communication that we are in charge of the internet, not the children. And unfortunately, that's what's happening in most homes. The children set up their cell phones, they set up their gaming systems, and the parents are unaware of what these children are doing. And we have to have the digital supervision contract, and we have to have the communication
00:06:43
Speaker
And we have to do spot checks on what our children are doing as well. And there are other methods of digital supervision that I can talk about a little later, but without parental involvement, we're leaving our children to be brought up by the internet. And we have our traditional parenting skills, which we all know, but we have to start catching up to the digital age and make sure
00:07:10
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that we are digitally parenting as well. That makes perfect sense.
Creating a Digital Supervision Contract
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And talk to me a little bit more about the contract. What would be the specs of this contract? Well, there are two sides to it, the child and the parent. And I have a sample digital supervision contract on my website that people are more than welcome to download, to use.
00:07:40
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There are things like I will tell my parents if someone has contacted me that I don't know and I'm feeling uncomfortable. I will not have my cell phone by my bed in the middle of the night. They will be, it will be docked at my parents bedside for charging. I, you know, just things like that. And it's all listed on the digital supervision contract and I've set it up at the bottom. It's exactly like a legal document. And what parents need to realize is that once this is set up,
00:08:11
Speaker
A lot of the stress in their home has been reduced because there are guidelines for the parents and the children. And the one thing you cannot do is sway from that contract because then it makes it null and void, just like a legal document in a court of law. And without this, you don't have that outline with the kids to follow.
00:08:34
Speaker
Right. And if you're not outlining the rules, how are your kids going to follow the rules to begin with? So this makes perfect sense. Exactly. And it's very simple. Anything I talk to people about, I try to make it as user-friendly as possible so that more children will be protected. Because too often, people that have my type of background are tossing around terminology that parents just go, I don't have a clue and I'm not even going to try.
00:09:04
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So I make it very simple. Turn the router off at night. Make sure that the children are not on anything throughout the night. That's when a lot of the problems occur. It's interesting and good that you point that out, that most of the occurrences happen during the times that children should be asleep.
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That's right.
Adapting Parenting for the Digital Age
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I've had parents talk to me that they took their children to the doctor and the doctor said that the child had sleep apnea because they were tired all the time. And I said, so where are their cell phones in the middle of the night? And the parents, they, parents need to realize that whatever is going on in their home, the children need the guidance and rules so that the children know you care.
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and we all know we care about our kids, but saying no seems to be something that people are avoiding. And we have to start realizing that saying no is being kind to our children.
00:10:09
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that there should be no cell phones after a certain time and certainly not throughout the night. No gaming so that if you pull the plug on the router, then the child cannot game as long as there isn't an unsecured router in your neighborhood because they can go on any router in the neighborhood. But if you have it, at least you're doing that in your home. You check routers in your neighborhood. Are they wide open? Some parents still don't put passwords on them. You tell those families.
00:10:39
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It's just a matter of being a very alert to very elementary things that will help keep you in control of the internet in your home and keep children safe. And what I tell people is that the minute you put that gateway to the internet in your house, we as parents have to start realizing that that gives us a profound, greater sense of responsibility for our children.
00:11:06
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if there was no internet, then the traditional parenting skills would still work. But because they're internet, we have to digitize our parenting. So interesting.
Risks of AI in Predatory Activities
00:11:20
Speaker
You talked a little bit about AI earlier in our conversation. So I want to touch upon that and maybe expand on what you were talking about. You said the use of AI is changing the way that
00:11:33
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You know, it's changing the game and it's changing how things are being done online. And I want to know exactly how hackers and traffickers are using this technology to commit crimes against children. Well, artificial intelligence is putting a real problem into policing.
00:11:54
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into parenting, into the internet, everything. There has been a predator handbook online in the dark web, and there now is an artificial intelligence predator handbook online, making it very easy for predators to target children. And what I'm going to do, I like giving examples so that people can truly identify with it.
00:12:17
Speaker
Parents quite often are picture bombing pictures of their children online, face on pictures. And they're giving information about their children that they really shouldn't be giving because don't tell me that your social media is secure. When they can get into taxation departments of governments and hack in, your social media is not secure.
00:12:43
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And I ask people, how much do you pay for it? You're not even paying for it. That's how secure it can be. So they picture bomb pictures of their children and they have their own picture on, on a Facebook or Instagram or whatever. And then they may have videos up that has their voice on the video.
00:13:04
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or they have their voicemail on their cell phone and they put their cell phone up on social media, which you shouldn't do, but some people do so that someone has pictures of you and pictures of your children and they also have your voice. So let's say for example, someone takes AI and they put your picture on a like body and then have a voice
00:13:32
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on it. That's your voice. And then they send it to a child saying, I'm in big trouble. Would you please come to such and such a mall on such and such a street? And then the child goes there, and then they can be taken. And this is very simple to do. There's artificial intelligence software online. Anyone can get it. And there's facial recognition software online.
00:13:58
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If you have pictures up of your children, someone can find your children online and social media using facial recognition software. Contact your children. I mean, the list goes on.
00:14:10
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And people have asked me, should I learn more about artificial intelligence? And I say, absolutely. Because artificial intelligence is how they're doing this. Give you an example, the IWF in the UK have highly specialized technologists. That's the Internet Watch Foundation. And in June 2023, just last year, they were looking at artificial intelligence videos.
00:14:34
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with the deep fakes and they could distinguish. They said, oh no, that's a deep fake, that's artificial intelligence. In December, 2023, they were looking and they could not distinguish between artificial intelligence and the real thing. That's how quickly this is coming. And what a lot of people are doing, this has happened in schools. I know in Saskatchewan, Canada, a fellow took girls pictures
00:15:03
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and put them in triple X porn and circulated it around the school using artificial intelligence, high school student. Was he arrested? What happens when things like this happen? This is obviously a crime.
Legal Aspects of Digital Crimes
00:15:17
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That is a crime. It depends on the criminal code in most countries. I know in Canada it's illegal and I believe in the United States as well to take an intimate picture of anyone and circulate it without their consent.
00:15:33
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which is a crime or a felony. And by doing that and then engaging in sextortion, trying to get them to pay or do things so that the film won't be circulated is definitely criminal behavior.
00:15:53
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Let's talk about mitigating this as parents. I know it's difficult to, it's hard to get ahead of technology, but you mentioned communication with our children is number one. So what are some plans that we as parents can put in place in the home to avoid this type of technology exploiting our kids, like maybe
00:16:17
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talking about if something was to happen and you get a call that your mom is at a park, maybe put in a password or some sort of communication code between parent and child to know that this is true or not. So I'm just asking you, what are some ways that we as parents can get ahead of this? Well, first of all,
00:16:45
Speaker
I always tell people to put the router in an area of the home that's under lock and key and only controlled by the parents. For two reasons, you want to be able to turn that router off at night and people will say, well, I'm still using it. And I'm like, when you're done, turn it
Protective Measures for Online Safety
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off. You know, let's not get too complicated here.
00:17:05
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And you can put it in the parental bedroom so that when you go to bed, you're done. Turn it off so that your parents don't know. There are, or that your children don't, aren't able to get online.
00:17:18
Speaker
Two reasons for that. Number one, you can control the router. And number two, you're telling your children that you are in charge of the internet in your home. Because there are no boundaries right now in homes. I speak around the world, and this is a problem worldwide. That parents don't realize that they should be in control of the internet in the home, and the children should be aware of this.
00:17:45
Speaker
Another way is the digital supervision contract. And also, when a child might get a communication from a parent, like a video or even a phone call using the parent's voice, I am advising now to have a pager with a GPS on it.
00:18:07
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And have the child text a message to the parent, did you just send me a video? Or did you just leave a message on my cell phone that you're in trouble? Because that pager won't be hacked. And the parents can then communicate and say, no, I didn't. Or yes, I did. One or the other.
00:18:29
Speaker
But we have to have some safeguards in place to get around the AI and to get around the predation online. And we can't forget that in many cases, the biggest predation is peer to peer victimization. What are kids doing to our kids?
00:18:49
Speaker
Without digital supervision, these kids communicate everything online. They communicate where they're going. They could communicate that they're even contemplating a suicide, that they're being bullied. And if parents aren't digitally supervising, then we have to realize that we're going to have some consequences. And this is happening more and more in this digital age.
00:19:19
Speaker
This is so eye-opening. Thank you. I have one more question for you. I'm looking at this from an entire household perspective, meaning there are different households. There are single parents. There are parents who work three jobs. What if removing devices
00:19:42
Speaker
is not an option. I know you talk about supervision, but what are some ways parents can still protect their kids or just be on the alert to spot anything harmful? Just, I guess, maybe elaborate on what you just talked about. Sure.
Monitoring Tools for Parents
00:19:58
Speaker
Another method is to mirror the cell phone of your child. You can get apps online to do that, or you can... Some cell phones have that capability now.
00:20:11
Speaker
And anything that goes on in your child's cell phone, you will get a copy of. And just as soon as it happens, so that if a child is being bullied or if there are problems, then you are able to deal with it right away. And the other thing that I tell people, people will say, what about
00:20:33
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blocking software like filtering and so on. Filtering is really good when a child is younger and you can get a filter for a router which is really good but kids talk about how to get around those things in schools and what I tell parents is to put a key logger on every device and the key logger
00:20:53
Speaker
You can tell the key logger where you want a file sent and the regularity of it. You can have a file sent to you every evening and read exactly what's been going on in your child's life. Should you tell your child about this? It's up to you. It depends on your relationship with your child.
00:21:13
Speaker
But that key logger, you can get a comprehensive one that will tell you any pictures or videos that have been shared, any websites they've been on, the results of any chats. And people will tell me, well, what about the cell phone? Well, they're on games, that's not a problem. There is so much predation on gaming platforms.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's scary. And if you put a filter on the router coming into your house, if you put a filter on the computer, the host computer, it has nothing to do with the gaming platform because when they're on a game, they're on a separate server. So you give them the gateway to the internet, they go on a game, they're on a separate server. And this is why predators love
00:22:05
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the games because the separate server, the filters, aren't going to touch it. And that's why a key logger will work because the key logger will record anything your child puts out there and that will not bring in the exchanges of any pictures.
00:22:28
Speaker
This is where children are victimized the most. They're being asked to send nudes. They're being asked to do very questionable things in front of a camera, engage in bestiality. This has all been researched and studied by different organizations, particularly the IWF in the UK.
Consequences of Neglecting Digital Supervision
00:22:51
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And if we believe that our children are telling the truth,
00:22:57
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We have to understand that children lie. And I've had people tell me, well, I asked my son if he was involved in any of that and he said no and I trust him. Well, I can say that I lied to my parents and everyone has. And if someone says they didn't, then I think they're telling a fib. And when you realize that these children are trying to get off with as much as they can online,
00:23:27
Speaker
That's when you start realizing that you have to digitize what you're doing because they think it's fun. They think it's funny to send nudes to each other. And there are children in different states in the United States put on the sex registry for life because they're exchanging nudes. And there are children in other countries and in the United States being charged criminally for producing and distributing child pornography.
00:23:54
Speaker
And these are things that we don't want to have as conversations as parents with police, nor do we want to have these conversations with our children. Right. Where can I get a key logger? You can get a key logger online.
Detecting Secret Device Usage
00:24:11
Speaker
They are available and you will have to install on each device.
00:24:17
Speaker
but it is money well spent. And if the file, you stop getting the file from the key logger, then you know that the child is kind of working around it and you just go and you say, this is for your own protection. And another thing, a lot of people I'll tell them, ask them, have you ever tried to take a cell phone from your child? And they'll look and they'll say, oh yeah. And I say, how did that go? And they'll say, it was terrible.
00:24:47
Speaker
And I warn parents, if you go to take a cell phone from your child and they give it to you readily, then you have to be careful that they may have a burner phone. And these burner phones are being sold out of high school lockers. And it doesn't matter where they are. They can go to any coffee shop because coffee shops do not have passwords anymore, usually to get on the internet because they know they can't really, you can't police it.
00:25:16
Speaker
So kids will use the burner phone to do everything they were doing. And you may have their phone. That's why if it's very relaxed atmosphere and you take it from them, they no doubt have a burner phone. Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss such a timely and important topic. I think I might have you come back for a follow up. I know that people are going to ask me a lot of questions and I'd love for you to come back and talk more.
00:25:46
Speaker
Oh, I would love to. Okay, great. Thank you so much. And for everyone listening. Oh, you're welcome. For everyone listening to learn more about Dr. Doke Gebauer's work, just go to her website at www.cdoke-gebauer.com.