internet

As painful as it sounds, Florida is the fourth state in the US where the child pornography over the Internet accounts for the largest volume of cyber crime. According to Bill McCollum, Attorney General for the state of Florida: "The state authorities know very well the dangerous activities that on line child predators engage in and the amount of risks children face". Therefore, severe new laws have been implemented as October 2007 to protect our children against Internet predators and to prevent children sexual exploitation.

Thanks to these new laws these criminals will face maximum sentences extended three times more to fifteen years. These laws are not only against predators who solicit kids through the Internet but also for those who own child pornography.

If you have children old enough to use the Internet, hopefully you've warned them of the dangers of sharing their personal information online. But what if you're the one sharing personal information?

How can you know whether the person behind a personal ad, or at the other end of an e-mail is who they pretend to be? Are you providing perfect strangers your phone number, address or other details of your personal life?

What if the person you're giving that information to is a stalker, a sexual predator or worse? How would you know? Several local women have learned the hard way that sometimes you don't know, and they have become victims of a man whose tactics have exposed at least one woman and her family to very real danger.

In the course of gathering information for a story about this man, I also became his victim. Although I am no longer the lead reporter on the Times-Union's story about this man, which is still being developed, Lt. William Gaden of the Clay County Sheriff's Office has asked me to write a public service announcement warning you of the dangers you may unwittingly be exposing yourself and your loved ones to.