Someone really wants my money...and yours!  Don't fall for these scams.  Here's the one I got yesterday.  Notice the part at the top where it says my registered name is included as proof that this is really from ebay?  My registered name does not appear in this message.  Furthermore, I don't have anything for sale on ebay, but you can see how someone who does would probably fall for this without a second thought.

If you get a message like this, open a new window, go to ebay yourself, log in to My Messages and read your messages from there. 

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eBay sent this message to you Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more. Question about Item -- Respond Now eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member via My Messages. Responses sent using email will go to the eBay member directly and will include your email address. Click the Respond Now button below to send your response via My Messages (your email address will not be included).

Question from buru_mik Item: (6436472319) This message was sent while the listing was active. barnsley1105 is a potential buyer. Hey, I have tired twice to pay you through paypal but the transaction is not working its keeps giving an error message (This recipient is currently unable to receive money) is there anything wrong with your paypal?? Respond to this question in My Messages. Item Details Item number: 6436472319 End date: 31-May-2006 18:56:12 BST View item description: https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6436472319&sspagename=ADME:B :AAQ:UK:1 Thank you for using eBay http://www.ebay.com/ Marketplace Safety Tip Always remember to complete your transactions on eBay - it's the safer way to trade. Is this message an offer to buy your item directly through email without winning the item on eBay? If so, please help make the eBay marketplace safer by reporting it to us. These external transactions may be unsafe and are against eBay policy. Learn more about trading safely. Is this email inappropriate? Does it breach eBay policy? Help protect the community by reporting it. Learn how you can protect yourself from spoof (fake) emails at: https://pages.ebay.com/education/spooftutorial This eBay notice was sent to you on behalf of another eBay member through the eBay platform and in accordance with our Privacy Policy. If you would like to receive this email in text format, change your notification preferences. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement if you have questions about eBay's communication policies. Privacy Policy: https://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-policy.html User Agreement: https://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html Copyright © 2005 eBay, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. eBay and the eBay logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of eBay, Inc. Notice the links just above this writing.  If you hover your pointer over them, and read the actual link address you'll be taken to in the lower left of your screen (Explorer), you'll notice they don't take you to the addresses that are written and underlined in blue.  That is a dead giveaway.    My best advice, don't ever click a link given to you in an e-mail, go to the actual company's page yourself and do some investigating.  Also, find out where you can forward the scam, large companies all have internet safety departments.  You can also forward them to the feds, at spam@uce.gov.   Visit Confessor's blog for another variation of this scam.

Tonight is the next show in Dateline's "To Catch A Preditor" series.  Some highlights (or maybe lowlights would be a better choice of words) for tonight's show:

One guy actually had his sister (with her baby girl in the car) drive him to the house where he was to meet the underage girl.

One guy even topped him, he brought his 5 year old along, and brought him into the house!!  I wanted to reach through the tv and strangle him, and that was just a commercial I saw.

Parents' note:  they seem to get a little more graphic as the series is progressing, so if you want your teens to watch, maybe record it first and preview.

My e-mail is usually pretty good about weeding out spam, but I just got phished!!  My first clue that it was fake--we don't have any accounts with Washington Mutual...

Beware of a fake message from Washington Mutual Bank (or any other bank for that matter) that goes something like this:

Dear  Washington Mutual Bank valued member,

The security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of our business and our top priority at Washington Mutual Bank.  Our policy is to protect personal or financial information which comes into our possession during the normal course of business.  It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated due to inactive members, frauds and spoof reports.

Please follow the link below and renew your account information. 

(I deleted the link, but it was official looking.  Even started with https:. But when I held my mouse pointer over it, the actual link was completely different than what they had typed into the e-mail.)

Once you have updated your account records your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

 
Online Department
Washington Mutual Bank

So, what can you do when you get an e-mail like this one?  First, NEVER click on the link provided.  Find the real home page of the bank in question, and somewhere on it there will be a security link.  Follow it, and they should have an e-mail address that you can forward the suspicious message to.  Third, forward it to spam@uce.gov so that the feds have the information as well.

Hindsight being 20/20, I realize now that I probably should not have recommended the viewing of this show by teens until their parents had seen it first, and possibly edited it a bit.   I did not realize there would be some fairly explicit language that was used.  I thought that part was a little too much information, but all in all the show was well done.

If you're not familiar with how the show is done, here's a quick summary:  Someone poses as a teenager on networking websites like MySpace.  They put up a profile, stating clearly their age, usually 13, 14, or 15.  Within a short time, people try to contact them, usually by instant message.   They talk online, and it doesn't take long for the predator to start getting sexually suggestive.  The 'teen' mentions she is home alone.  The guy asks for a meeting, and gets directions from the 'teen'. 

When the guy comes to the house, there is a woman in another room with a young sounding voice who usually yells something like, "Come in, sit down, I'm almost ready".  The man sits down, and this is when the Dateline host confronts him, asking him why he's there, etc.  I was surprised to see so many of these men open up and confess what they are doing.  When the interview is over, they are 'free' to go, and as soon as they get outside, they are arrested.  I can't believe it, but when Dateline first started doing this, they actually let the guys leave, and didn't have law enforcement involved!!  Thank God they changed that practice!

When I saw these men that came to this house, it was alarming.  They looked normal.   There was a Paramedic, a graduate student, a student at an Evangelical university, who claimed to have asked both his best friend and his pastor for advice, they both told him what he was doing was very bad, (duh) and he still showed up!   There was  a mechanical engineer, and a 6th grade teacher.  His was the most chilling interview.  He stated that because he was online, it was like the girls were not real.  He basically admitted that if he had gotten this far, it probably wouldn't be long before he started in on his students.  He resigned his position the night he was arrested.

Another disturbing tidbit about this show:  the first ones were done in major cities, New York, DC, and LA.  You'd expect that kind of stuff happening there.  This show was done in a farming community of 13,000 people, an hour-long drive from anywhere.  Most of the men drove between 1 and 2 hours to meet these girls they thought they were meeting.  One arrived at 2am.  One came from another state.  It is incredible, the drive this kind of person has to commit this act.

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I would have to say that all in all, I believe the homeschool community does a much better job monitoring their kids than the rest of the country does.  Still, we as parents need to know this information, not only for our own, but our relatives' kids, and our friends' kids, too.   We are definitely in the minority when it comes to how much time we spend with our kids.

Here are a bunch of links to Dateline's website.  You can surf these individually from here by right-clicking and opening a new window for each link you want, or you can just go to Dateline and surf from there.  There is TONS of good information to go through, so you may want to dedicate some time for this project.

Dateline Main Page

Transcript of the entire show

Survey of teen internet usage

Tips for parents

Information on MySpace including all of the following:

And, there's more to come next Wednesday, including a man who comes to meet a girl just one week before his court date for the same type of offense!  How sad is that?

Parents--I'm begging you.  If you don't have TV in your home, get someone to record it for you, or go to a friend's house and watch Dateline NBC tonight, it will change the way you view the internet.  It will sicken you, it will open your eyes to the pure evil that is in our world.  Consider allowing your teens to watch with you, they are going to show a little about how these internet predators 'groom' kids.  At the very least, read the stories on Dateline's website. 

One guy they caught had seen the last show Dateline did on this subject, thought to himself, "Those guys are sick", then proceeded to lure what he thought was a 13 year old girl.  This man was a 6th grade teacher.

We must be ever vigilent with our kids, and we must not forget that we have to know every one of their friends.  If a friend of my child, especially one in public school, had a computer in their bedroom, I would have a grave talk with the parents of this child.  We must spread the word of this danger, it's too important not to.

I feel compelled to air my opinion of MySpace.  This is just my opinion.  Okay, it's quite a few people's opinions who hold similar viewpoints as I do.

MySpace is a business above all, and as such is slave to the allmighty dollar.  Although it may have started out as a great idea to let kids express themselves, it has quickly gotten way out of hand, snowballed into something that can't be controlled. 

I like to believe that the creators of MySpace had no intentions of creating something sinister.  They most likely wanted to create a website that would get a lot of traffic, and bring together lots of new friends. But when the sweetest dog in the world becomes rabid, he still needs to be put to sleep.  He is not what he once was, he is consumed by the disease, and there's no cure.  

CHILD PREDATORS:

MySpace is a varitable "One Stop Shopping Center" for child predators.  Think about it.  They can search for whatever they prefer.  Boys, girls, age ranges, localities, etc.  They can find kids who talk about being alone at home.  They can find kids who talk about drinking and doing drugs (easy to pursuade).  They can find out where they live or work.  

It is all too easy for a predator to find a child.  The kids put personal information out there so trustingly, thinking that only their friends will read it.  Kids will put their names on their page, their hometown, and the school they attend.  They will post pictures of themselves and their friends.  How simple is that?   The predator has his pick.

This is the new way to catch these predators:  Police officers sign up posing as young girls or boys, and within hours they have propositions to meet in person.  If it happens so easily with these 'fake' kids, think of how often it may happen with the real ones.

CORRUPT MORALS:

When a child joins MySpace, they are supposed to promise that they are over the age of 14 or 15, I believe.  How many kids out there will be truthful about their ages, do you suppose?  They obviously have no supervision if they are signing up in the first place.  It is very simple to just type in 14 when signing up, instead of a child's real age, 13, 12, 11... 

Now, when that tender child signs up, the first thing they are confronted with is a survey they should fill out about themselves, to let other people get to know them.  These are posted on everyone's front page.  Some of the questions on the survey:

Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?

Are you gay, straight or bisexual?

Do you smoke?

Do you drink alcohol?

Do you do drugs?

The list goes on and on, you get the picture.  What is the first thing this child thinks?  "Everybody's doing it."  "Why not me?"  "Maybe I'll just say I've done it."  This is very dangerous.  Again, it just snowballs into something uncontrollable.

LURES:

When I was surfing around MySpace, I noticed that some people used very provocative pictures for their avatars.  Upon further investigation, visiting these people's pages it was apparant that these weren't teens at all, they were just lures to get teens to hit the links on these pages to go visit pornography sites.  The job of this corrupt industry is to hook our kids very early, so that they will become very good customers for years to come, just as drug dealers do. 

It has been observed that when a person views pornographic images, the same chemical changes occur in the brain as if they were using heroin.  The person becomes addicted and needs more and more to get that 'feeling' again.  This kind of addiction is no easier to break, either.  Snowballing out of control.

RUINING THE FUTURE:

If all of the preceeding weren't enough, what kids are posting on MySpace is now hurting their chances at a bright future.  Kids have always had the attitude that nothing they do can hurt them, that's why they drive fast, take chances, etc.  This is just the next logical step.  Say a kid decides to fill out that survey, and caves in to peer pressure.  He answers the questions about drinking and drugs with a 'yes', and then goes on to tell a story about himself binge drinking.  True or not, he has just put it out there in the public domain, that he (or she) is a high risk person. 

College admissions boards, prospective, and current employers are finding MySpace a great tool for researching people.  This child will not likely be admitted to any school, based on what he has posted, nor will he be hired by anyone.  He may even be fired from a current job for what he has exposed about himself, true or not.  Here comes that snowball, ready to engulf him.

SO, WHAT DO I DO?

I'm happy to report that we, as homeschoolers, already have the edge on that one.  The most important thing that any parent can do is to know what your kids are doing, where they are, and who they are with, all the time.  Get to know the parents of their friends.  Make sure their values match up with your own.  The last thing you need is for your kids to be left without adult supervision at someone else's house.  Teach your kids the dangers about putting personal information out there.  Get a good internet filter that can completely block these websites, and kids can't get around.  My favorite is BSafe.

Don't sit on your hands.  Get this information out there to other people, especially our friends and relatives who have chosen to send their kids to school.  These are the kids who are at risk, they inherently have a lot more unsupervised time on their hands.  I am a huge advocate of 'converting' public schoolers to homeschoolers.  Give it a try!!

Well, you know what state I'm in, and that there are some mountains around, but hopefully that's all.  Internet safety has been brought to my attention lately, and it occurs to me that I have never posted on the subject, so here goes:

Never post any identifying information on your blog.  Make up a first name, and make it a pretty common one.  Use initials when talking about people.  If you put too much information together, even in separate posts, be sure it doesn't lead to you, such as, first name in one post, place of work in another post, town in another post, link to a picture, etc...

Moms, make sure you know what your kids are posting, always read it before it goes out, and if your child works outside the home, or goes to the library alone, do a google search every now and then for their name, to make sure nothing comes up that they may be doing away from home.  You need to know who their friends are that they have links to, also, and make sure friends are not posting information (pictures) as well.

Let  your friends know if you notice that they have posted something that may be a little to specific, I'm sure they will appreciate it.  Ask them to do the same for you.

Use a good filter, like BSafe, which allows you to block all the bad stuff, including specific sites like myspace, and has safeguards so that teens don't hack into your settings.  Don't even get me started on the evils of myspace.  Stay in safe places like this wonderful blogging community, and don't give 'strangers' your blog address by putting it in a signature line on other sites, and such.

I know there's much more I could post, but hopefully this is a good start.