Authorities Warn Parents About Sexual Predators in Online Games
Authorities Warn Parents About Sexual Predators in Online Games
July 3, 2008
Concerns over sexual predators lurking in online gaming venues are highlighted in a pair of reports.
USA Today interviewed investigators in Michigan and Arizona about the issue. Lt. Thomas Kish of the Michigan State Police told the paper:
Child predators are migrating from traditional methods to alternate media. They are going to places where children are.
Meanwhile, Lt. Jessica Farnsworth, head of the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said her unit has seized a number of Xbox systems during investigations. She credited Microsoft with providing training to law enforcement personnel on how to extract messages and other data from the consoles.
Philadelphia's CBS-3 interviewed an investigator with the New Jersey State Police. Detective Cy Bleistine told the station:
We have kids growing up in computer age that are leaps and bounds ahead of the adults and as the parental controls come out, they find ways around them.
Last week GamePolitics reported on the prosecution of an alleged predator who abducted a victim he met through World of Warcraft.
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Posted 01/06/09 at 04:12pm
DeepThorn: Dero, I swear she told me she was 18.
DeepThorn: Dero, I swear she told me she was 18.
Posted 01/06/09 at 03:07pm
HarmlessBunny: @PHX Corp: No surprise. Jack's favorite desperation move: Image-laden filings that make zero sense! Guarunteed to piss someone off, and provide hilarity to us
HarmlessBunny: @PHX Corp: No surprise. Jack's favorite desperation move: Image-laden filings that make zero sense! Guarunteed to piss someone off, and provide hilarity to us
Posted 01/06/09 at 01:54pm
Derovius: What did you call my little sister?
Derovius: What did you call my little sister?
Posted 01/06/09 at 01:38pm
DeepThorn: 'Security' additions, which means it protects the music, which you bought, and have the right to use. It doesnt stop illegal activity, and even copying the music onto 2 back up CDs isnt illegal. Giving one to your little sister is border line.
DeepThorn: 'Security' additions, which means it protects the music, which you bought, and have the right to use. It doesnt stop illegal activity, and even copying the music onto 2 back up CDs isnt illegal. Giving one to your little sister is border line.
Posted 01/06/09 at 01:36pm
CK20XX: What's it gonna take for JT to get arrested? It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
CK20XX: What's it gonna take for JT to get arrested? It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Posted 01/06/09 at 12:12pm
PHX Corp: Look on JAABLOG at his recent court filings he's starting to post pictures again http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DB5ODRNE
PHX Corp: Look on JAABLOG at his recent court filings he's starting to post pictures again http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DB5ODRNE
Posted 01/06/09 at 11:51am
CMiner: It's the same as the controversy over Sony's rootkits in their music CDs, as far as a separation of the issues of cd content and the security additions.
CMiner: It's the same as the controversy over Sony's rootkits in their music CDs, as far as a separation of the issues of cd content and the security additions.
Posted 01/06/09 at 11:27am
Vake Xeacons: But there does need to be a limit on DRM. I mean, CD check's okay, but spyware? That's an invasion of privacy!
Vake Xeacons: But there does need to be a limit on DRM. I mean, CD check's okay, but spyware? That's an invasion of privacy!
Posted 01/06/09 at 11:00am
Krono: @insanejedi: DRM isn't an aspect of the game. Unless you can make an argument that Securom is an intregal part of Spore that the game would be an incomplete experience without.
Krono: @insanejedi: DRM isn't an aspect of the game. Unless you can make an argument that Securom is an intregal part of Spore that the game would be an incomplete experience without.
Posted 01/06/09 at 10:57am
insanejedi: It's asking the government to regulate aspects of a game. Their just going to use this as a backdoor to regulate other aspects.
insanejedi: It's asking the government to regulate aspects of a game. Their just going to use this as a backdoor to regulate other aspects.
Posted 01/06/09 at 10:53am
Krono: @insanejedi: DRM = trade practice, Violence in games = speech. I'm not seeing the similarity here.
Krono: @insanejedi: DRM = trade practice, Violence in games = speech. I'm not seeing the similarity here.
Posted 01/06/09 at 10:40am
insanejedi: Guys, Regulation of DRM is fudementally the same as regulating violence in games...
insanejedi: Guys, Regulation of DRM is fudementally the same as regulating violence in games...
Posted 01/06/09 at 10:13am
sortableturnip: He's in full swing now, asking for all expenses paid by the Florida Bar.
sortableturnip: He's in full swing now, asking for all expenses paid by the Florida Bar.
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:51am
sortableturnip: @ Simonbob: isn't it better to read the comments, LOL wise?
sortableturnip: @ Simonbob: isn't it better to read the comments, LOL wise?
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:41am
SimonBob: You could've mentioned it's close to the bottom, although it's good to know he's actually got an okay golf swing.
SimonBob: You could've mentioned it's close to the bottom, although it's good to know he's actually got an okay golf swing.
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:41am
PHX Corp: @Sourtable T JT's brain acts like a cookoo clock, It never stops Cookooing
PHX Corp: @Sourtable T JT's brain acts like a cookoo clock, It never stops Cookooing
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:23am
sortableturnip: In his latest filing, JT claims he is still admitted to practice as an attorney in the Southern District of Florida: http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2007/09/04/pardon-our-appearance.aspx?pg=3&view=threaded
sortableturnip: In his latest filing, JT claims he is still admitted to practice as an attorney in the Southern District of Florida: http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2007/09/04/pardon-our-appearance.aspx?pg=3&view=threaded
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:13am
SimonBob: Or the falsified usernames of gaming company CEOs. :P
SimonBob: Or the falsified usernames of gaming company CEOs. :P
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:07am
Alevan: Yeah, he doesn't use the shoutbox... then again, he doesn't like to confront his problems head on. He hides behind the "law"
Alevan: Yeah, he doesn't use the shoutbox... then again, he doesn't like to confront his problems head on. He hides behind the "law"
Posted 01/06/09 at 09:05am
SimonBob: It's funny, Alevan, I've never seen him respond to anything in the shoutbox. I think he's got tunnel vision.
SimonBob: It's funny, Alevan, I've never seen him respond to anything in the shoutbox. I think he's got tunnel vision.
Copyright © 2007 ECA. All rights reserved.
Game Politics and Game Politics logo are trademarks of the ECA.
Game Politics and Game Politics logo are trademarks of the ECA.
Comments
It's a bad sign when your sig is longer than your post =p
Good to hear they want the parents involved. I can't speak for how easy it is to get around parental controls (never had to deal with them), but it's good to make sure parents won't be naive as to think simply putting them up is enough. I'm especially glad to see Microsoft recognizes the problem and is helping law enforcement track people down, although I am a bit concerned over the potential invasion of privacy. Granted, I keep my hands fairly clean, so I personally don't have anything to worry about, but mistakes do happen.
---------------------------------
So speak I, some random guy.
I can see the headlines, "Camperz want ur n00bz"
Good on MS for helping out the police though.
Yeah, glad to see also that law bodies aren't ignoring "where the kids go" when it comes to this. Also, that they are trying to get the parents involved.
The way i see it, if 'kids' (as all these things tend to generalize anyone under the age of 17) know how to circumvent parental controls, than they probably can tell the difference between fantasy and reality too. Not that OTHER people will be able to tell that.
and as the parental controls come out, they find ways around them...
Sorry but i have to disagree there... cant you password protect a 360's parental lock?
It aint easy to get software to run on a 360 to hack a password (dictionary attack etc) let alone young kids doing it.
In short think of a decent password. How about a random string of numbers and letters. a kid CANT just guess like a 10 character string randomly made up. you cant just 'get around that' as far as im aware.
If you protect the parental control features with a password like 'password', 'secret', 'xbox', or 'insert name of family member here' then yeah, kids will get around it. but dont sit there and try and tell me that if i chose the password 'ab67fjgu432hHbB' that a kid can just 'guess' that or 'get around it'.
GRR i wish some people would ACTUALLY look at technology instead of taking a glance and being scared to get involved. A little parental knowledge goes A LONG way.
You know, if a kid is that fucking resilient and skilled as to get past a code system, I say they've earned a little GTA. -_- Bleh.
-If shit and bricks were candy and tits, we'd all be livin' large. For information on games and psychology, look up: Jonathan Freedman(2002)Block & Crain(2007)Grand Theft Childhood, by Harvard Medical School researchers Larry Kutner and Cheryl Olson
I'd like to bring up a creepier, but far more real threat.
People who sound like pedophiles and sexual predators on XBOX Live. Honestly, some people need to not own mics. I'm sick of playing COD4 or BF:BC and hearing people who sound like peewee herman. It cresp the fuck out of me.
Also, why are their so many kids playing those games anyway? Everytime I get on a COD4 map, there's someone on my team who's seven. Where are the fucking parents on that?
"Where are the fucking parents on that?"
- Clubbin'.
- Just glad the kid is in the other room being resonably quiet. (#1!)
- Buying crack.
- Watching golf.
- Making another rugrat.
- (in summary) Anything but raising their spawn.
(Unless, of course the kid is well-mannered and just playing - perhaps the kid is mature enough from proper parenting . . . but I don't hold my breath.)
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
Or
- As long as the kid does well in school, stays out of trouble, and behaves reasonably well for a kid, the parents don't care what the kid plays or what he says over the internet.
-Gray17
Eh, anything's possible, I guess. But consider me skeptical on the existance of such a creature. I think there was a pic of one once, but it may have been a costume. . . or was that sasquatch?
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
Look at it this way. A few of my teenage cousins play games on Xbox. If they keep their grades up, and don't get into trouble, they're allow to play games. If they get into trouble or their grades drop, their parents take away the controllers (it's diffcult to play Xbox when the controllers are locked up in the trunk of dad's car at work)
After that it's just a matter of them minding their language when their parents are in earshot. So I can easily imagine kids that are raised reasonably well, but still tend to be asses on Xbox live.
-Gray17
True, but irrelevant. Teens are ostensibly smart enough to not get predated. Also, Austin was referring to 7 yo's.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
The same general principal applies to pretty much any kids. Teenage or not, and after that it's a matter of "do you think your kid can handle the game."
Plus as I generally don't play Xbox games, I've got no idea whether or not the 7 year old thing is hyberbole or not, so I just went ahead with the examples I know of directly, which is a few cousins of mine that are over 10.
-Gray17
Let me assure you that this story is, in fact, not hyperbole. I have actually been on servers recently with kids as young as seven years old. When a child is too immature to say anything insulting other than doodie head (direct quote from when an older gamer told the kid to stop blocking the fucking doorway on bog) then there's something amiss.
Ten is in that gray area where I think it should be the parent's discretion. Of course, most parents don't do anything these days, so you can't really count on their discretion to be worth a damn thing. But playing a game online at seven years old, especially when it's COD4 or GTAIV? That's just idiotic.
It's not the specific story I suspected of being hyperbole, but rather the implication that the majority of kids on Xbox Live were 7 or so. Also I'd say that most parents still do plenty these days. We just don't hear about it because people doing their job right doesn't make the news, people screwing it up does. The parents rasing their kids are too busy making ends meet, and rasing their kids to be spending time trumpeting that fact.
Returning to the subject at hand, assuming that in at least some of the cases you've seen the parents are paying attention; I suppose it's a matter of what they figure their kid can handle. If they think the kid can handle the internet, and they think the kid can handle the game, it's natural they'd figure that their kid could handle the two combined. The problems with children and violent imagery in my experience is usually the kids being frightened by it, not it warping the kids.
Note I'm not saying all kids being asses on Xbox live are receiving otherwise good parenting. I'm just saying it's a possiblity that shouldn't be so derogatorily dismissed, particularly in the case of the ten and up crowd.
-Gray17
So if your seven year old did all those things, you'd let him play COD4 and GTAIV online? PLEASE NOTE THE AGE.
Me? No. However my point was that the presence of kids does not necessarily mean that their parents are being utterly irresponsible as was being suggested. Parents thinking their kids can handle fake violence is not the same as parents paying absolutely no attention to the kid.
-Gray17
I'm pretty cynical that this is a real problem. It sounds like a couple of incidents have been blown out of proportion. I can barely get a real conversation started on xbox live, much less coax someone into meeting in person.
I really doubt pedophiles are out buying 360's and Gold accounts just to try and pick up some naive kids. Wouldn't they have a better success rate on the internet than on xbox live? It seems to me that they would be wasting their time trying to pick up kids in between rounds of COD4.
I would imagine that child predators use Xbox and the like as a piece of the stalking toolkit. Like meeting likely kids on Xbox, then simply saying, hey why don't we chat on IM or Myspace after the game? That's just my guess, of course.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
Wait is that a Genesis controller in that picture?!
Sweet Jesus, it is!
I've been inspired to dig my sega genesis out and play some sonic. And after that I may be playing my dreamcast.
Seriously though, Fox news, let's see you splurge on newer clipart and graphics please. You look like idiots.
I'm sure their crack team of undercover reporters risked life and limb to infiltrate a garage sale and pick up that controller for $1 before fleeing the scene by jumping into their news van as they sped away.
"ZOMG look! We found an early child psyche destroying weapon! Look! It's a first generation! It says right here: 'Genesis'."
-Loudspeaker
"Volume helps to get a point across but sharp teeth are better."
maybe you can play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 online with a buddy now
Anyone remember the days when all your parents told you was that if some guy in an unmarked van offered you candy you should run the other way? Things got a bit more complicated regarding child predators.
-"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." -Sir Winston Churchill
Too bad they didn't tell me I would grow up to look like that guy.
But seriously people need to be more active in parenting their children instead of waiting for something bad to happen then trying to blame everyone else but themselves for not looking after them.
DarksouldragonX: yea, it was. I noticed it too.
I guess Nintendo has this covered so parents shouldn't complain, but Nintendo is at the same time making their online setup revolve around child predators. But I somehow doubt it. Nintendo is very Japanese in its practices and values. The Japanese aren't much into online gaming as Western players, so I think Nintendo is playing damage control on their gimped interface by saying it's to protect the kids, when it's more of an inclination of how Iwata and the console engineers think in terms of the Japanese audience and bringing it to the West.
Nintendo's quirky selection of games has proven to be popular for North Americans, but not its quirky way of interacting with people in the games. Friend codes are not a good solution to keeping predators away. It's almost like giving a different phone number for every person that wants to call you. It provides no universal nicknames, not even a friends list. You can't talk or even send text messages through the online interface. What's the point of online gaming if you undercut the social benefits that separate online gaming from playing alone?
Once again: Fear of Internet Predators Largely Unfounded.
"But we humans have a well-established cognitive bias that overestimates threats against our children, so it all makes sense."
What a professional way to present the, "WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" group-think.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
@Dennis
Thank you for not useing the term "Pedophile" incorrectly this time.
I have found the world's best parental control.
It's called the power button.
Um, as far as I know there's no way around parental controls.
Anyone else find this hypocritical?
When a 14-17 yr olds commits a fellony they are usually charged as an adult. I have read so many cases where 14-17 year olds who commit murder, arson, assult, etc etc are chaged as adults.
But as soon as someone else makes them the victim they are children? there not even consider teenagers.
@MonkeyPeaches: Well there's a way around ANY security measure if you try hard enough or have the right access but you'd really need a computer or modded console to try & bypass the security on an account, the only thing you can do on a console now is basic brute force cracking & a manually done one at that.
It's been a while since I investigated the security on the 360 but if memory serves you can create child accounts & designate the rights for online presence, chat, video, accessible hours etc. Then you can give the adult account (basically the administrator account to the child's user account) a controller based password consisting of I think 8 keystrokes made up from left trigger, left bumper, right trigger, right bumper, a, b, x & y, that makes what, 16,777,216 possible passwords (I may be wrong, math is something I suck at but it's shitloads any way you look at it).
Think of how easily bored a child gets, is it going to have the patience to make a table of every possible combination then methodically go through them, ticking off each one as they go to make sure they don't repeat one? Unless a child is REALLY lucky, is a supergenius or you've been crap at securing your password by writing it down on a big bit of paper & keeping it next to the TV, the kid is going to be busted LONG before he/she/it can be lured into a van with the promise of free candy & then raped by the evil internet.
And thats just a 360, with a real OS you can secure it properly!
The Media got it right for once... good for them!