Free advice on internet safety and how to prevent cyber bullying on computers and mobile telephones will be offered to Wakatipu parents by a former Queensland detective in the Queenstown Primary School hall tomorrow night.
Police officer turned internet safety consultant Brett Lee, of Brisbane, owner of Internet Education and Safety Services, said this week parents tended to stand back from the internet and technology, perhaps due to lack of knowledge. However, Mr Lee said the issue was about parenting, not information technology and he urged mothers and fathers to take back control.
The Queensland police officer of 22 years pretended to be a child on the internet for five years to arrest predators.
He trained with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's undercover internet team and the Department of Homeland Security's cyber crimes unit, he said.
"I address issues surrounding mainly young people as it comes to them being victims on the internet and also them being perpetrators, as in making bad choices and getting in a lot trouble for doing the wrong thing," Mr Lee said.
"The purpose of my message is to generate conversation and also to get people to start thinking about some of the activity they're engaging in online and how they are engaging online with other people.
"Even though we can't see them on our screen, we are dealing with people who are as real as the people in our community, so the expectations, rights, consequences and responsibilities are going to be exactly the same."
Mr Lee shows his audiences a video of him entering an online chat room as a 13-year-old. A paedophile contacted him in four seconds and took 20 minutes to commit criminal offences, he said.
He said the dangers were a range of criminal offences, ranging from predators exposing young people to pornography, to holding inappropriate conversations with them, which normalised the behaviour for children and drew the sexually excited offender into the child's life.
Other predators wanted to offend against young people in the real world and used technology to get access.
The father of three boys and one girl said parents should trust their instincts and be in control of their children's activity on the internet, as they were parents in every other aspect of their children's lives, as early as possible.
"Every family is different, but I do recommend the internet access needs to be in a public area in the home," Mr Lee said.
"My boys screamed they need their privacy. This isn't about their privacy, it's about removing the privacy of everybody else out in the world.
"I don't want one of six billion people coming into my boy's bedroom and me having no knowledge of it whatsoever."
An offender will ask where the child or teenager is and if the young person is away from parental supervision, the predator will take risks, Mr Lee said.
"That's what I tell parents. They must be that barrier between their kids and the adult world."
Mr Lee's presentation will be held in the school hall, on Thursday, June 23, at 7.30pm.
