Sex predators use of Myspace.com alarms legislator

THIS LEGISLATIVE HEARING NOTHING TO LOL ABOUT

SACRAMENTO - If parents notice that an older MOSS or MOTOS is asking for their child's A/S/L for OLL, they better have a serious F2F with the kid ASAP.

Translation: Members of the same sex and members of opposite sex are using the Internet to seek out childrens' age, sex and location for online love, and parents should speak with their kids face-to-face right now to prevent them from becoming victims.

That was one of several urgent messages a handful of online safety experts gave the Senate Business Professions & Economic Development Committee today at a three-hour hearing designed to inform the public how to keep children safe when using the Internet, even at home.

The experts urged parents to learn the latest lingo in the modern world of teen acronyms. They suggested filtering software to keep pornography off the computer screen. And they implored teenagers to keep personal information off their Web pages on popular sites, namely Myspace.com.

``We're underestimating our youth a lot,'' Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont, said after the hearing. ``We just have to keep one step ahead to keep them safe.''

The committee is not attempting to legislate Internet use in California, Figueroa said, but the hearing comes after multiple reports that sexual predators nationwide are increasingly selecting their victims from teens' personal pages -- where they regularly post pictures of themselves, the name of their school, even cell phone numbers.

bout one in five Internet users between ages 10 through 17 have received unwanted sexual solicitation online, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics cited during the hearing. And 97 percent of the solicitors were strangers.

``The statistics are alarming,'' said Teri Schroeder, president and chief executive of isafe.org, a non-profit foundation that offers Internet safety curriculum to schools.

The hearing opened with video clips broadcast from an investigative report that aired on Dateline NBC that showed how predators locate and lure children online.