Virtual Schooling

No action is foolproof, but there are steps students can take to protect themselves online and lessen the chance of becoming the victim of unsolicited messages:

Never give out personal information, passwords, PIN numbers etc.
Remember that personal information includes your name, age, e-mail address, the names of family or friends, your home address, phone number (cell or home) or school name.
Choose a user name that your friends will recognize but strangers won't (such as a nickname used at school). This will help you to identify yourself to friends and lets you know who is trying to communicate with you.
Do not submit or post pictures of yourself to any website, including your own. These can easily be copied and posted to any other website.
Passwords are secret. Never tell anyone your password except your parents or guardians.
Do not respond to "spam" or unsolicited e-mail.
Set up e-mail and instant messenger accounts with your parents.
Do not respond to, or engage in, cyber abuse.

Most teenagers visit websites to communicate with friends and meet new people. MySpace.com is a social networking site, one of many that has become increasingly popular with students. MySpace allows students to create a personal website (for free), post pictures, add comments and use it to meet "online friends." The website often includes their full name, telephone number, address, school name and a picture. YouTube is a similar site dedicated to hosting video clips.

About 68 million people reportedly use MySpace, and millions more use other social networking sites such as friendster.com, livejournal.com, nexopia.com and facebook.com. According to MySpace, 22 percent of its users are younger than 18.

The danger lies in that the Internet is vast, public and constantly expanding. And, if students have not developed critical thinking skills, are unsupervised or create websites that are not monitored, they can be at risk of unknowingly communicating with predators, spammers or pornographers.

As such sites proliferate, students should be warned not to post identifying information to the site and never to meet someone in person they have met through the site unless an adult accompanies them. And parents should conduct frequent reviews of the site to ensure that identifying information or pictures have not been posted.

MySpace will cooperate in shutting down a site created solely to harass another individual.