Let's take a minute to talk about online safety. The Internet is a great place to chat, do research, and have fun. Despite all its usefulness though, it does have its dark- side. Knowing what and what not to do online can save you a lot of grief!

Parents should know that no one under the age of fourteen is allowed to use our site. While we can't always tell if someone is lying about their age, we try to keep them off our site. If you discover that your child is posing as someone older and using our site, please let us know. Its important to us to help you keep your child safer online. For some great information for parents about Internet safety, visit wiredkids.org and wiredsafety.org.

* If you're under 14, MySpace is not the place for you. Go away. If we find out a user is under 14, we will delete his or her profile. If you're under 14, there are other sites better suited for you. If you see anybody on MySpace who looks or says they are under 14, let us know here.

* Never publicly post in ANY online forum any personally identifiable information. What is personally identifiable information? It's any personal information that could be used to find or identify you in real life. This could be such information as your real name, address, telephone number, cell number, your sports team, health club, or links to websites or other profiles that might give this information away. Even without meaning to, you can give this information away by taking a pic in front of your car with your license plate or home address showing in the photo. This information could be misused to steal your identity, guess your passwords, cyberstalk or harass you or by predators who really want to hurt you.

* While it's fun to meet new people online, always remember that the friends you make online should NEVER replace people you know and are friends with in real life. No matter how often you have chatted with someone or how much you think you know about them, you never really know who you are chatting with online. That cute 21 year old guy may not be cute, may not be 21 and may not be a guy!

* We have all heard the stories about in-person meetings going bad. The simple fact is, people can "be" anyone they choose to be online. Just because they sent you a picture, does not mean it is THEIR picture. Or their picture taken within the last three decades. IF you feel that you must meet someone you are only familiar with from online conversations, be sure you choose to meet them in a VERY PUBLIC PLACE. A busy coffee shop, or shopping mall (near the security guard station) would be a good first step. Meet during the day. And BRING A FRIEND! (or several, preferably big tough sumo wrestler friends.) Do not be afraid to walk away if you feel you have been lied to in anyway. People who have pure motives do not need to lie. Never trust those that do. If you discover they are lying to you, chances are they are lying to others too. Report them. [to report cyberstalking or harassment or learn more about safe meeting techniques, visit wiredsafety.org]

* Don't reply to spam. At best, they go into a black hole and never get to the sender. At worst, you find yourself now on many more lists because they figured out you read the junk e-mail. Invest in a good spam filter or reach out to your ISP and see what anti-spam services they offer. You can also visit wiredsafety.org and learn about the two e-mail trick, creating one for public use and another for your friends. Always use a disposable free e-mail address, like yahoo, hotmail or msn. If you run into problems, you can just stop using it and no one can follow you back to your real address (assuming you followed our tip about not sharing too much personal info.)

* Being online does not make you completely anonymous. There are ways that people use to discover real life information about the people they meet online. Sometimes the code on the top of your e-mail, or used when you post anything online can tell people where you go to school, work or access the Internet. If you are really worried that someone may try and track you back to your offline location, use an anonymizer e-mail or surfing service. And never post from work, unless you want your employer to know what your doing and saying. Many employers reserve the right to monitor all your electronic communications.

* Some people enjoy giving others grief online. If for this reason only, you should never go to an online chatroom, or download public files or email without having a good firewall and an up-to-date anti-virus program installed on your computer. While you're at it, get a good spyware or adware blocker too. There are several free services. Drop by wiredsafety.org to learn more.

* Some hacking programs and spyware can grab your passwords and credit card information. Use a firewall and anti-virus program and update them automatically. Visit wiredsafety.org or the FTC.gov site for more information, and to report any attempt to hack into your account, steal your ID or login information.

* Keep your password a secret. Sharing it can cause you huge problems. And don't use one that's easy for someone to guess, or use a password hint that others who know you might figure out. (Keeping it on a post-it note glued to your monitor at work may not be the best way of storing your e-mail address.) Change it once in a while too. In a similar light, have a secret code word with your real life friends that you chat with online. If you are chatting with someone you think you know, but are suspicious if the person on the other side is really them or not, ask them for the password. If they do not know it, disconnect! (It might be their roommate, office mate, or creepy uncle!)

* Use your head! Many new schemes exist to trick you into giving up your login and password info, especially at your Paypal, bank and e-commerce member pages. If something seems too good to be true, it's not true. Unfortunately, there is a cybersucker born every minute.

* ThinkB4UClick: Never reply to ANY attempt to gain personal or banking information from an email that you did not originate. Don't be hooked by a "phishing" scheme. Phishing is the sending of authentic looking emails that probe you for personal and financial information. They use such come-ons as ?Your account will be closed if you do not respond?, or ?Our computer files were lost and we need to verify your information? or many other variations on that theme. If you receive such an email, ignore it. If you aren't sure if it?s legitimate, exit your e-mail and type the real website address into your browser. Don't even cut and paste it in. If you are still worried about the email's authenticity, call the bank or financial institution supposedly sending the request on the telephone and authenticate your information that way.

* Take5! If you receive something that hurts your feelings, makes you angry or offends you, don't lash out in anger or try to teach them a lesson. Put down the mouse and step away from the computer until you calm down. Think in advance of what you could do for five minutes to help you relax. If you think it needs to be dealt with, MySpace has terms of service. First check and see if the post violates our terms of service. If it does, let us know. If it doesn't, think about whether it's worth your time and energy to worry about it. Arguments online tend to escalate quickly and turn into full cyberwarfare when no one wins. If someone has posted a harassing message about you, or is posing as you online or has stolen your password, we need to know right away. You can also report it to WiredSafety.org and get help from their cyberstalking, cyberbullying and harassment team.

* Don't be naïve!! If someone makes you an offer that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There is no one in Nigeria who is actually going to give you 30 million bucks, and that girl you don't know who just emailed you doesn't want you to watch her webcam because you're cute. No reputable bank, ISP or other online service will EVER ask you for your password via email or instant message or send you a link to their site if there is a "security breach." If someone is making you uncomfortable on email or instant messenger, most programs will let you BLOCK them. You don't have to talk to anyone you don't want to.

* Treat others with respect, and expect the same from them. Don't be obnoxious. Online arguments are known as "flaming." Do not go there. Many times these incidents can escalate into off-line harassment. Harassing people online is against the Terms of Service guidelines of just about every ISP. Do not harass others online. If you do it can get your service revoked. Bad things you say and do online can come back and bite you.

* If you ever feel like you're in real danger from someone online, tell someone you trust and then go directly to your local law enforcement agency. Don't delete the message. Also, a printout won't be enough. The police will need the live communication to check out the headers and other coding to trace the sender or poster.

A little common sense can go a long way online. Keep it safe.

P.S. Most of this was put together with WiredSafety.org's help and is used here with their permission. (ThinkB4UClick and Take5! are two of their programs, and all rights are reserved.) That's the group run by cyberlawyer, Parry Aftab. When she says all rights reserved, she means it!

Learn more about WiredSafety.org!

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

My name is Parry Aftab. I am an Internet privacy and security lawyer . I founded and run the world's largest online safety and help group, WiredSafety.org. You may have seen me on TV ,read one of my books or heard about me in magazines or newspapers on Internet safety issues, especially those impacting kids. I get lots of e-mails and inquiries from parents about all types of Internet risks. Recently, I have been receiving a large number of inquiries from schools, parents, regulators and the media about social-networking websites. I decided that it was important to address parent concerns and answer their questions. Where better to do that than on the most popular of all social-networking sites, MySpace.com?

MySpace.com and other similar sites are designed to allow people to share their creativity, pictures, and information with others. Sometimes people do this to find romance. Sometimes they do it to find friends with similar interest. While this may be okay for adults, it is not okay for kids.

MySpace.com recognizes this, and prohibits anyone under 14 years of age from using their website. Unfortunately, while they may set rules to keep younger kids off the site, they can't prevent kids from lying about their age, pretending to be 14 years of age or older. To address this, MySpace.com has developed special software to review the profiles of their members, to try and find anyone under age, based on information the members post about themselves. It's not perfect, but it does help spot the underage members.

While MySpace.com is doing its best to keep your children from using their website and lying about their age, it's up to parents to do their job too. Parents need to talk with their children about not sharing personal information online. Personal information includes pictures, names and addresses, schools they attend, cell and phone numbers and many other less obvious things, such as the name of their school team, ethnic background and even a mall near your house. (You can learn more about how to talk to your kids and what you should be asking at WiredKids.org or WiredSafety.org. I am an Internet privacy and security lawyer and founded the all-volunteer Wired Safety Group. We can help you if things go wrong online, or you just have questions. We provide information, education and one-to-one help for victims of cyberabuse.)

We at WiredSafety.org are developing a special program just for parents concerned about their kids using social-networking and online dating sites. It will teach you what you need to know about finding out if your child has a profile on one of these sites, how to review them and remove them, if you want to. It will also help you if your child is being cyberbullied using one of these sites or members from these sites, or is cyberbullying others.

The best way to find out if your child has a profile on this or another similar site is to ask them. If you're not sure that your child is being honest with you, you can search MySpace.com using their e-mail address, or by searching for their school. (You click on "search" and enter their email address or full name in the appropriate search box.) If you find that your child has a profile on the website, you should review it. It's amazing how much you can learn about your child by reading their profiles. Does it contain personal information, such as their full name, address or phone numbers? Has your child posted photos? Are they photos of themselves or someone else? Are they sharing poems they write or provocative comments about themselves or others?

If you want the profile removed (you must remove your child's profile if they are under age), contact MySpace.com's parental help staff or contact me at WiredSafety.org. If you want something removed from their profile, you can contact the parental help staff as well. Ultimately, protecting your child is your job. But you have lots of help. At WiredKids.org and WiredSafety.org thousands of volunteers donate their time to helping parents and children surf responsibly and safely. And we will be building a few tutorials here at MySpace.com to help parents and their children understand how to be careful when communicating publicly online.

Ask them why they created the profile. You might learn that they wanted to share their thoughts with others, make new friends or even allow others in their school to get to know them better. But not all of their motives are as noble or safe. Some may be interested in meeting new romantic interests or role-playing inappropriately online. And when a young preteen lies about their age posing as a seventeen year old at the site, that can be a serious problem. Others in their late teens might approach your child thinking they were older. That's bad for everyone.

If you discover that your child is posting provocative comments or inappropriate images online, it's time for the tough talk. The one about stranger dangers and how that cute eighteen year old boy they meet online may not be cute, may not be eighteen and may not be a boy. (Parents of young boys need to understand that their children are equally at risk. About one-third of the cases of Internet sexual exploitation are men exploiting boys.) Our children need to realize that there are real risks relating to meeting strangers offline, including murder. The first confirmed murder victim by an Internet sexual predator was thirteen when she died, three years ago May 2005. The risks are real, not matter how smart, sophisticated or tech savvy your kids are. We recommend the book, "A Girl's Life Online," by Katie Tarbox. We are also developing a few videos for teens teaching them about standard ploys used by Internet sexual predators to lure a young boy or girl into an offline meeting or sexual exploitation situations online.

It's not easy raising children anymore. It is even harder when the parent is expected to be expert in Internet, cell phone and interactive game risks. The good thing is that you're not facing these challenges alone. We're here to help.

Just remember that while your kids may know more than you do about technology, you know more about life. And you are allowed to set the rules and enforce them. You're still the parent! There is software you can install that will record what your kids say and post online. There is even one that will e-mail you reports at work. The ones I like best are made by Spectorsoft, and can be found at software4parents.com or spectorsoft.com. But don't use them just to spy on your kids. Treat them like a security video camera in the corner of a bank. No one views the tapes unless and until there is a break-in. Do the same here. Check the program reports if something goes wrong. It will collect whatever you need for evidence and to help your child if something goes wrong.

Also, check your parental control programs. Many, such as AOL's and MSN's, can block access to social-networking websites or other sites you think are inappropriate for your younger child. There are many other products you can purchase to block sites as well. (Check out software4parents.com to learn about and purchase some of these.) Just remember that the best filter is the one between your children's ears.

If schools are looking for a presentation or program to address their students? posting inappropriate profiles or using these websites while underage or other parent concerns, they should visit WiredSafety.org, WiredKids.org or Teenangels.org. Schools may find many of their students using a particular website. If the students are under 13, please notify MySpace.com's help staff and their profiles will be removed immediately. Working together with schools and parents, we may be able to keep our kids off of website that are inappropriate for young children and teach them to make good choices online and offline.

- from MySpace.com

• http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/misc/safetytips.html

• http://www.myspace.com/misc/tipsForParents.html