OK U NEED TO LISTEN THIS IS SCARY!

[stickyj]

OK mums this could be really important.

DS 11 has been looking at a blog site SHANE DAWSON.

He's going to bed now but has been muttering about a website that I saw him looking at. I thought he was wecamming his cousin but in fact it's a website called OMEGLE.

I just logged on, without a webcam and actually thought he was joking. He has a webcam set up to talk to his friends and cousins. NOOO..he can talk to random strangers on line and chooose to see them/they can see him or apparently they disconnect if they see he is a child1!!!

wtf is going on!!!

I logged on and a random stranger talked to me. I was asked how old I was and was I a male? To be fair, it might have been a decent guy at this time of night looking to "speak" to a lady but it freaked me out.

Can I ask you all to try this webiste out (without webcam or with if you're brave)to see how scary this is and how easy it is for our kids to access. I am usually in bed around 9pm and smallest one is nearly 12. He often is awake after me. His dad quite often crashes to sleep and we thought we had the policing stuff sorted. His brother s a compter geek and even he didn't know about this site.

According to our computer, you can't even type bum or tits or sex in now

Her DD's are on FB swearig etc all the time but she doesn't police them and doesn't know what they're saying

Well then, that's her look out. My dd is only 7, so has limited internet time, with me or dh sitting next to her. In years to come, she will be very closely monitored & we will have high internet/pc security.

I don't think anyone called you a troll, nor did they call you a crap parent. They are just pointing out you need stronger internet controls.

And seeing how far you can get what, exactly? Are you trying to get someone to admit they want a meeting/contact/sexual contact with a minor? Because then what will you do?

TBH, you sound angry, rightly so I guess. But the only people you need to be angry at are yourself & your dh. For not monitoring your ds properly!

And getting your older DS to do the internet controls...why don't you learn to do it, then you will know better when it has been 'breeched' as it were.

nearly 12 is not a child

Really? Not an adult tho,. so what is he?

7 & 2 & yes.

And will continue to do so (yes, at 12 & beyond) because they are vulnerable & too young to realise the dangers.

Really, I will wait with baited breath when you come on here with teen problems. I will wait for you to sit patiently by all your children, every minute of the day when they are on the internet. I was only trying to alert everyone to this particular website and to the fact that I thought we had been careful enough to block what we could and should.

If your kids are little now, they wil learn and quote stuff you won't like in the secondary playgrounds upwards, live with it. I was talking about a website which I was not aware of, and which is now blocked by my computer literate DS17. Are you all aware that my DS17 has blocked MN for being on the "naughty" list and that I have now to get the password off him? There's a big difference between MN and sites that actively encourage your kids aged 12 to talk to strangers. According to the controls you want me to exercise and be a better parent, I now have to ask my DS 17 to put in his password to allow this post.

I have read posts on MN which many people wwould consider innappropriate.

12 and too young to consider the dangers, you have no idea.

12 yrs old - I know kids that are carers at this age. They are not little kids any more unless they are made that way. My DS will still have a cuddle,the only one of the four of them but he's growing up. At scghool, do you think they treat them like kids anymore? It's a tough worldout there and you can't baby them.

Am going to bed. No2 ds (17) still up. Will have to get him to write hios password down for me to enable me to go on MN tomorrow, such a bed of iniquity!!

Mumsnet is not for kids. Yes some of the content is inappropriate for kids - duh!

Any site which encourages direct interaction between posters is a danger for children. It's that simple. But you have to sit with them and discuss it and the motivation behind the words so they learn to differentiate between someone who wants to chat about football for example, and something less innocent.

You've been given a bit of a rough ride here - I think MN generally is tough on those who use text speak (because most of us find it intensely irritating).

There is a lot worse on the Internet - and it is shocking if you are not aware of what's out there. I am and few things shock me these days sadly. But that knowledge means I can equip my children to be aware and careful online.

I think you are preaching to the converted OP, and instead of ranting and warning, you should be asking some of the very computer-savvy types fort he best ways of filtering and restricting your son's access to the internet.
I am 50, have teens and was ignorant about the whole interweb and access malarky.
So I learnt.
Now I teach this stuff in school to 11 year olds.
Running around squealing 'OMG! OMG!' is confusing and unhelpful.
Stay calm and get more organised about who is communicating what and where and with whom.

thanks to all but you can hacve a go at me if you like I dont mind

I wasn't very nice to yuou

In my opinion you are acting very silly

you do not sound 21 let alone 50

if you have internet in your house and you allow your chidren on it then you should be aware of ho to keep them safe and what kind of shit there is out there

telling us to go on the site is silly too

we dont need to, we already keep our chioldren safe

and pretending to be a child

oh come on, that is purile

and who mentioned the program big brother, thankyou, I'm thinking of allowing dd1 a laptop,sounds like just the thing I need

oh sticky, you asked their ages

10,5 and 3 and they all use the internet

and just a tiny little aside

triple pachyderm is supposed to be easy to work out

triple/trinity pachyderm/rhino it was someone else that came up with it (sorry cant remember who)

I'm off to change back

a friend of mine has just developed this www.SuperviseAndProtect.com

If the link works..............

only about half way through this thread but why are you all being so horrible to the OP? she's just learned something pretty horrible and is trying to protect you lot from learning the same...

If she's unhappy about the site, she should contact the police. They have specialists who pretend to be children online to trap groomers and the like.
If the OP is going to bed before her son, either the father takes some responsibility over monitoring what's going on, or the child comes off the internet.
She's allowed him to have a Facebook account, although he's 11. Even though that resulted in problems, my bet is that he still has an illegal account.
He mentioned this site twice to her, she thought he was making it up and so he must have taken her indifference for agreement that it was acceptable.
He's playing 'bang bang' games, are they age appropriate or is he used to the idea that there is no difference between himself and his 17 YO brother and his dad?
Why not set up different accounts on the computer so that your password protected log in has different security settings to his log in? Then you can have mumsnet and he is safe from bumsex?
It's not us being horrible Aitch, the OP is panicking and clueless about what's possible on the internet. Instead of learning how she can fix the problems, she wants an invasion of a dodgy website by mummies in disguises so we can gawp and be shocked in turn.
We know this crap is out there, we protect or children against it. Some methods are more effective than others.

i guess that it must be really, really difficult, though, with older teens in the house. i'm only basing this on the tremendous backslide that has taken place here between pfb and nsc, and they're both still under five.

sticky, you are very patronising!

I will wait for you to sit patiently by all your children, every minute of the day when they are on the internet

I already do & will do until I feel my daughters are able to understand the dangers of using sites such as you suggested. I will certainly know what they are looking at, at 12! They don't like it, they don't get internet/pc access!

And I was suggesting that you take control of the pc security (Ie have the passwords etc) and not rely on your older dc. I didn't suggest you ask his permission to post!

You can then undo the block for your duration of internet time & reinstate when you have finished!

Nothing compares to parental supervision. And there are a huge variety of sites out there a lot worse than you have suggested here, so I don't need to take your word for it. I will do what I feel is right for my children & if that is continued internet supervision well into their teens, so be it!

12 and too young to consider the dangers, you have no idea

Still very much a child. If he isn't aware of the dangers, (as most aren't) he still needs watching online.

I do have an idea, I am around older kids than that who are not aware, hell my sister thinks it's cool to invite all sorts of strangers to be her friend on social networking sites where her address is public, where there are pics of her kids & she is 38!

She should know better, your ds doesn't!

It's a tough worldout there and you can't baby them.

Checking their internet history, keeping an eye on what they see isn't baby-ing them. It is looking out for their best interests & making sure they don't get into trouble, see what they shouldn't!

I don't really understand the hysteria about this from the OP. Surely by now everyone knows that there are inappropriate websites and that it is a bad idea to allow children to go on chat sites?
And why push people to put their children on to see what happens? I am pretty sure everyone believes you - they don't need to use their children as guinea pigs to see if anyone takes the bait.
And in relation to pretending to be a child, bad bad idea. The police tend to take a bit of a dim view of this sort of internet vigilantism - they have their own specially trained officers to do this sort of "fishing" and a lot of resources are put into this. People going off on little frolics of their own don't help at all. If something happens and you have a concern then then best thing to do is to take precautions of your own and, if appropriate report it. If everyone took these precautions it would actually make the police's job a lot easier - what won't make it easier is someone with no knowledge about these things getting involved in some sort of entrapment exercise.
And I am a criminal lawyer and have worked on cases of this type so I am not just making this up!

stickyj, would you let your children wander about the street going into strangers houses with no supervision? Course not. You need to set the pc up somewhere you can all see it, that way you can see what they are accessing.

And you are being over the top in your defence, instead of getting huffy why not take some of the advice that's been given?

I have just found out that my daughter has been using omegle (she told a friend about it and her mum called me) and I'm appalled that a website which actively promotes "talk to strangers" can even operate - I must be really naive but is this not wrong on every level??? I'm well aware of chat rooms and I know that our kids are vulnerable online but really - encouraging them to do the very thing we tell them not to do from the minute they can talk??? How is it not illegal - and who exactly can you report this stuff to? And where do they advertise themselves??

I am sorry but nearly 12 isn't old enough to be unsupervised on internet.