New Laws Protect Kids
By Bob McDonnellNew legislation went into effect in Virginia on July 1 that will keep Virginia children safer online.
Virginia law requires sex offenders to register certain information with the Virginia State Police, including their home and work addresses, fingerprints, photos, etc., in our state-of-the-art Sex Offender Registry. (There’s a link to it from our website: www.vaag.com/KEY_ISSUES/PREDATORS/index.html.)
As of July 1, convicted sex offenders are now required by law to also register their e-mail addresses and other online identities like screen names. Additional State Police troopers who regularly verify offenders’ information will start checking online activity also. Just as an offender could return to jail for falsifying an updated photo or employer address, he or she can return to jail for falsifying their online identifiers. This legislation was crafted by our office’s Youth Internet Safety Task Force, and Virginia is the first state to enact such a requirement.
This new information allows our office to work with social networking sites like MySpace.com to track these offenders and block them from interacting with kids on these popular websites. In addition, social networking sites will be able to forward sex offender information to our office for prosecution in Virginia. This new law, and partnership, is “a landmark moment in the history of Internet safety,” in the words of MySpace’s Chief Security Officer Hemu Nigam.
While this new law is a positive step, the battle to keep children safe online will ultimately depend on what parents do at home. As you work to keep your children safe, here are some tips that I recommend:
Place your computer in an area of your home where you can easily supervise your child's Internet activity.
Use parental control technology. (America Online, another member of our Task Force, offers free, customizable parental controls at http://daol.aol.com/safetycenter/parentalcontrols, even if you don’t subscribe to AOL’s services.)
Teach your children to never give personal or financial information over the Internet.
We take the safety of Virginia’s children seriously in the Office of the Attorney General. By working together and staying informed, we can help prevent crime and keep kids safer online.
Click here for Consumer Alert of the Month Archives