TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Social Media Crime

  • Yet another Connecticut Creeper

    Yet another Connecticut Creeper

    MySpace Link Yields Arrest:

    From the state that brought you such ‘luminaries’ as Scott Shefelbine and David Leonard comes the story of one Christopher Griswold.

    He’s a 21-year-old male from the Constitution State who caught by a 12-year-old girl’s mother trying to lure the 12-year-old for sex over MySpace.

    Region 10 School Superintendent Alan Beitman had some great advice for parents that I’m sure will fall on deaf ears.

    “Parents need to be sure their computer is in a place that’s visible” so they can keep some control over their children’s activities online, Beitman said. “They don’t have to sit with their children — just walk by the computer once in a while.”

    By the way, Connecticut, how is all that new MySpace legislation working for you?

  • IP addresses close but no cigar

    IP addresses close but no cigar

    Want To Protect Kids On MySpace? IP Addresses Are The Answer:

    The short answer is no.

    The author of the article takes MySpace to task for their pointless new safety measures. He also suggests that instead of giving your child’s e-mail address to MySpace to keep them from it, he suggests giving your IP address instead.

    I think that’s a great suggestion, but it’s just as flawed as the e-mail plan.

    There are sites and software out there called anonymizers which easily mask your IP address, making any IP block useless.

    Whatever block MySpace can think of, kids and predators have already thought of a way around it.

    Actual parental involvement is the best line of defense in my book.

  • Canadian child porn charges

    Canadian child porn charges

    Man admits to possessing child pornography, pursuing teens online:

    26-year-old Ian Stuart Johnson of Calgary, Alberta, Canada pleaded guilty to child porn charges. It seems that Johnson would lure underage girls over the Canadian social site Nexopia offering them money and alcohol.

    Every time a Nexopia user would complain about Johnson they would shut down his account only to have him open a new one.

    The prosecutor said all of the communications Johnson had was with females who reside in Calgary and were between 14 and 18 years old.

    The correspondence, which occurred under the user names satellite_eye, Secureca, Coca-cola55 and dmwarehouse – all Johnson’s – occurred between August 2002 and February 2005 and elicited several complaints from other Nexopia users, prompting site owner Timo Ewalds to terminate the man’s accounts one by one.

    While I’m glad that this scumbag is being put away I wonder why it is that you don’t hear about the Canadian government putting pressure on these sites. Maybe they actually think it’s a parent’s job to protect their children.

    What a novel concept.

  • Child advocate scoffs at MySpace. Scoffs, I tell you.

    Child advocate scoffs at MySpace. Scoffs, I tell you.

    Children’s Advocacy Group Scoffs at New MySpace Security Measures:

    Robert Fellmeth is the director of the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego. He’s not happy with the new proposed security measures that MySpace will be putting in place.

    I’m just concerned that parents will get a false sense of security that this is all taken care of because they’re handling it — and I don’t think they can handle it.

    He also has some advice for you.

    Fellmeth says parents need to be the first line of defense in monitoring children’s Internet use.

    You don’t send your kids sown a dark alley alone. Why should the internet be any different?

  • Stickam still flies under the radar

    Stickam still flies under the radar

    Teens turn to sites without monitoring:

    This article from a local Arizona news outlet brings up a great point.

    While soccer moms and politicians have their panties in a wad over MySpace, no one is paying attention to the more dangerous site, in my opinion, Stickam.

    Stickam is an unmonitored webcam chat site. To the unenlightened, that means that anybody of any age with a webcam can go on Stickam and basically show whatever they want.

    The site states that nudity will get you banned, but think about it. Who is really going to complain about nudity, since that’s pretty much what a lot of people are going there hoping to find?

    Further proof that politicians are clueless.

  • NY husband and wife MySpace rapists indicted

    NY husband and wife MySpace rapists indicted

    Queens couple used 2 Internet teen girls for sex, prosecutors say:

    22-year-old Sophie Soto and her husband, 31-year-old Julio Rojas, have been arrested for an assortment of charges. I’ll let the article explain the travesties they’ve committed…

    The sordid saga began in late 2006, when Sophie Soto, 22, used the MySpace social networking site to contact one of the girls, prosecutors said Monday in a statement. Soto told the girl that she was an 18-year-old virgin who had sexual relations with girls and was planning to have sex with a boy but was nervous and wanted the girl to be with her, they said.

    The girl wrote back to Soto and said she would be there and would take a friend along, and their relationship developed through telephone and Internet instant-message conversations, prosecutors said.

    When the girls showed up at Soto’s Queens apartment in January 2007, she liquored them up and took them into a bedroom, where she sexually abused them before her husband, Julio Rojas, 31, had sexual intercourse with all three, District Attorney Richard Brown said.

    Later that night, the couple took the girls, who were under 15 but were given fake identification cards, to a Manhattan strip club, where Soto and an exotic dancer dragged them on stage, slipped their clothes off and made them have oral sex with patrons, the district attorney said.

    Together, the pair face a 56-count indictment including charges of rape, sexual abuse, and using a child in a sexual performance.

    While the ultimate responsibility for these crimes ultimately lays with the multiple rapist scumbags that did this to these poor girls, it still has to be asked.

    Where in the hell were these girls’ parents?

    Why aren’t the attorneys general looking into that?

  • MySpace caves to pressure for new security measures

    MySpace caves to pressure for new security measures

    MySpace Agrees to New Safety Measures:

    First, let me hit you with just the first paragraph from the AP article that’s making the rounds about MySpace’s proposed new safety measures.

    Under mounting pressure from law enforcement and parents, MySpace agreed Monday to take steps to protect youngsters from online sexual predators and bullies, including searching for ways to better verify users’ ages.

    The fact that parents are pressuring MySpace is a joke. If parents were actually parenting, I would say more than half the stories on this site wouldn’t have happened.

    Here are some of the things MySpace said they will do for lax parents. Ok, I made up the lax parents part.

    Under the agreement, profiles for users under age 16 will be set to private so no strangers can get information from their profile; users can block anyone over 18 from contacting them; and people over 18 cannot add anyone under 16 as a friend in their network unless they have their last name or their e-mail address.

    All of these can be circumvented by the underage user if the parents aren’t paying attention.

    Another new feature will be the following…

    MySpace said it is in the process of creating a database where parents can submit children’s e-mail addresses to prevent their children from setting up profiles.

    And it only takes your kid about a minute to set up another e-mail address that you don’t know about.

    In my opinion, age verification won’t work either, even if you need a credit card to sign up with MySpace. First of all, MySpace will never do that because their userbase will plummet. Secondly, it wouldn’t take much for a kid to slide the credit card out of mom or dad’s wallet, use it to sign up on MySpace, then slide back unnoticed.

    There is no greater security measure than good parenting.

    Thanks to Bay for the link.

  • Way to stay current

    Way to stay current

    More Details Emerge In Myspace Suicide Case:

    Sometimes the media cracks me up. Take for instance this article by the local Fox affiliate in Kansas City about the Megan Meier case dated 1/10/08.

    The Washington Post reports that someone established a Web site a few weeks ago to degrade Megan Meier’s character. The site has since been taken down, and no one knows who set it up.

    Wrong.

    First of all, the website, the infamous Megan Had it Coming, is still up and secondly, Encyclopedia Dramatica already admitted to the hoax. I posted about it here over a month ago, as did a lot of other bloggers.

    Get with the program.

  • 37-year-old arrested for meeting to have sex with 12-year-old

    37-year-old arrested for meeting to have sex with 12-year-old

    Edward Oberwise

    Hillsborough County man met girls on MySpace in order to have sex:

    Mr. Clean, over there, is 37-year-old Edward Oberwise of Hillsborough County, Florida. He’s been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 12-year-old girl he met on MySpace.

    Police were tipped off by the girl’s 14-year-old friend, who told her parents.

    So let’s hear it, sex offender defenders. Please tell me how you think that this man who was 25 years older than his victim was not at fault.

  • Indiana doesn’t get it either

    Indiana doesn’t get it either

    Law could ban sex offenders from Myspace:

    Just like his cohorts from other states, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter just doesn’t get it. Like his other counterparts, he is proposing legislation that is supposed to keep registered sex offenders off of MySpace and other social networking sites.

    Carter says convicted sex offenders will be required to give police their usernames and emails at the same time they register with their basic information like where they live.

    As usual, Attorney General Carter doesn’t address the issues of registered sex offenders using different e-mails and usernames that they gave police or sex offenders who haven’t been caught yet. Not to mention clueless parents who let their children roam the internet unchecked. Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Those clueless parents are also voters.