Chad Meli of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) said even preventing children from watching pornography was no guarantee they would not become victims of child sex offenders.
Speaking to FMT, Chad said sex offenders could still get to their children via social media.
“For instance, applications such as Facebook may be used. Facebook has privacy settings in place to help protect one’s identity, but because of the vast audience that it hosts, there are so many ways perpetrators can get to your child.
“Then you have the chat applications, and social media applications like Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat – the list goes on.
“Parents need to keep up if they want to understand how sex offenders operate and how they can protect their child,” he said when met after the launch of the Global Study on Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism held at Novotel Kuala Lumpur.
“You cannot afford to say you don’t know how to change the WiFi password at home. You also have to learn how to restrict your child from excessive usage of digital devices.
“If you decide that your child should have a mobile phone, you also have the authority to remove that privilege should your child break the rules.
“What I do is, whatever application they want to have on their phone, I will learn up the application and download it first, before I allow them to download it on their phone.”
On another note, Chad also encouraged parents to “stalk” their children on social media outlets such as Facebook.
“Facebook has an age restriction, but not many follow this age restriction. Some of these parents are at fault because it is they who allow their child on Facebook.
“I told my children, if they want to have Facebook or any other social media application, they have to be my friend on these applications.
“In this context, ‘stalking’ is necessary to keep track of who they interact with, who they are exchanging information with and what they post on social media that could attract the wrong attention.”
He warned internet users that information such as photographs posted online would stay forever.
“You cannot remove them from the internet. Once you put it up there, it is there forever.
“If you think people cannot download a photo from your Facebook account because of privacy settings, you are wrong. As long as they can see it on their computer screens, all they need to do is to screen-capture that photo or take a photo with their phones.
“And just when you think your child is safe from strangers online, even without revealing an address, a perpetrator only needs to find the right topic of discussion to persuade your child to send a photograph.
“If the photograph was taken with your location settings switched on, it is loaded with location information that is accurate right up to a 20ft radius.”
The Global Study on Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism report revealed that one method used to sexually exploit children in travel and tourism is through online grooming.
Online grooming, also known as cyber enticement or online solicitation, is the process by which child sex offenders target children using the internet, largely via social media sites, to select and recruit children for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Grooming refers to the means by which a child sex offender gradually gains the confidence and trust of a child so that later, the offender can get the child to agree to sexual contact.
“This is why we have not only been educating adults, but also children, teaching them how to identify suspicious acts or possible sex offenders.
“There are countless ways these perpetrators can get to your child. If you think keeping your child at home after 10pm is good enough, what about the phone, laptop, computer, iPad or tablet that your child owns?
“Any device they have that can access the internet will put them in a vulnerable position and expose them to child sex exploitation,” he said.