Ask Parry!
Special reports
Ask Parry! is a service where Parry Aftab, noted online safety and privacy expert, and Executive Director of WiredSafety.org can answer your questions about online safety, privacy and security, and help you with problems you encounter online. Anything from help finding a safe chat room for your teens, to knowing what to do if the item you bought at auction doesn't arrive as promised.
The first thing to do is enlist your child's help. Ask them if they have a site and profile. If they refuse to share this information with you, you can still do some searching on your own. While there is no guarantee that you will find your child's Web site or profile without their cooperation, you can check and see if your child is listed anywhere and remove the information if they are.
Here are a few other Web site search locations you should check in the U.S:
Finding people: www.1800ussearch.com
Looking up people and businesses: www.databaseamerica.com or www.switchboard.com
National Telephone Book-White Page: www.yahoo.com/search/people
Also, if your child has ICQ, check their directories and profiles at www.icq.com.
If they use AOL's instant messenger, or another instant messaging service, or any free e-mail service, check their member directories.
And if your ISP or online service offers member directories or profiles, search for your child, using their screen name or your or their e-mail addresses.
Assuming they are cooperating with you, you might want to enlist your children's help-if you think they won't add themselves to these site directories when you're not looking.
Last but not least, you should search for your child's name at the major search engines by putting their whole name in quotes. (For example, "Parry Aftab" will search for me, as opposed to every "Parry" and every "Aftab" mentioned that might appear separately in the search engine.) And if someone is posting about them, or they are using their real names in newsgroups, you can also search Deja News (www.dejanews.com) for their name, also using the same "quotes" search format.
In the U.S. there are certain laws regarding sites allowing children to post this information online if the child is under the age of thirteen. (You can read about COPPA at our site in our Law section.) But usually merely by writing as the parent, the sites will remove the information or offending site.
