Parents

Due to the high number of issues arising from children (and predators) using the Internet along with other issues related to our children and the Internet we strive to stay ahead of the curve ball and the new technology available to our children. If you have concerns regarding the number of hours your child is spending on the Internet or wondering what your child is doing while on the Internet we can likely provide you with information that will help you resolve the questions and concerns you may have.

"Not everyone watches the news at night. Not everyone reads the paper. Not everyone even reads news online. But it seems like everyone is on MySpace," says Stephanie Slater, a police spokeswoman in Boynton Beach, Fla. Her department's MySpace page gets more hits than its general Web site does.

Yet for all that MySpace reveals in its 200 million profiles, it's just one of innumerable online avenues.

ways to hunt for clues not only on obvious social-networking zones like Facebook and MySpace but also the likes of Xanga, Bebo and Orkut.

Second Life," a sprawling online universe, has had technology circles abuzz for a while

More and more, such boundaries don't make sense. Whether it's on MySpace, Facebook, "Second Life" or other Web flavors of the moment, criminals and victims — especially young ones — are leaving clues in plain sight online, even for offline crimes. Things people once wrote in private diaries now cascade through Web sites that stimulate free expression — and are open to anyone who comes looking.

But the anonymity and the sheer scope of the Internet also can make it easier for criminals to cover their tracks. And today's hot online hangout is tomorrow's dead zone. The trick for cops is to figure out how to keep up — a proactive step that doesn't come easy, given that most police departments have to concentrate their limited resources on reacting to crimes.

social-networking sites. People jabber in "Second Life" or through chat programs

Each of those sites has different procedures required of law enforcement agents who want to match anonymous user names with the Internet Protocol address behind them. Then more work is needed to ask an Internet service provider to cough up the IP address holder's real name and address, assuming it wasn't a cybercafe or library.

is to walk through dark corners of the Internet. There are gang members boasting on MySpace, killers revealing their obsessions on LiveJournal, teenagers sharing drug-making tips on YouTube, prostitutes hawking themselves on Craigslist, child pornography flourishing on Internet Relay Chat, a specialists' slice of the Internet separate from the Web.

Social networks are not a bad thing. It's a great thing," he says. "It's like any community, communities we all live in. There are going to be criminals in it."

have trouble accepting the particulars of "Second Life," where people chat, shop, trade stuff and have sex — and in Cohen's estimation, launder money occasionally — through animated characters known as avatars.