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Missing Children

What to Do if Your Child Is Missing & You Suspect a Cyberpredator Is Involved

Don’t panic. I know that’s next to impossible, but you need to be thinking clearly to be able to help law enforcement. Don’t touch the computer or let anyone else touch it. This is not a time for your neighbor who is a computer expert to be fiddling around with your computer trying to find evidence. That should be left to the professionals. Call your local law-enforcement agency first. They know your community best & are located right where you need them. Don’t let them touch your computer, however, unless they have a cybercrime team. Pull together the information they will need. Gather recent photos of your child & make sure that someone is talking to your child’s friends to see if they have any information about the abduction. Make sure you have the e-mail account passwords available, & information about which ISP & e-mail service you use. If your child has an e-mail account with the school, gather that information as well. Does your child have an ICQ account? If so, make sure you have the ICQ number & their ICQ password. Do you use filtering or monitoring products? Find the manual, & make sure you have your passwords accessible.

Call the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or the FBI. The National Center can be found at 1-800-THE-LOST, & you can get the number for your local field office of the FBI from the phone book. You can also find it, in advance, online at www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm.

Fast methods are available to law enforcement to obtain information from the ISPs. They also have very good working relationships with the Internet service providers, since many of their security officers worked for the FBI & other federal law-enforcement agencies before joining the private sector. Sophisticated cybercrime teams can find almost anything online these days.