Perhaps the most serious and emotive concern for parents and young people about online digital communication, is the unwanted attention some young people receive from disturbed and predatory adults. I have deliberately, so far, steered clear of the subject because I wanted to deal with it separately, and seriously, instead of peppering it throughout the previous articles.

The first thing to understand here, is that there is danger out on the Internet for young people, and that we must set ground rules and acceptable use policy with our young people, and be prepared to police their online activities for their own safety.

In the past, in the UK, I have been jumped all-over by some child advocates for taking such an approach - their argument is solid and understandable: How can we expect young people to respect privacy when we are prepared to go through THEIR private items ourselves? My response to that is simple: Even as a society, there are times when we take that responsibility away and issue, for example, a court order to access someone's bank records or telephone activity details - it does not mean we are morally bankrupt - on the contrary, it is the protection of that moral code that has us seizing the opportunity to inspect these things. We need the same kind of approach with our young people and their protection online.

Now if you have spent time to understand the technology and discuss - dispassionately - your young people's online relationships, you really should have nothing to worry about, but you must remain vigilant.

Unfortunately, in dealing with this, there is not a "one-size fits all" solution, or recommendation I can make. In the UK, one mother who discovered an online relationship between her 13-year-old son and a 19-year-old man was very distraught, but told me that she "just had a feeling something was going on" - this kind of intuition is very important for parents to pick-up on, to recognise in themselves, but in order to receive it, they must "have their antenna up" - they must be polling for the potential issues. In this persons case, the mother, having got the intuition, decided she would look through her son's cellphone text messaging - Had she ever done this before? No. She had respected her son's privacy, and she would have continued to do so had she not "just had her feeling" - and that is my point - if parents have a general understanding of the technology, and how its used, and they are aware of their children's online relationships, then the intuition is already there.

It is important to bring a bit of perspective, however...The chances are unlikely that a young person is going to develop an unhealthy online relationship with an adult - as it stands, the statistics show that they are more likely to die in a plane crash. However, the perspective is required on the flip-side too - they are twice as likely to be approached online by a disturbed adult, than they are in real life, and they need to be aware of the risk.

The point here is not to make them paranoid. Too much media hysteria has lathered up too many emotive people about the subject, and as such, if you are emotive about it yourself, you run the risk of either making your young person super-paranoid, or else they will tune-out your concerns as over-exaggeration of the situation - either way, you need to steer clear of emotions when you discuss the risks with your children. A steady, calm, fact-based approach is the BEST solution to ensuring your young person is equipped to deal with the potential for being approached.

Next time I want to go even deeper into this, and look at what your young person should do if they are approached in this way...

Bob Mellor is a senior business technologist with more than 20 years experience in the IT industry. He is accredited by the British Computer Society as a Chartered IT Professional, and currently Technology Consulting Manager at Bermuda Microsystems Group. His views here do not reflect the views of The Royal Gazette or Bermuda Microsystems Group, and are purely based out of his personal experiences and knowledge. He can be contacted on bob@bmg.bm