Digital technology continues to advance putting global communication at our fingertips but with this increase in information sharing, are we doing enough to keep ourselves and our families safe?
The National Children's Advocacy Center sponsors the symposium on child abuse.
It's held at the Von Braun Center. 1,200 child abuse experts share information with the goal to keep families and children safe across the country.
JJ Moody is attending the '21st Digital Responsibility' workshop for both professional and personal reasons.
“I just hope to gain some tools to help my child move with awareness online and offline,” said JJ Moody.
Richard Guerry is the speaker for the digital responsibility workshop. He started a non-profit group that teaches digital safety. It’s called ‘The Institute for Responsible Online and Cell Phone Communication.’
The theme of his lesson is the '21st Century Golden Rule.' He wants everyone to know that every thing you put on your digital device is public and permanent.
“That preventative mind set will help you avoid making a life altering mistake that will injure your current reputation and potentially your legacy as well,” said Richard Guerry.
Richard Guerry says you should be willing at any time to let anyone look at the hard drive of your digital device or let people run a recovery program to retrieve what you've deleted. If you're not comfortable with this you're putting yourself at risk.
“In that one second when you lose that device who ever finds it will have access to the hard drive or be able to run an undelete program,” said Guerry.
He wants all parents to teach their kids to be responsible when using digital devices. This could save the child's reputation and keep them safe and out of trouble.
“If you're under 18 and you take a sexually explicit image on your digital device or what have you, you are a creator of child pornography. If you send that to anyone you are now a distributor of child pornography and if you maintain it on your hard drive you are in possession of child pornography,” said Guerry.
Sextortion is a new term where people are being black mailed for their pictures. Guerry says even after you delete a picture or message of any kind from any website it can always be recovered by almost anyone. It's information JJ Moody plans to share with her daughter.
“Anything you put out there can come back to bite you. It's out there forever so it's important for kids to know that and parents to know that,” said JJ Moody.
The symposium runs through Thursday. Many issued will be covered. Wednesday they will address everything from ‘Preventing Child Sex Trafficking' to 'How to Beat a Bully.' Thursday experts will cover the topic of 'Sexually Abusive adolescents' to 'Child Sexual Exploitation via the Media and Technology.'
