The Terrace RCMP deal with a wide variety of cyber complaints on a daily basis – from online scams defrauding residents of their money, to online threats, to inappropriate photographs – and while it’s their duty to investigate these instances, the web is deep and there is often not much they can do.
That’s why the onus is more and more falling on area residents to browse the Internet safely and responsibly and teach their children to do the same.
Criminals on the Internet are like “a big fruit tree and we’re only catching the low hanging fruit,” said Const. Angela Rabut, who returned earlier this year from a police conference that focussed on Internet safety.
“[Internet criminals] are good at hiding and we’re not going to catch them. That’s why people need to stop relying on police and take the initiative to protect themselves, protect your passwords, protect your identity.”
Rabut also said loss of privacy is one of the main challenges facing society today, with people often dismissing this concern by saying, “I’ve got nothing to hide, it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s not a matter of something to hide, it’s a matter of privacy,” she said, noting that there are things called ‘cookies’ that track every keystroke you make on the Internet. “If you were walking around downtown, and someone was watching you and following you, and going into each store watching what you’re buying, normally you would care about that – so why is it different on the Internet?”
The difference, she says, is that the Internet is abstract and society hasn’t kept up with how fast the Internet changes.
But people need to start realizing that what happens on the Internet, the information you share, and how you present yourself online can have real-life consequences.
“There seems to be a distortion between reality and the internet right now, particularly with youth, and the blurring of that line,” she said.
There are programs available to protect your privacy online, the big two being anti-virus software and spyware, she said. There are also apps you can add on to your browser that will delete the cookies as soon as you leave a website.
And it’s up to parents to communicate with their children about responsible online behaviour. The Internet isn’t going away, she said, so banning its use isn’t always the best answer.
“Parents have to really shift now,” she said. “Instead of stopping it, you have to teach kids to self-monitor and control.”
That includes teaching youth about the kind of stuff that’s appropriate to put online.
“Nothing ever goes away,” she said, noting youths need to watch who they befriend online and watch the photos and videos that they post.
“This will affect your job, your career choices. I’ve had volunteers that I’ve had to turn away because of what they’ve had on Facebook.”
These are problems unheard of even a decade ago, but they are only going to get more complex as things like facial recognition software and location-based tagging become commonplace, and as the first generation to grow up on the Internet become adults.
“Is it going to happen that when they’re 25 and they hit that next level of maturity and they want to go on and do something else, what’s going to happen? Are they going to have to have a whole new identity created because of how much they’ve put on the Internet?”
And parents should still monitor their children’s activity online, and there are a wide range of programs available to help them do that – but nothing beats communication, because youths are tech savvy and can figure out how to get around software quite quickly.
Youths can also unknowingly violate the criminal code, for instance if two 16-year-olds exchange inappropriate photographs between each other, that’s not illegal, but if the boyfriend sends the photos to his friends, he is committing a criminal offence of distributing child pornography.
Rabut teaches different seminars to parents and youths on Internet safety and how to cope, and says another thing people can do is report suspicious online behaviour to the RCMP for investigation.