The internet is a great way to send photos of your children to distant friends of relatives but they are not the only people who can have access to your child's pictures. Anybody can call up your webpage and view them. Not all of the people who do so are friendly. There are predators of children on the internet and they are called "pedophiles". A pedophile can be either a man or woman who prey upon the innocence of children.

I addressed this issue on another one of my pages but I thought that it would be best served by dedicating a whole page to this issue. I've gathered information from various sites on the internet.

As stated earlier, the internet is fast becoming a safe haven for pedophiles. These pedophiles find that internet sites are a great place to gather new pictures of children for their fantasies. The pictures could be even of your own children. When found, the pictures are placed onto the pedophile's own webpages as a representation of either a fabricated or real sexual encounter with that child. Pedophiles use the many search engines available on the internet to scour all the web pages available for pictures and information about the children (including your own). The majority of the parents online would be really horrified if only they knew what pedophiles could do with pictures of their own children.

As parents, you have the power to protect your children online. Do not let your child become a plaything and sexual fantasy for pedophiles. Every parent is proud of their children and their accomplishments and would like to share these pictures with all of their friends and relatives.

Here are some things that you can do as an alternative to placing a picture of your child onto your webpage.

1) Have your child draw a self-portrait of themselves, scan it, and then use it as a representation.

2) Find a cartoon image on the internet that your child likes and use it. There are many sites where you can find free graphic images.

3) Use a graphics program to remove the face or head from one of your child's pictures and replace it with either a cartoon image or a hand drawn image. Paint Shop Pro is a great program to do so.

4) Manipulate your child's picture with a graphics program. Turn them into an animal with ears, fun noses, whiskers, etc. Be creative. The more you do to the photograph the less likely a pedophile would want to use that picture.

5) Create an original design for your child's name maybe with little icons around it and use it to represent your child's interest or special qualities.

6) Ask yourself the reason why you are wanting to place a picture of your child onto the web. If you do not want people to know about you or your family, then maybe your child feels the same way.

7) Get permission from your child before you place their picture on the web. Be sure to tell them all of the facts. Do not hide anything from them. Let them make an educated decision.

8) If you do use a picture of your child, put this picture onto a separate page which is not linked up to your main page or any sub-pages. Try to make it as secret as possible.

9) Do not give out any information about your child that will make it easy for a pedophile to find your child. Use a nickname that the child picked out instead of their own real name. If they are too you to do so, think of a nickname yourself and use it.

10) Do not place personal information onto any page, especially the ones with your child's pictures, like address, city, clubs, daily routine, school name.

11) Do not give out the URL address of this special page to any search engines. Make this URL hidden to electronic spiders who index pages for search engines. In the header of that page, put in this Meta Tag

12) Do not use your child's name as a name for their graphic image. Use a combination of letters and numbers instead. Be aware that you do not have to subscribe to a search engine to the graphic name listed in it. I've found my picture that way by typing into the search window of a search engine my name and either .gif or .jpg". You can get an index of all of the pictures at a certain site.

13) Only give the URL address of this special friend to friends and family. Be aware that you can never truly know who is at the other end receiving your email. If possible, use the phone or snail mail.

14) Never place this URL address onto a electronic bulletin board or email list. Pedophiles regularly surf club and family bulletin boards for such postings.

15. Do not enter your child's picture into a "cute kid contest" on the web.

16. Do not allow your child to have access to their own picture file.

It takes less than fifteen (15) minutes for a pedophile to totally redo an innocent picture of a smiling tot into one who is engaged in a lacivious sexual act with someone else. These pictures are then places onto XXX sites, cd's, private collections, and either traded with or sold to others.