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Internet Situational Awareness

by Deborah Kraft – Canyon County Anti-Trafficking Task Force

I read an article recently on “situational awareness” that resonated deeply with our Task Force work on Youth Internet Safety.  Situational awareness is described as being tuned into your surroundings so that you know how to recognize a threat and when to act on it. The concept of assigning levels of alertness materialized out of WWII-era combat.

There are five different color-coded levels of awareness. Code White is being completely relaxed and unaware, found only in the safety of one’s own home. Code Yellow is relaxed but aware of situational surroundings such as sitting in a restaurant. Code Orange is a heightened sense of alertness to a potential threat that may require action, perhaps while standing in an angry crowd. Code Red is when a threat has been confirmed, requiring action as in a house fire. Finally, Code Black is panic, when unable to physically or mentally carry out a response to avoid the threat.

Now, superimpose these color-coded levels of awareness onto the World-Wide-Web. When youth pass through that portal from the dimension of the physical world into the dimension of the virtual world – the Internet, they immediately place themselves, at the very minimum, into a Code Orange situation even though they are in the safety of their own homes with doors locked, resting privately in their own bedrooms with parents in another room, falsely believing they are immersed in Code White. Youth who are then lured into a private chat room enter a Code Red situation where the more than 750,000 sexual predators-in-disguise can begin to groom and ultimately extract nude photos from these naive minors. Once that first nude is sent those youth have entered a Code Black situation. But this scenario is avoidable.

Parents can begin to teach this basic skill of Internet situational awareness to children at home. An excellent source of information can be found on the Idaho developed website called, Fortify Your Kids.  The short soundbites of information can be easily absorbed in five minutes or less. Begin this education today at fortifyyourkids.com, Username & Password: CanyonCounty.

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