RVTC students hear about online threats

River Valley Technical Center of Springfield invited Frank Bopp, a patrolman with the Tom’s River, N.J., Police Department to provide advice for high school-aged students how they can protect themselves online.
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RVTC students hear about online threats May 20, 2014 Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 0 Frank Bopp, with the Tom's River, N.J. Police Department spoke with students at River Valley Technical Center Tuesday to remind them of how to protect themselves online. SPRINGFIELD — River Valley Technical Center of Springfield invited Frank Bopp, a patrolman with the Tom’s River, N.J., Police Department to provide advice for high school-aged students how they can protect themselves online. Bopp, also the Tom’s River North High School resource officer, told students they put themselves and their privacy at risk each time they log onto a social networking site. Young adults, some with more than 1,000 friends on Facebook, oftentimes get into a frenzy over their own numbers and feel they need to compete with their peers to see who has the most friends, he added. “No one has that many friends for real, why would you let complete strangers into your life via Facebook or other social media sites?” said Bopp. “What you’re doing is you’re opening up your world to not only the friends you’ve accepted into your social media life, but all of their social media friends as well.” Even with personal settings made private, he said access to pages, photos and information is still easily accessible to anyone. Bopp’s discussion also focused on predators who use social media sites to stalk and take advantage of their victims. He has seen many cases where false identities are used to obtain access to teenagers and described the profile of a pedophile known as a “traveler” who takes some time to establish a relationship with their underage victims, then requests a meeting place and time; often with the intent to harm. As part of the presentation, Bopp brought with him props confiscated from a case where a 44-year-old man was posing as a 17-year-old boy and set up a meeting with a teenage girl. Among the items were handcuffs, a large knife, duct tape and condoms. The girl’s mother had intercepted a chat on her daughter’s computer and alerted authorities. Additionally, Bopp spoke about other online threats, such as pornography, hate groups and gangs (who are currently recruiting through social media sites), identity theft, harassment and online predators. “You have to know that everything you put on the Internet is there forever,” he said, “And what you put out there leaves an impression of who you are or who you are portrayed to be in your photos.” Christopher Irish with information technology support at RVTC invited Bopp to share this information with students.