The ACM Sketch

Understanding Ethical Issues in Networking

1.1 What is chat room predator

Chat room is an area or forum on the World Wide Web that allows users to communicate with each other through instant messaging such as facebook, myspace and the other chat room. An online predator is an adult Internet users who exploits vulnerable children or teens, usually for sexual or other abusive purposes.

1.2  How can we prevent the children from falling into their traps

The solution is we need explain to them how to using the internet application in the right ways. They must know how important it is to not give out any personal information while they are in an online chat. Communicate, and talk to your child about sexual victimization and potential on-line danger. Spend time with your children on-line. Have them teach you about their favorite on-line destinations. Keep the computer in a common room in the house, not in your child's bedroom. It is much more difficult for a computer-sex offender to communicate with a child when the computer screen is visible to a parent or another member of the household. Utilize parental controls provided by your service provider and/or blocking software. While electronic chat can be a great place for children to make new friends and discuss various topics of interest, it is also prowled by computer-sex offenders. Use of chat rooms, in particular, should be heavily monitored. While parents should utilize these mechanisms, they should not totally rely on them. Always maintain access to your child's on-line account and randomly check his/her e-mail. Teach your child the responsible use of the resources on-line. There is much more to the on-line experience than chat rooms. Find out what computer safeguards are utilized by your child's school, the public library, and at the homes of your child's friends. These are all places, outside your normal supervision, where your child could encounter an on-line predator. Understand, even if your child was a willing participant in any form of sexual exploitation, that he/she is not at fault and is the victim. The offender always bears the complete responsibility for his or her actions.

• Instruct your children: 
  • to never arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they met on- line.
  • to never upload (post) pictures of themselves onto the Internet or on-line service to people they do not personally know.
  • to never give out identifying information such as their name, home address, school name, or telephone number.
  • to never download pictures from an unknown source, as there is a good chance there could be sexually explicit images.
  • to never respond to messages or bulletin board postings that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, or harassing.
  • that whatever they are told on-line may or may not be true.

Here are some basic rules that everybody should use while chatting on the internet:

• Never give out your last name
• Never put your age as part of your nickname e.g david15
• Never give anyone your phone number or agree to phone them
• Carefully of people who ask you your age
• Don't accept files from people who you don't know
• Don't give out picture to people who you don't know

1.3 Application of Social Contract Theory

According to social contract theory (SCT),

“Morality consists in the set of rules governing behavior, that rational people would accept, on the condition that others accept them as well.”

(Rachels, p. 145)

The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all stressed that the justification of the state depends on showing that everyone would, in some way, consent to it. By relying on consent, social contract theory seemed to suppose a voluntarist conception of political justice and obligation: what is just depends on what people choose to agree to what they will.

Only in Kant (1797) does it become clear that consent is not fundamental to a social contract view: we have a duty to agree to act according to the idea of the “original contract.” Rawls's revival of social contract theory in A Theory of Justice did not base obligations on consent, though the apparatus of an “original agreement” persisted as a way to help solve the problem of justification. As the question of public justification takes center stage (we might say as contractualist liberalism becomes justificatory liberalism), it becomes clear that posing the problem of justification in terms of a deliberative or a bargaining problem is a heuristic: the real issue is “the problem of justification” what principles can be justified to all reasonable citizens or persons.

1.3 Can the government do anything to address chat room predator issues.

Government should set up new laws in chat room predator issues. Also, Government should oversee the internet user online data when users do the wrong thing. Government should censor the internet.(by using the system or smart technology) Government could just revoke the target user online connection when they try to do the wrong thing. Or the government could produce "To Catch A Predator"

In my opinion, the government involvement is not helpful to resolve this problem because it is the responsibility of parent to provide a better exposure for their child while using the internet.

References

Internet Predator Protection since (2002). Internet Predator Chat
Copyright © 2012 PCs N Dreams
Retrieved July 5, 2012 from
http://www.pcsndreams.com/Pages/ChatNightmares.htm

Rachels, (p. 145), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). According to social contract theory (SCT)
Retrieved July 5, 2012 from
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/sct.htm

Kant, Immanuel (1797 [1999]). Metaphysical Elements of Justice, second edn., John Ladd trans.
Indianapolis: Hackett.
Retrieved July 5, 2012 from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/