Internet Safety News
Teen's IM Privileges Taken Away
by Anne Collier
A Boston-area teenager has been charged with using instant messaging (IM) to harass six girls and their families. "Under the terms of a pretrial probation agreement signed...by the unidentified teen and others involved in the case, the resident of North Reading, Massachusetts, risks criminal prosecution if he engages in 'unsupervised' use of IM and other computing applications."1 There will also be civil proceedings against the accused, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly announced this week, saying the boy's instant messages threatened the girls with violent and sexually explicit language.
1Paul Festa. "Teen Accused of IM Harassment." Wired News. May 15, 2002, http://news.com.com/2100-1023-914471.html.
Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.
