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On-Line Runaways Safe

A 13-year-old girl missing for two weeks from her home in suburban Louisville, Ky., was picked up by the FBI in Los Angeles. Before running away, Tara Noble had spent dozens of hours exchanging e-mail with people including a San Francisco man who promised, "We can run around our room naked all day and all night."

Her parents, searching her room after her disappearance, also found sexually explicit images transmitted through the computer.

Last month, Daniel Montgomery, a 15-year-old boy from a Seattle suburb, ran away to San Francisco, using bus tickets mailed to him by another teen-ager he met in an America Online electronic chat room for gays.

In a storm of media coverage, news reports assumed that the Seattle teen was seduced to San Francisco by an adult. The fact that "Damien Starr," the America Online screen name used by the San Francisco "seducer" is a 17 year-old has quelled investigations into criminal offenses.

Both cases involved teens who suddenly started spending hours on the computer -- and parents who discovered too late what their children had been doing on-line.

Parents are sometimes caught off-guard by some of the more unusual uses of on-line technologies. "I would consider myself computer literate, but frankly, I didn't suspect what I found out," said Bill Montgomery of Maple Valley, Wash.

His son, Daniel, was gone for more than two weeks before being found safe June 4 at San Francisco International Airport. Daniel is back home now, grounded from the information highway until he regains his parents' trust.

"You can get into anything you want on-line," Montgomery said. "There's pornography in these chat rooms. There are obscenities. It's really wide open."

It's not clear what the teen-agers did while they were gone, and the FBI, which is investigating both cases, has not said whether charges will be filed.

But the bureau's Louisville office issued a statement saying Tara Noble's case "demonstrates the need for parents to provide oversight and guidance to their children in the use of computers."

That message is echoed by the big three computer network services America Online Inc., CompuServe Inc. and Prodigy Service Co.

The companies say they allow subscribers to screen what their children see on line by blocking certain services such as chat rooms or access to the Internet. But the ultimate responsibility rests with parents, they say.

"2.5 million use this service," said Pam McGraw, spokeswoman for America Online. "That's like a city. Parents wouldn't let their kids go wandering in a city of 2.5 million people without them, or without knowing what they're going to be doing."

The on-line services teamed up in November with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to produce a brochure called "Child Safety on the Information Highway."

"There are parents out there who don't know where the on-off switch is, and they don't know what their kids are doing," said Ernie Allen, the center's president. "It's important for parents to develop an understanding of what their kids are doing on the computer."

The brochure advises teens not to give out personal information such as their address or phone number, and to tell parents if they're sent messages that make them feel uncomfortable.

Allen also urged parents to set rules on how long their children can spend on line and what services they can use.

"The point, whether you're talking about on-line services or television or anything else, is that it's not inappropriate to set limits," Allen said.

Montgomery said on-line services could do more, such as fine-tuning their blocking capabilities so parents could screen objectionable services more selectively without losing others. The companies also should require a greater burden of proof that a user is 18, he said. They currently require a credit card or checking account number from new subscribers, assuming that that eliminates most minors.

vern@cybertoday.com