I was born in 1982. My first computer was a 486 that ran DOS. We had dial up, then we had something called surfboard that was a ‘high speed’ modem connected straight into the coax.
I had AOL instant messenger, ICQ, chat rooms and early forums that didn’t even support images. I was on the internet before Myspace, when Opendiary was still a thing. I used Lycos and Webcrawler. I remember Infoseek and Ask Jeeves. And I talked to strangers online. It was exhilarating. It was a whole world of people outside my school or neighborhood. When my family moved abroad in my teenage years, I kept in touch on AIM and ICQ.
And those childhood internet experiences are to me like watching ‘The Sandlot’ and seeing boys run around, play baseball, get into minor trouble and never be in any real danger. I count myself lucky to have experienced those days of the internet. But those days are gone.
Today, children are groomed, abducted, trafficked, abused and worse. And it begins in the anonymity of fake or deceptive accounts online. But as with everything I present, don’t take my word for it.
Two years ago Shawn Ryan interviewed one of the world’s best hackers and this was part of what they talked about:
Shawn Ryan / Ryan Montgomery 1
Their follow up was ONLY about this topic:
Shawn Ryan / Ryan Montgomery 2
Shawn Ryan with Schlep (creator banned from Roblox for getting predators arrested)
Shawn Ryan With Ro Khanna on Epstein Files
Software to Protect Family Devices
This is just scratching the surface. If you have other tools or resources, please share them with me and I will add them.