AVOIDING PORNOGRAPHY

Pornography Affects Everybody!
Ways Pornographers Lure You In
Ways Pornographers Trap You
How to Stay Safe

Pornography Affects Everybody!
The porn industry needs people to make money, so basically they’re trying to expose themselves to everyone they can.

Targeted
If you are a live body, you’re in the danger zone. You don’t even have to look for porn. It will find you.

Baited
Pornographers look for ways to make you stumble across porn when you meant to go somewhere else online. Once you’ve been baited, curiosity makes you want to keep going back.

Trapped
People get trapped before they ever see it coming. Once you get trapped, pornography can take control. It quickly becomes a really hard habit to break.

Ways Pornographers Lure You In
• Porn-napping—purchasing expired domain names when owners forget to renew and redirecting the expired address to porn sites.

• Cyber-squatting—using a name that sounds like a legitimate topic. (For example: driverslicense.com instead of driverslicense.org)

• Misspelling—purposefully buying misspelled domain names for trendy, high-traffic sites.

• Advertising—using false error messages, alert boxes and false forms where one click will open a porn site.

Ways Pornographers Trap You
• Looping—making a never-ending loop with new porn pages constantly appearing.

• Mouse-trapping—altering the use of the back and close button so a person can’t exit that site.

• Start-up alterations—booting up your computer opens a porn site.

• Cookies—placing small files on your computer’s hard drive to keep track of every move you make.

• Filter fooling—Pornographers are constantly working to work around blocking filters.

• Dangerous downloads—Trojan horses and spyware can get into into your computer through Internet downloads. They can alter your computer’s behavior and track your every activity on the web.

• File sharing and P2P (peer-to-peer) networks—porn is very easy to pass around through these distribution methods.

• SPAM/SPIM—Pornographers send tons of SPAM (unsolicited emails) and SPIM (unsolicited instant messages) to lure people to pornography sites.

(“Tricks Pornographers Play,” Jerry Ropelato, 2003 familysafemedia.com http://www.familysafemedia.com/tricks_pornographers_play.html)

How to Stay Safe
• Never give out personal information (such as name, age, address, phone number, school, town, password, schedule) about yourself or anyone else. With your phone number, anyone can easily get your address and a map to your house. Never agree to meet in person with anyone you have spoken to online.

• Some “kids” you meet in chat rooms may not really be kids; they may be adults with bad intentions. Remember, people may not be who they say they are.

• Never tell anyone online where you will be or what you will be doing.

• Never respond to or send e-mail to new people you meet online. Remember it is okay to not answer every email or instant message.

• Never send a picture over the Internet or via regular mail to anyone you’ve met on the Internet.

• Never buy or order products online or give out any credit card information online.

• Never respond to any belligerent or suggestive contact or anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. End such an experience by logging off and telling your parents as soon as possible.

• Always tell someone you know about anything you saw, intentionally or unintentionally, that is upsetting.

• Use gender-neutral screen names.

(http://www.oprah.com/presents/2005/predator/safety/safety_online.html)

If you're struggling with porn: 

• Avoid compromising situations.

• Be accountable to someone. Have someone you trust hold you to your commitment. Arrange to have them ask tough questions about what’s going on in your life and what you’ve been doing. You don’t have to make an announcement and tell everyone.

• Monitor your viewing. How much time are you spending on the computer? What behaviors are associated with your porn viewing? Drugs? Boredom? Stress? Loneliness? Certain friends? Habits you may need to break? What are you watching? There are web sites and Internet accountability tools. Some of these tools have faith language on them, but in reality, any two people can help keep each other accountable. (For example: X3 watch; Net Accountability; Covenant Eyes; Bsafeonline; Cybersitter.) Remember everyone is targeted. Protect yourself before it becomes an issue.