What’s inside your child’s cell phone? (Part 2)
A follow up to ‘Cell Phones for Children – A “Catch 22”?‘
Some of you may remember “Joe” from our last blog post and his experience with cell phone forensics. He bought his children cell phones and, due to changes in their behavior, he became nervous and started “snooping” into their phones when he could. Never finding anything stored on the phones led him to believe the data was being deleted for a reason – and not a good one. Joe hired New Jersey Legal for our cell phone forensics services and in the process discovered his children were involved with guns and sex.
This past Tuesday, Fox News reported on some Pennsylvania high school students that are being charged with child pornography — not because they’ve been involved with an underground kiddie porn ring, but instead because three girls between the ages of 14 and 15 took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves with their cell phones and sent the photos to three male classmates between the ages of 16 and 17.
Police say that high school officials found the pornographic photos when they confiscated the phone of a student who had broken school rules by using it during school hours. Police were brought in, leading to other phones being confiscated and other photos being found.
But imagine if they hadn’t. Imagine if this child hadn’t been using his phone during school that day. No one found out and the photos were still being taken and distributed. Could be your children, could be your neighbor’s child but you wouldn’t know because your children are hiding it from you.
I don’t think any parent wants to snoop on their children. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t. But you should at least make it clear to your children that you can — and will — snoop if you have any reason to. For New Jersey Legal to make an image of your child’s phone, all we need is about the time it’ll take your children to watch an episode of Family Guy. Once we have a forensic image of their cell phone we can find whatever there may be on there that they don’t want you to see. That’s a fact that you and your children need to know.
What do you think? Is it better to play it safe and check or is it better to simply hope they’re not doing anything you would disapprove of? Is it better to enforce regular “check-ups” on usage, or is it better to wait and see? Keep in mind that if any child porn is found on any household cell phone or computer, everyone who has used that computer is subject to investigation by the authorities. Whatever your opinion is, we look forward to hearing from you in the comments below!
For those of you who are either current customers or blog members, we do offer a free initial consultation for any concerns or questions you may have with cell phone forensics or computer forensics involving clients or family members. You can email us at answers@njlcblog.net. If it’s an emergency please call us at 856-910-0202.
And yes, “Sexting” is the most ridiculous word the media has made up so far this year.
Related posts:
- Cyber-Bullying: How Cell Phone and Computer Forensics Help (Part 1)
Sally feels humiliated at lunch after tripping over an unfortunately placed backpack belonging to another student named Jenny. The more students in the lunchroom laugh at Sally, the more her...... - Cyber-Bullying: How Cell Phone and Computer Forensics Help (Part 2)
Last week we posted an update talking about the epidemic of cyber-bullying. Largely based upon psychological assault, cyber-bullying has been spreading through our school systems rapidly. The impact on some......
