PA man poses as young surfers to lure kids online

Do you REALLY know who your “Friends” are online? This man set up fake online profiles posing as young surfers from Florida.
- KDCOP

Attorney general: Mars man an online sex predator

By Brian Bowling and Bobby Kerlik
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, February 11, 2012

In the real world, William R. Ainsworth was a used car salesman from Mars with a wife and two kids.

On the Internet, he took on the personas of two 15-year-old runaways living as surfers in Florida and a Pittsburgh-area “Sugar Daddy” willing to send money to one in return for sex with the young girls who friended him on Facebook, state Attorney General Linda Kelly announced on Friday.

Ainsworth, 53, used the two young persons to target girls between 13 and 15 who were stressed because their parents were in a custody dispute or because their peers were harassing them, prosecutors said. Some victims were 12 when he first contacted them.

“He made them feel good about themselves,” Kelly said. “He made them like him. He made himself part of their lives.”

State prosecutors charged Ainsworth with 68 counts of criminal solicitation, child pornography and unlawful contact with minors. He is in the Butler County Prison on $100,000 bail, according to county court records.

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Photos automatically tagged for location by smartphones put children at risk from predators

Geotagging can be very helpful while researching online. It may not be so helpful when you are posting personal pictures on smartphones. If you are concerned about your privacy, you have options to shut off geotagging.

-KDCOP

Photos automatically tagged for location by smartphones ‘put children at risk from sex predators’

By Rob Waugh
10th February 2012
The Daily Mail (UK)

Parents who take smartphone pictures of their children are leaving a ‘digital trail’ that could lead sex predators direct to their front door.

Smartphones often automatically ‘geotag’ every photo they take with its exact GPS location unless the function is disabled.
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A study of photos on Flickr found that a significant proportion of pictures of children were ‘tagged’ – parents were handing out what amounted to a street address for their child to ‘internet users who may have dubious reasons for accessing this data.’
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The tags use GPS data or phone network data to ‘position’ pictures, and can be acccurate to within a few feet.
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Joanne Kuzma, a researcher at the University of Worcester, England, found that many freely available photos on Flickr were geotagged – and was able to trace back children to 50 of the most exclusive zip codes in the U.S.

‘The location information could be used to locate a child’s home based on information publicly available on Flickr,’ explains Kuzma.

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