Teen targets
Today most children have cell phones. According to the Asahi Shinbun, “Unwary students are getting hit with huge cellphone bills after clicking on e-mail messages that link them to adult Web sites.”
To the junior high school student, the novelty of signing up to an online dating site and the hint of sexual adventure was too good to pass up. All he had to do was push a few buttons to record his name, address and telephone number. His parents got stuck with a bill for 73,500 yen in registration and late fees.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Comprehensive Consumer Center says it has received a growing number of complaints about e-chain messges. In fiscal 2001, it had just 14. By fiscal 2003, the number had jumped to 119 and then to 138 the following year.
More than 70 percent of the roughly 350 complaints received in the past five years have been about bogus bills. About 60 percent of the victims were teenagers.
This article made me sad. I think children are always curious and unwary. Rightly, they click on e-mail messages that take them to adult Web sites. They are not bad. But to deceive them is very immoral and wrong.
But now most people have cell phones, including children. The cell phones are very convenient; they can call, send e-mail and search imformation anytime. However, many crimes relate to cell phones and target children, especially.
The parents should know this and be careful about giving a child a cell phone. They have to protect children from crimes. They had better tell them about the risks of using the cell phone and emphasize that it is not a toy. These days children need to be critical and questioning to protect themselves.
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Comments (4)
Rudolf
wrote on December 22, 2005:
Yes—technology can be dangerous, it can be abused, and young people in particular need to be protected from the dangers and the abuses. Above all, they need to be told what the dangers are, and maybe the schools have to play a more active role in this, especially since the parents may not always be very knowledgeable about communication technology.
I’m not sure I quite understand this particular story, though, especially the part about the high bills. If a site charges for registration, a junior high school kid is not going to be able to register because they don’t have credit cards. So they can’t run up high bills for registration.
The problem of excessive data transfer, it seems to me, can be solved technologically: as a parent of high school kids I would insist that they get an account with an Internet Service Provider that only permits a certain amount of data transfer per month, and then cuts them off once they go significantly over their limit. That also might be a great lesson to teach them how to use resources economically: if they overstep their data transfer limit, they’ll get cut off from communicating with their friends, too.
However, I’m not familiar with cell phones and Internet access through them. Does your ISP limit the amount of data you can shift around per week or month?
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Caroline
wrote on December 23, 2005:
Hi!
I totally agree with you Mayu, and with Rudolf as well. I think that nowadays, children have what they want, and they don’t know limits. I personally think that cell phones and children can’t be together.
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Rudolf
wrote on December 29, 2005:
The police is putting out posters to educate the public on the danger of clicking on malicious links.
At what age, on average, do young people get their first cell phone?
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Mayu
wrote on January 18, 2006:
Mowadays most elementary school students have a cell phone. I got my first cell phone, when I was 15 years old.
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