Fourteen year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police now speaks after spending over half of his career working online undercover.
INGERSOLL -- Protecting your kids from dangers that lurk online is the focus of an event tonight being put on by the Ingersoll Community Schools Committee.
Former OPP Detective Sgt. Rob Nickel now works as a public speaker and is often referred to as a world renowned "Cyber Safety Expert." He'll be sharing his expertise and tips for families tonight Laurie Hawkins Public school in Ingersoll.
Nickel, a former 14-year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police spent over half of his career working online undercover. In February 2003 he retired at the Rank of Detective Sergeant from the OPP Child Pornography Section and is globally recognized as an expert in the field of undercover investigations as they relate to the Internet.
Investigations which Nickel conducted included face to face meetings with pedophiles in an undercover capacity as well as working undercover online. Working in those situations has also helped him in lecturing and training officers throughout Canada and the world on online undercover techniques.
Refining your skills in the field is a must -- as Nickel says -- keeping up with child predators online has gotten more challenging with increased use of today's wireless hand-held technology.
"People forget that your smart phone is a computer. Kids now have the ability to not only text or Facebook, but send emails. They might take a picture with a geo-tagging feature on so if they send that picture to someone, they can see exactly the latitude and longitude from which they were standing at when they took the picture. There's all of this technology out there now and just to keep up to date with this stuff is a chore in itself that's for sure."
Nickel reminds parents that while today's cell phones are more powerful than the computers we first started using the Internet on, he wants to make sure they simply talk to their kids about how they're using them and ask how about how they interact with others.
Nickel's experience interacting with online pedophiles gave him extraordinary insight and access to those who go to great lengths to make a connection with your kids online.
"They will do their homework. They don't mind taking the time to build that relationship with you before they all of a sudden spring that they want to meet with you in person. I always say, the more information you put out there, it's just more ammunition for them. They will study the information that you put out there and they will know the right things to say to you."
Nickel says the first step in reducing risks online is by talking. Talking to your children about what they should and should not do when they are online and find out the activities they are currently doing online and talk about them.
An "Internet use contract" is another way to know when your kids are allowed online and can provide your children with rules for computer use.
After retiring from OPP, Nickel says he really had no intention of public speaking to any school or audience with kids. But after years of talking to youth about Internet safety he's been able to discover the value in his work.
"Now when I go in and talk to kids, I say -- 'I'm not going to tell you what to do -- I'm just going to show you some things, and hopefully you make the right decision. That's all I can do, and I hope you do something after today that keeps you safer.' If do this for thirty years and just one child is spared from being molested, abused or exploited in any way by something I said, then I die a happy man."
Nickel urges parents and communities to be proactive in talking to their kids so something bad doesn't happen as the result of a child or teen's interactions online, adding that so often these types of conversations only happen after something bad happens in a community.
Created in 2004, Nickels' web site, www.cyber-safety.com is a site dedicated to helping protect children from online dangers while educating parents about their child's Internet use.
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