VIDALIA — Sixty-one percent of America’s teenagers have a personal profile on the Internet, and many converse with strangers online.

That was the message delivered to a group of parents and community members Tuesday night by Monica Ford, a computer forensic examiner with the Attorney General’s High Technology Crime Unit.

Ford said parents need to be aware at all times of what their children are doing online.

“Children should not have computers in their room,” she said. “It’s the same as walking down the street and asking a stranger if they would like to spend unlimited, unsupervised time with your child.”

Cyber bullying is also a growing trend among children and teens, she said. Acts of cyber bullying include spreading rumors or gossip about individuals or pretending to be someone you are not to gain information about a particular person and even sending or forwarding messages about a person that can be hurtful.

“The most common victims among cyber-bullying are 16 and 17-year-olds,” Ford said.

Children that are bullied are four times more likely to bring guns to school than the average student, Ford said.

Ford encouraged the parents in attendance that if they feel a child at school, or even their own, is being bullied, to report it.

Parents need to be aware of what information is online as well, she said.

Child pornography is prevalent on the Internet, she said. The Internet contains 1.6 billion websites; 14 million of those contain child sex abuse images.

Ford recommended ways to track what your children are doing online through specific programs that can be purchased and downloaded.

Keystrokelogger.com is a website that contains a downloadable program that Ford said records everything that a computer user is doing online. It can capture chats, e-mails and passwords. The program can be hidden from children and can even be set to specific time intervals.

Adults should also be aware of what personal information may be online, she said.

“‘Google’ yourself. You never know what is on the Internet about you,” Ford said.

In addition to Google, zabasearch.com, melissadata.com and birthdatabase.com are some sites that can be used to find out what is on the Internet about you.

The workshop for parents was hosted by the The Miss-Lou Regionalism Education Sub-Committee.