Earlier this week I attended an event at Newtown High School led by Richard Guerry, Founder and President of  The Institute for Responsible Online and Cell Phone Communication.

The award winning presentation was offered to Newtown residents to help build a greater awareness of irresponsible and malicious digital behaviors and trends and to offer a method to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of digital exploitation, cyber-crime or bullying.

Although chock full of useful information, there was one message that came through quite loud and clear: Absolutely everything we do on our phones, our computers, our gaming systems and even our camera cards -- regardless of whether or not it has been “deleted” – is “Public and Permanent.”

What I found most impressive about Mr. Garry’s presentation was that rather than rousing his audience with countless horror stories and baffling information on spy wear programs, parental control sites and digital do’s and don’ts, he instead focused on the source of where all change ultimately comes from: our own perceptions.

In a nutshell, before kids begin using any digital or electronic device, it is crucial for parents to arm them with a mindset of “public and permanent” – that is the ingrained understanding that utterly everything they post, text or photograph could ultimately be seen by anyone in the world.

Clearly if Rep. Chris Lee had this mindset he would still have a job.

Guerry shared a number of noteworthy examples of what can happen when people do not think this way :

• The teenage boy who, while surfing an “adult” site,  came across lewd photos of his parents that they had taken while on vacation some years earlier.  His mom thought she had them stored in a “protected account.”
• The teenage boy who, distressed over his girlfriend’s breaking up with him, texted his friend a nude photo the girlfriend had privately sent him.  The girl was 16.  The photo was discovered and he’s now a registered sex offender.
• The mom who bought her young son a used digital camera at a neighbor’s garage sale and who wisely decided to run a recovery program on the deleted camera card just to make sure there was nothing on it. She discovered some very revealing photos of her neighbors.
• The 17-year-old girl who could be seen drinking a beer in the background of a photo from a party that someone posted.  She’s now suspended from school.

Following are some helpful tips from the evening’s program:

• Update and run spy ware as often as possible
• Don’t assume that Macs are more secure. They are believed to be more secure simply because there are less people using them.
• Never post vacation plans as a status. Burglaries have occurred when people have casually posted that they were going away or even out for an afternoon.
• Facebook messages are stored in a database. It is someone’s job to review their content. Never assume deleted messages, whether on-line or from texting, are "gone." They're not.
• Digital devices should never be used for private matters. Use them for communication, games, videos or getting the news – basically the uses for which they are intended.
• Digital invasions of privacy usually come from someone you know or someone who knows someone you know.
• Criminals look for something exploitable to blackmail or sexy content. If neither of these are available then there is nothing to worry about.
• Parents already know to teach kids tonever give their address or number to as stranger. Parents now need to include the web and gaming in this discussion.  Giving out information on-line is the same as giving your address to a stranger in the park.
• Deleted photos from a camera card can also be retrieved. This is great if vacation photos are accidentally deleted; not so great if there are “private” photos on that card.
• Having a “password” does not mean material is protected.
• Before sending an email, text or taking a photo, imagine the person you care most for in the world is standing over your shoulder.  Ask yourself if you would still do it. If the answer is no, don’t.

 According to Mr. Guerry, if we were to look into that crystal ball and ask what people in the not so distant future would consider to be one of the greatest misconceptions of our time, the answer would undoubtedly be that we believed we had privacy on the World Wide Web.

Responsible on-line and cell phone use starts with the confidence that, in the event everything you've ever texted, posted online or shot with a digital camera suddenly became public and permanent, the repercussions would not be devastating or hurtful to anyone.