Retired New York State Police Computer Crime Unit Investigator, Cyber Crime Specialist, and U.S. Deputy Marshall Tom Roidl spoke to Chatham students in grades 5-8 during two separate, age-appropriate assemblies at Chatham Middle School.
Among the topics he discussed with the students was how to be savvy media consumers and differentiate fact from opinion; how handle online bullying by not engaging or responding to the bully and instead saving the evidence and reporting it to an adult; and how they can never know who they meet online really is or what that person's true intentions may be.
“I don’t want you to be paranoid,” he told the students. “Be prudent.”
He also discussed how everything they do online, even their physical location, is monitored, collected and saved by the apps, sites, and programs they use. He shared how anything they post could potentially be seen by millions of people and once they share that image or information, they can never get it back, even if they delete it.
"It's never really gone," he said, citing how he often recovered deleted information as part of his investigations.
He touched on online threats and how making them is not only dangerous and harmful, but also something that is illegal and can lead to serious consequences, even if the person making the threat never intended any harm.
He also took time at the end of each presentation to answer the many thoughtful questions our students had for him.
This presentation was organized by the CMS guidance department as part of our District's ongoing safety initiatives.