OWEN Riley is a serial killer who likes people to watch him murder his victims. He asks people to co-kill his victims by inviting them to tune into his website killwithme.com.

Video feeds streamed to the website show the victims dying a slow death from specially rigged up contraptions.

The more people who log onto his website, the faster the victim dies.

A couple of million viewers watched the first 'victim' bleed to death in a few hours. Soon, killwithme.com had spread by word of mouth.

Over 14 million people clicked in to watch the third victim "eaten" alive by sulphuric acid.

Discomfortingly, there were rave reviews.

Fortunately, killwithme. com is fictitious. It is in a movie called Untraceable, which will be released here in the coming week.

In the movie, hapless agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) grimly trail the killer helplessly.Owen had hidden his cyber trail so well that even the FBI's sophisticated computer tracking systems could not trace him.

Owen had his IP address changed every second. He hijacked another person's computer to send e-mail messages. He hacked into the agents' computers, mobile phones and even their cars' electronics.

Untraceable sends a strong message on the dangers of the Internet given that large number of users here are between 10 and 15 years old.

Last year, a survey found that nine out of 10 children in this age group were going online to communicate, play and learn.

Chatting online is a favourite past-time for slightly over a third of them while over 42 per cent send instant messages and about 27 per cent share personal data in social networking sites like Friendster.

The survey was conducted by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

For a few years now, a few community groups like Touch have had outreach programmes to counsel children on gaming addiction and how to use the Internet safely.

A new website called b4usurf.com was set up last month sponsored by the BSA (Business Software Alliance), the Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road), the Media Development Authority (MDA) and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

But content focuses more on piracy and intellectual property issues rather than those touching on risky behaviour on the Internet.

Type in killwithme.com and a warning pops up: "Visiting this website could cause harm to people. Do you still want to enter?"

Click yes, and a FBI message comes up: "90% of you ignored the warning. Where are your morals?"

That's exactly it. Children would be naturally curious about websites like this and there is plenty more inappropriate material online.

Parents and adults can't supervise children every minute. Also, the Internet can be accessed via mobile phones and laptops away from adults' eyes.

Children must, therefore, be wisened up with the values to make the right decisions when they come across such sites.

It is easy to explain to children that copying software and downloading pirated songs are wrong. But it is another thing to explain what is right and good behaviour.

Children are well-taken care of, thanks to efforts by Touch and the Education Ministry to reach out to them and to introduce cyber-wellness in schools.

Less focus is placed on the role of parents in this debate.

They may be computer savvy at work but may not realise that their children know more than they do when it comes to the Internet. In fact, kids can mask their cybertrails quite well.

There's no reason, however, for adults not to familiarise themselves with the world their children already know too well. For this, foreign websites hold a wealth of information on Internet safety.

There is netalert.com, which gives a list of filtering software and ideas for parental supervision.

Also look at wiredsafety. org. It is run by Parry Aftab, an American lawyer and one of the early American pioneers in Internet safety for children.

For instance, take the quiz: Have you ever been cyber-bullied? And bone up on information so that you can talk with authority.

For instance, women tend to lie about their age and weight online and men, about their degree of baldness.

Watch peer-made video together about cyber predators.

Whatever the issue may be, whether you have or know kids, tweens or teens, walk a mile in their shoes.