The threats of sexual abuse and exploitation of teenagers through online social networking can be very alarming for parents. The U.S. legislation introduced the KIDS Act of 2007 in order to protect children from sexual predators and assure that paedophiles shall pay for the crime.

By changing their profile, such as their names, age and addresses on the Internet, sexual predators or paedophiles usually contact their victims online. Commonly, the paedophiles change their age and enter in chat rooms or instant messages to offer teenagers with sexual favours.

The KIDS Act of 2007 is introduced on January 30, 2007 by Congressman Earl Pomeroy and the late Representative Paul Gilmore. The KIDS Act of 2007 helps parents to protect their children from any sexual predator. This bill aims to lengthen the sentence of anyone who will lies about their age with the intention of engaging into sexual contact with a minor. Furthermore, the bill authorised a $5 million fund to hire more probation officers for supervising and monitoring the activities of every sex offender. The KIDS Act also requires convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses, IM addresses or any online identifiers on the National Sex Offenders Registry. The legislation will provide punishment of up to 10-year imprisonment for those who will lie about their online identifiers. The bill had been passed to the House of Representative on November 14, 2007.