If you walked past your child as he or she used the computer, and you saw the typed letters “IPN,” would you be worried?  How about “MOSS” or “NIFOC?”  You might see them in a text message, in a chat room, or on a page like myspace.com or facebook.com.

It’s Internet shorthand.  “IPN” stands for “I'm posting naked” and “MOSS” means “member of same sex.”

Young people have developed an entire sub-language to communicate on cell phones and computers.  They use abbreviations and acronyms and while most parents don't know them, their kids do.

“Absolutely, and they even use it in writing down notes to each other,” said parent Liz Marziale, interviewed at a local high school football game.

“It’s very hard to understand sometimes,” said parent Charlotte Petkovich.  “You have to text them back and say ‘What?’”

When it comes to young people using technology to communicate with each other, the numbers are mind-boggling.  Student Shaquille Guerin said he sends between 100 and 200 text messages per day.

To be fair, most of the time, children using the abbreviations to text or e-mail their friends are innocent.

“You know, ‘IDK,’ that means ‘I don't know,’” explained Guerin.  “‘LOL’ stands for ‘Laugh out loud.’  There's many of them.”

In fact there are hundreds of them, but many are used specifically to keep a conversation secret, like “P911,” meaning parent alert, or “POS,” meaning “parent over shoulder.”

The problem usually isn't when friends are talking to friends, but do you always know who your child is talking to?

“Anytime a child goes on the Internet, there are 50,000 sexual predators prowling the Internet looking for kids,” said Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway, whose cyber crime division works every day to catch those predators.

Brian McGregor is a 38-year-old, 14-year police veteran but on the day Eyewitness News cameras visited, he was posing as a 15-year-old girl talking in an online chat room like Yahoo or AOL.

Eyewitness News was in the office for less than 45 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon and within minutes, McGregor’s pretend 15-year-old was talking to a 21-year-old man.  The first thing he typed was the acronym “ASL,” which means age, sex, location.

When the man finds out he's talking to a 15-year-old, he writes back "Kind of young,” and later asks if she thought he was too old for her.

McGregor says knowing the shorthand will help parents understand the conversation.  He says if your children are in these chat rooms, it’s not a question of if they'll be contacted by a predator, but when.

“They're usually going to be contacted by some type of predator,” he said.  “The first thing they're going to do is start out with ‘ASL,’ for age, sex, location.”

“They may ask for pictures, they may ask you to use a webcam and they may ask for phone calls,” he explained.

While talking to the 21-year-old, McGregor started another chat, this time with a 41-year-old man who not only knew he was talking to what he thought was a 15-year-old, but also put the live video of himself on his webcam.

The man talked about not being married and asked the “girl” what kind of day she had at school.  That was followed by a bigger question, and an immediate red flag.

“Basically he's online, he's showing me his webcam and now he's asking me if I'm alone,” McGregor explained.

The conversation lasts 10 minutes and ends with his name on her buddy list, meaning they'll likely talk again.  McGregor says that’s a grooming technique.  A predator will shower them with compliments and try to become friends.  But future calls, often with webcams can be far more graphic..

“They’ll send pictures, they'll send you pornography, they'll send you images of them having sex with other people,” McGregor said.  “That’s some of the things they'll tell you they want to do with you.”

And its not just teenagers with cell phones.  11-year-old Alexis has her own Myspace page.

“Just to talk to my friends so I don't have to be on the phone all the time,” Alexis said.

But unless the Myspace page is listed as private, anyone can see it...

“They can learn where you go to school, what type of music you like, who your friends are, and they can look at your friends’ photographs,” McGregor said.

And that means mom has the password too and no strangers are allowed.

“I don't want people she doesn’t know.  Anyone over a certain age is blocked from it,” is how Charlotte Petkovich said she deals with her daughter’s page.  “If I see something that concerns me, she's grounded from it.”

Learning that “WTGP” means “Want to go private?” is something all parents can learn, but it gets tricky because it involves kids and  technology, and that mean it’s a moving target.