- The majority of sexual predators are online during the evening because they have jobs during the day, thus children who are online at night are at the greatest risk of coming across a sexual predator.
- Many times online sexual predators use gifts to sway potential victims. These gifts might include toys, pictures, plane tickets and gift accounts on websites. While gifts such as toys and pictures might be used by an online sexual predator simply to win favor with the child, gifts such as plane tickets and website accounts are more logistical in nature. An online sexual predator might send plane tickets to a child so that the child can visit him. Gift accounts on websites allow children access to websites where the online sexual predator can interact with them and where the child would otherwise not be granted access.
- According to a FBI brochure titled "A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety," a sexual predator works to isolate his child victim from the family. By creating distance between a child and her family, the predator tricks the child into becoming more dependent on him. As the predator makes minor issues the child is having with her family into major issues, the child feels she is growing closer to her predator because her predator understands her, while her family does not.
- While an online sexual predator might start to prey on a child on the Internet, he will soon try to move the relationship to phone calls. Sexual predators will often engage in phone sex with their young victims, warns the FBI. They will also try to set up a time and place when they can meet up with the child. To get around any warning the child might have received from his parents about giving out his home phone number, an online sexual predator will give the child a phone number to call, sometimes even an 800 number to avoid long-distance phone charges from showing up on the child's phone bill. The predator is then able to get the child's home number through the use of caller ID.
- Online sexual predators often begin their victimization of a child while the relationship is still strictly online. He might send the child photographs that are sexual in nature, either of himself or of others. He might also engage in sexual conversations with the child, consisting of sexual questions that he asks the child.
