CYPRESS, Texas – Facebook -- where teenagers tell it all: Secrets, stories, gossip. But because so many teens and tweens want to be seen as uber popular, many times they'll accept Facebook friend requests from just about anybody.
"They want to have as many friends as they can have; it's a status thing to have a big number," said Dody Wood, whose daughter Kennedy is on Facebook.
The problem is accepting all of those friend requests can open your child's whole life to just about anybody, especially sexual predators and sexual offenders.
"These people can look at photos of you, look at where you live, your phone number possibly, even what school you go to," said 18-year-old Josh Vickers, of Cypress.
Enter now a brand-new, powerful tool that parents and kids can use for free to find out just what kind of Facebook friends are being accepted.
It's called "Friend Verifier," and what it does is scan all of your Facebook friends and friend requests and it compares those names to the National Sex Offender Registry.
Then, using a three-color warning system, it alerts you to every name match found.
Using Friend Verifier is easy:
1) Log onto Facebook.
2) Inside the search people window, you enter "friend verifier app."
3) At that point, a list of names will pop up of every friend you have that has the same name as a registered sex offender.
--If the name flashes yellow, that means just the name is the same.
--If the name flashes orange, that means the name and location of your Facebook friend matches a known sex offender.
--And if the name flashes red, that means your Facebook friend has the same name, location and date of birth as a convicted sex offender.
With their parents permission, Local 2's Bill Spencer sat down with a group of nine teenagers ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old to try out Friend Verifier.
"Wow, that's creepy," said Alexa Kwan, a 15-year-old Cy-Ranch High School student, as more than 25 name matches popped up on her computer system.
"This could really save someone's life," said Vickers, watching Kwan use Friend Verifier.
After using the new application, every one of those nine teens said they liked Friend Verifier and would recommend it to their friends.
"I really learned how many, like how close you can be to the danger," said 14-year-old Cole Stegent, from Cy-Woods High School.
As for the parents who watched all of this, every one of them also said they liked the way this app could quickly alert you to a potentially, very dangerous, Facebook friend connection.
"It's great because you don't want predators near your child, your friends, your family," Dody Wood told Local 2. "I'm going to make my children use it."
Currently, Friend Verifier is only available on Facebook, but the creators of this name-scanning application are working to try and make it available on Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and LinkedIn in the next several months.