By Matthew Lasar
May 16, 2008 - 02:41PM CT

She was thirteen years old and thought that she was having a MySpace online romance with a sixteen-year-old boy named "Josh Evans." Four weeks later, "Josh" broke off correspondence, allegedly telling the girl that the world would be a better place without her. In response, she hung herself and died a day later.

Now the Department of Justice says that "Josh" was really Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Missouri. Drew will stand trial in Los Angeles, accused of providing false information to get a MySpace account and violating MySpace terms to harass and harm other people—specifically, a girl the DOJ will only identify as "M.T.M." The accused faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

"Whether we characterize this tragic case as 'cyber-bullying,' cyber abuse or illegal computer access, it should serve as a reminder that our children use the Internet for social interaction and that technology has altered the way they conduct their daily activities," said LA FBI Assistant Director Salvador Hernandez. "As adults, we must be sensitive to the potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by our children."

But the latest research suggests that this awful exchange is not typical of the troubling encounters that take place between adults and kids on the 'Net. Most of those interactions also don't end very well, but they are neither deceitful nor fatal.