Nick Lachey: A Sexual Predator’s Online Tool

Since LAist mentioned Drew Lachey’s dance move earlier this week, we thought we’d give equal time to Drew’s older brother -- and the former Mr. Jessica Simpson – Nick, who’s helping launch a safer social networking website for kids.

According to a Chicago Tribune story yesterday:

Actor/singer Nick Lachey was eating lunch at a Los Angeles restaurant when he heard some disturbing news. Parry Aftab, a cyber safety advocate, approached Lachey and told him that some Internet predators pretend to know Lachey so they can lure kids into off-line meetings.

Now luring kids into private chats by dropping celeb names is nothing new for sexual pervs. But at least Lachey is throwing his name behind a kids-only site – www.Yfly.com -- that tries to mitigate the occurrences. There’s even a special "Report the Creep" button if kids suspect another user is an adult freak.

Yfly launches today. Maybe it’ll help protect a few kids, but maybe it won’t. We’ll just wait and see.

And if Lachey gets free publicity like this from the site, then so be it. Who knows how much he’ll get in alimony.