New Delhi, July 26 - If you are a teenager, be careful who you talk to and what you say on social networking sites -- for papa and mama may be watching, sometimes with good reason.

Rakesh Kumar was worried what his teenage daughter was up to on social networking site Orkut. When he finally accessed her profile, he was shocked to find that she was in touch with absolute strangers. Now he has installed a software to keep her in check.

Rakesh's 15-year-old daughter Akansha has around 2,500 profiles on her friends list on Orkut -- a third of whom are people she has never met.

'With the growing cases of cyber crimes via these social networking sites, I decided to keep a tab on my daughter to find out what she was up to on Orkut,' Rakesh told IANS.

So he created a profile on Orkut and altered his privacy settings so that he could view Akansha's profile without her knowledge.

'I was shocked. My daughter was spending long hours talking to complete strangers. The first thing I made her do was to delete those strangers from her list and also assigned a software 'Nanny' that keeps a check on who she chats with.'

Rakesh is not alone -- many worried parents are resorting to similar measures, which children feel is 'an invasion of privacy'.

Fifteen-year-old Shreya Talwar was surprised when her mother sent her a 'friend request' on Facebook, another popular social networking site.

'When I first got a friend request from my mother, I ignored it. I felt that would invade my privacy. I didn't want my parents to know what I am talking about with my friends,' she said.

To escape the surveillance, Talwar found a loophole -- she added her mother to her list but only after changing settings to 'limited view'.

Her friends choose to lock their profiles when faced with the same situation.

Youngsters are also resorting to other ways to get around snoopy parents, like using lingo they don't understand.

College student Utkarsh Kumar says he uses acronyms and code words while chatting with friends online.