Keeping Kids Safe Online

Facebook - One small step forward 10 huge steps backwards

2011-05-23T13:38:00.000-04:00

Facebook is joining other online companies to lobby for the removal of age restrictions imposed by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Zuckerburg feels like kids are missing out and could learn more if they plugged in earlier. I'm sure pedophiles and stalkers everywhere agree. Read about it here:

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2011/05/20/6684286-facebook-is-coming-for-your-children

More on Facebook's Latest Safety Efforts

2011-04-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

Here is an article from MSNBC this morning talking about Facebook's latest family safety efforts (which I posted about yesterday):

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2011/04/19/6496604-facebook-upgrades-safety-and-security-tools-

Facebook...Another Small Step in the Right Direction

2011-04-19T12:44:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Facebook introduced a set of new safety and security tools and resources as part of their newly redesigned Family Safety Center. If you read this blog on a regular basis, I wrote an article about their first attempt at their Family Safety Center back in March. It was a weak start with limited offerings but it was something. This latest update shows a little more progress in the right direction.

The Facebook Family Safety Center features articles related to safety and privacy; statements about Facebook's safety philosophy; links to tools/resources for parents, teens, teachers, and law enforcement; as well as direct links to relevant Facebook pages, which can be “liked” for continuous updates. Facebook also claims a downloadable guide for parents and teachers in the near future.

A statement posted on Facebook's blog said this: "We also recently unveiled a new social reporting tool that allows people to notify a member of their community, in addition to Facebook, when they see something they don’t like. Safety and child psychology experts tell us that online issues are frequently a reflection of what is happening offline. By encouraging people to seek help from friends, we hope that many of these situations can be resolved face to face. The impact has been encouraging, and we’re now expanding social reporting to other major sections of Facebook, including Profiles, Pages and Groups." Facebook says these reporting mechanisms are currently functional for photos and wall posts, but they plan to extend the functionality to Profiles, Groups, Pages, and events. Facebook has also added some new security features like "Two Factor Authentication" which helps make sure the right person is accessing sensitive information.

While I applaud this latest step by Facebook and am glad to see they are finally doing something (as opposed to years of not caring and doing nothing), I certainly think they could be doing more. The updated Family Safety Center is still just a bunch of links to other places (kind of feels like they are just facilitating the passing of the buck). Also, the new security features are something that have to be turned on, they aren't automatic. In other words, all of these new offerings still put the final choice into the hands of the kids who are creating these Facebook pages and provide no authority or control to parents. It's almost like giving a child a dangerous, addictive drug along with some pamphlets that tell them what to do in case of an overdose. That's not really responsibility, that's a weak attempt at looking responsible. BUT, I don't want to be too hard on Facebook. Again, at least they look like they might be starting to care and I know nothing happens overnight. Let's hope we see more good stuff out of them.

Cyber-Stalking Just Got A Lot Easier

2011-04-18T07:24:00.003-04:00

I read this article this morning on Bob Sullivan's Blog The Red Tape Chronicles and knew I needed to pass the info on to parents. John is an excellent writer so instead of me paraphrasing, I'm just going to re-post his article. To view it on his blog, go to http://redtape.msnbc.com/2011/04/just-how-creepy-is-creepy-a-test-drive.html.

Just how creepy is 'Creepy'? A test-drive

Bob Sullivan - The Red Tape Chronicles

You probably know that some Internet and cell phone applications like Foursquare or Twitter can broadcast your location to the world. And you might know that Web sites with names like PleaseRobMe and ICanStalkYou have been created with shock value in mind to call attention to the potential consequences of broadcasting such information. But those sites picked on random individuals and exposed their whereabouts one at a time.

A new software tool created by Greek programmer Yiannis Kakavas goes much farther in the shock category. Called “Creepy,” Kakavas' tool makes it easy to gather all the location-based digital breadcrumbs that people leave online and plot them on a map. The map and associated time stamps make it easy to discern their routines -- “It looks like Bob goes to this coffee shop every Friday morning around 10:30” -- a tool of incalculable use to a would-be stalker. For Web users who loyally leave breadcrumbs everywhere ("Now at Whiskey Bar!" "Now at Park Diner," "Finally home") it's possible to recreate much of their daily lives using Creepy.

What's more, unlike ICanStalkYou, users can search for any Foursquare, Twitter or Flickr user they want. Kakavas tool also adds a handy handle-search tool, in case you only know your stalking subject by their real name.

When I reached Kakavas in Germany, where he is finishing his dissertation on computer security, he took pains to make clear he wasn't trying to make life easier for stalkers.

"I was trying to make a point," he said. "I'm trying to raise awareness among users of social networking platforms that they actually do share a lot of information and this can potentially be used by people with malicious intentions."

The name, by the way, derives from the programming language he decided to use when writing his tool -- python, which creates files with the extension .py. So the name for the program, strictly speaking, is Cree.py.

The tool takes only a few moments to download. There's a Windows version along with more hacker-friendly Linux versions. Users simply enter a handle, hit "Geolocate," and then sit back and wait for results. "Hits" can come from moments-old Tweets or Flickr images posted months ago. The hits then are plotted on a map, similar to the markers that appear on Google maps after a search for a restaurant. Clicking on a single hit allows a user to zoom in on a precise location, and offers the time and any media associated with it, such as "Enjoying lunch with @RedTapeChron."

No one should be surprised that their location data ends up on Creepy -- software tools like Twitter are deliberate in asking consumers if they want to post their location and it's not hard to turn the feature off. Clearly, people who tell Foursquare where they are located know they are sharing this information with the world. Still, it's jarring to see all your location declarations plotted on a big map.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

Photos and the Ever-Growing Privacy Risk

2011-04-12T15:22:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has ever been to one of my presentations is familiar with my stance on kids posting pictures on any online medium (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) or sending photos via their cell phones. One of the dangers I try to make parents aware of is how "leaky" the digital world is. Once a picture is posted it can spread to thousands of different sites through innocent exchanges by friends and peers. The concept of the "toothpaste being out of the tube" is the analogy I often make. When a child sends or posts a picture online, it becomes the property of the world and you can never take it back. And what's worse, since many pictures come from social media sites, they have names associated with them - names that can be indexed by search engines and names that can be searched by anyone.

CNN ran a great article about this and the author does a better job articulating it than I can.

Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/04/08/photo.privacy/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Color.....Why?

2011-03-28T07:40:00.002-04:00

Touted as the app that allows us to indulge our inherent voyeuristic impulses, the iPhone app "Color" was released a short time ago and is already growing in popularity. The more I learn about this app, the more it baffles me as to why anyone would use it, and the more it concerns me about kids getting their hands on it. Here's how it works:

Once the app is installed on my iPhone or iPad2, any pictures I take using that device are broadcast to everyone around me (within a 150 ft. radius). Anyone else who has this app installed will receive my photos along with the photos of everyone else who is using the app. I'm not choosing who get's the pictures (like Facebook) - everyone gets them. It gets stupider... Not only does it share the pictures I take at that moment in time, it broadcasts all the pictures I have ever taken since the app has been installed (yes...those embarrassing pictures your friend took of you at the bar last weekend are now being broadcast to everyone you work with). AND...it broadcasts all the time. So even if my phone is in my pocket and I'm not using it, it's still sending my photos to everyone within a 150 ft. radius...photos they can save and/or share with others.

My first question is why? As a society, we continue to march down this moronic path, sacrificing more and more of our privacy in the name of entertainment. Those of you who are old enough to have read George Orwell's 1984 should be recognizing that most of the invasions of privacy that "Big Brother" did on behalf of a dictatorship government, we are now doing to ourselves in the name of entertainment. It's bad enough that I get updates (via Facebook) whenever someone I barely knew in high school visits his dentist, now I get to see pictures of his root canal whether I want them or not.

Let's think about this app in the context of teenagers. We all know kids do dumb things, and most certainly, if something dumb can be done with a camera on their cell phone, a kid is going to do it. How many articles do you see in the news these days about sexting? In the midwest there is a growing problem/trend involving kids taking pictures of each other in school gym locker rooms or bathrooms and sending them out to everyone as a prank. They don't see the harm in taking a picture of your child in some state of nudity and sharing it with their friends. Let's now put this new app in the hands of these kids. Or what about the college kid who thinks it's so awesome to get drunk and take pictures? You may have read my posting of my friend who's daughter got drunk and her friends stripped her down, wrote vulgar things on her with a marker, took pictures with their cell phones, and posted the pictures on Facebook. What will happen when we put this app in their hands?

We have reached a point in our evolution where our own reputation is beyond our ability to protect. It was hard enough to teach young people about the dangers of posting objectionable pictures or information about themselves - how that might prevent them from getting a job or might cause them to lose a job later in life. Now anyone can take a picture of me at any time, instantly share it with everyone within a city block, post it on Facebook against my wishes and say whatever they want about me. Am I the only one who see's how dangerous this is all becoming? To make this all worse, this Color app is free from the iTunes store, which means it will likely spread like wildfire and soon be as prolific as Twitter.

My recommendation to parents of teens is to keep your eye out for this app. If you see the icon above on your kids' phone's or 4th gen iPod touch, it's time to have a talk about privacy and the dangers of sexting.

I wonder what idiotic app someone will think of next.

BTW, you can read about this app on CNN.

Could it Be? Facebook Finally Doing the Right Thing?

2011-03-24T11:58:00.002-04:00

It's still a dangerous place for kids and I still recommend kids under 16 not having Facebook pages BUT... After many years of ignoring the safety and wellbeing of children who use their service (as well as their own rules and regulations), Facebook seems to finally be moving in the responsible direction.

Facebook just announced a concerted effort to revoke the memberships of underage users. A preliminary investigation revealed over 20,000 users who do not meet Facebook's minimum age requirements (I know, I know...then why do they have profiles? Don't get me started) that will be removed soon (if not already). You can read about the effort on CNN.

Don't get too excited...Facebook currently has no plans to identify children who lie about their age in order to create a profile (which is what most kids do). But at least they're enforcing rules that until now have been completely impotent.

Thanks to SAFY

2011-03-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I presented to an impressive group of people. The organization was Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth (SAFY). For over 27 years, SAFY has been caring for children who are victims of neglect and abuse in their own homes. Headquartered in Delphos, Ohio, SAFY now has offices in eight states, focusing on treatment, intervention, adoption and the placement of children whose intensive needs cannot be managed through traditional foster care. Their mission is to provide a loving home for children in need. Today, SAFY is expanding into communities across the nation by providing programs and services that go beyond therapeutic foster care. Here is a link to their website.

It was a great experience to interact with people who offer so much charity and compassion to children in need. I am very appreciative for the opportunity to present to them. I encourage everyone to check out their website and learn more about the good they do.

Per my promise to the conference attendees, here is the presentation from the session.

Facebook Targets Cyber-bullying

2011-03-15T07:44:00.000-04:00

It's about time! I hope this isn't a lame attempt on their part to quell the criticism regarding how unsafe Facebook is for kids, or to jump on the Obama bandwagon, with his recent statement about cyber-bullying. As much as I have complained about Facebook in recent years, this is a good move on their part.

Amar Toor form Switched.com does a good job explaining the new features:

Facebook Introduces New Tools to Combat Cyberbullying

by Amar Toor on March 10, 2011 at 11:45 AM

Facebook is expected to unveil a new set of anti-bullying tools today at the White House Conference for Bullying Prevention in Washington, D.C.

The changes, designed to "create a culture of respect" among Facebook users, are focused on two main areas: a revamped safety center, and a broader array of more social mechanisms for reporting offensive or threatening content. The social network's new safety center will now feature more multimedia resources, including "new educational videos, external resources from renowned experts, downloadable materials for people to share and discuss." The company will also directly solicit teens for their feedback on enhancing the site's safety.

Users will also have more ways to report bullying or offensive content besides simply sending a notification directly to Facebook. If a user feels harassed or offended by content posted by another person, he or she can now choose to send a private message directly to the user, via Facebook's reporting options interface. Should the user choose to report the incident to Facebook, he or she can also include a trusted third-party (e.g., a teacher or parent) as a contact on the report.

Read the rest of the article here

Police chief: Hack your kids' Facebook passwords

2011-02-17T08:21:00.001-05:00

Saw this article on NBC News a couple of days ago. In summary, a police chief from a town in NJ is saying that parenting in the digital world can sometimes require extreme measures. He points out that most parents run into problems with their kids online because they are naive and choose to remain that way. Tough love in the digital world means knowing what your kids are doing: what sites they visit, who they talk to, and what they say. Corporations install hidden software on their employees' computers to track every move they make. Parents have that option as well, but it requires the investment of time and a willingness to shrug off apathy and naivete.

Here is the article:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/NJ-Cop-to-Parents--Steal-Facebook-Passwords-From-Your-Kids-115526069.html

I agree with this position but only as a last resort. There is no substitute for good old fashioned communication between parents and children. Set rules, create a mutual understanding and talk to your kids on a regular basis. And if that doesn't work, then resort to more extreme measures.

Sorry for the Absence

2011-02-17T08:10:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately a demanding and extremely time consuming project in my real job has kept me away from this blog for a few months. My apologies. You gotta put food on the table, you know? Hopefully I have more time now and should be more frequent with my posts.

Facebook to Display Amber Alerts

2011-01-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

Since I often have very negative things to say about Facebook with regards to child safety, I feel I also have to acknowledge when they make a move in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Facebook is safe for your kids, but I do think that their latest addition is a good move.

As of now, you can receive Amber alerts for missing children on your Facebook page and on any Facebook connected mobile device. It's a good idea but it could be improved. The way it currently works, you have to sign up to receive the alerts. I have to ask, if Facebook is willing to push advertisements I don't want to see onto my Facebook page without me signing up for them, why can't they push Amber alerts instead? Give up one add space for the latest Amber alert. But that would cost them money and we know Zuckerberg is barely scraping by. Facebook claims the reason you have to sign up is so they know which states you want to receive alerts for, but they already know where I'm at every time I log in so why is the login required?

Anyway, it's not perfect, it could be better, but it's a good move. Here is an article on CNN about it.

Xbox Kinect and Family Safety

2011-01-03T12:53:00.001-05:00

I've gotten a bunch of commetns and e-mails about the Kinnect since Christmas. I definitely have some research to do. In the mean time, here is a new Q&A from the Microsoft Xbox website.

Q:

What Family Settings do you provide to help me protect my child’s privacy and online safety?

A:

Family safety is a very high priority for us and there are several ways parents can help safeguard their child’s use of Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE already provide parents with strong controls to manage their family’s gaming experiences, and we extend those controls to Kinect. Family Settings consists of two types of settings: The first is Console Safety, where you can manage settings for all users of the console. Within the console, located at My Xbox >Family Settings, you can:

Decide what your kids can play, online and off. This includes content ratings for games, movies, and television shows.
Set a pass code to restrict who can change your Family Settings.
Set limits on console play time using the family timer.

The second is Online Safety, which is set for each individual Xbox LIVE profile. Parents for example can set controls for each child’s Xbox LIVE profile that are appropriate for their age and maturity level, including:

Decide what activities your kids can participate in online including multiplayer gaming, video chat, and voice or text messaging.
Decide who your kids can communicate with online.
Choose who can see your child’s profile or friends list, and what information they can see about others.

The Xbox LIVE sign-in is how each member of your family signs in to use Xbox LIVE. Online Safety Settings only apply when you or your child is using Xbox LIVE. If a child is a minor, parental permission is required for the child to obtain an Xbox LIVE account, and the Online Safety Settings that you established during account creation are applied every time your child signs in to the service. For more information on choosing and setting the right parental controls for your family visit http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Family.

A Parent's Guide to Facebook

2010-12-13T09:26:00.000-05:00

I saw an article on Cincinnati.com last week about a new "Parent's Guide to Facebook" offered by ConnectSafely.org. I took some time to download and read though it...not too bad, especially since there isn't much fort parents available in this space.

The guide was written by Anne Collier and Larry Magid, Internet safety advocates and co-directors of ConnectSafely, which published the guide in conjunction with the iKeepSafe Coalition, a national partnership of governors, attorneys general, health and education professionals and law enforcement promoting safe technology use. The guide covers such topics as safety, privacy and reputation protection when using Facebook.

It's no secret how I feel about Facebook and how dangerous it can be for children. So here you go, another resource in your ongoing effort to keep your kids safe online.

Download the guide here.

Good Article About Ongoing Safety Efforts

2010-11-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

Sorry for my lack of posting lately. My real job has me extremely busy.

Here is a good article from USA Today's website that talks about some ongoing efforts by a few tech companies around keeping kids safe online. You will probably recognize a couple of these items as I have already written articles about them. Here is the link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-11-30-kidsonline30_ST_N.htm?csp=usat.me

Parent's Plan

2010-11-19T14:42:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the great folks at St. Teresa in Price Hill for having me speak last night. During the discussion I suggested that given the incredibly difficult task of trying to keep up with all of the technologies that children are using, parents best bet is to come up with a plan. No one could possibly know everything and no matter what you do know or do, you will never be able to account for every possible risk your child faces online. But doing something is far better than nothing and you have to start somewhere. An online safety plan is a good place to start.

Here is what I suggest:

Take an inventory of every connected device in your home. This will include the following:
- Internet connected computers
- Cell phones (smart phone or regular cell phone)
- iPods/iPads
- Video game consoles like PlayStation, Wii, XBox, etc.
- Televisions (yes televisions. Newer model TVs have internet capabilities built in)
Figure out how your children are connecting. I'm not talking about what devices they are using, we addressed that in step 1. I'm talking about the software and services your children use to connect. This might include the following:
- Facebook/MySpace
- Twitter
- Skype
- Search engines
- Chatrooms (video game chatrooms included)
- Instant messaging (like AOL messenger)
- Foursquare
- etc.
Learn about what protection is available for the devices, software, and services your children use to connect. Google is a good place to start. Pick any topic like "iPods" and perform a Google search on "iPod Parental Controls." Most likely you'll find information on protection strategies for each device/service. If you can't find information on Google or other search engines, try searching this blog. Chances are I've written articles about most devices/services.
Ask Mike. I'm not kidding. What drives this blog is parents needing information on specific devices, services, or strategies for protecting their kids. I am always happy to answer your questions and even do some research if you need more information.
Talk to your kids. Explain two things: the dangers associated with each device/service they connect with AND your expectations around their conduct with each service/device they connect with. Talk about offensive content, sexual predators, cyber-bullying, and potentially illegal activities (like taking pictures of other kids and broadcasting them to a group of people). If you don't know all the dangers associated, then learn about them.

You don't have to be a technology expert to start down the path of protecting your kids. Just follow the plan above and you will be miles ahead of where you would be if you did nothing. Don't sit back and do nothing. Don't be "that parent"...the one who resigns to "I don't know anything about computers so there is nothing I can do." Your children deserve more and it's no one's responsibility but your own.

Now Available on Amazon..."A Pedophile's Guide"

2010-11-10T14:46:00.001-05:00

No kidding! This article appeared on MSNBC today. Apparently Amazon is selling a guide book for pedophiles on how to conduct "child love" correctly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40112145/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Don't get too mad at Amazon yet. Anyone can list a self made book (which is what this is) on Amazon through Amazon's Marketplace. The thing to watch is whether or not Amazon will remove this item.

UPDATE: Amazon pulled this item yesterday afternoon. Good for them.

Xbox 360 Kinect...Voyeurism Advances to the Next Level

2010-11-09T09:32:00.000-05:00

Christmas is coming up and there is a lot of hype about how cool the new Xbox 360 Kinect device is. But before you ruin out and buy one for your kids, get the facts. For those of you who don't know what this "add on" for the Xbox is, I'll explain.

The Nintendo Wii revolutionized home video gaming by introducing motion/position based controllers. Instead of moving a joystick and pressing buttons, you simply waved around a small remote and the system would pick up your movements and translate them into actions within the video game. Since Nintendo pioneered this wildly popular technology, other game system manufacturers have been scrambling to catch up. Sony just came out with their "Move" device for PlayStation that copies the Wii functionality and now Microsoft upped the ante with Kinect. Kinect provides Xbox users with motion-based gaming functionality like the Wii and PlayStation devices but it does so in a very different way. Instead of a system that monitors the motion of a small hand-held remote, the Kinect watches YOU and monitors your movement. The Kinect is an advanced camera device that sees in 3D, binocular vision like you and I do, and also tracks you via infrared and listens to you with a super-sensitive microphone. Technologically it is very cool and it will definitely take video gaming to new levels, but at it's core, this device is a webcam.

So what's the big deal about hooking a webcam up to an Xbox? The truth is that you've always been able to hook webcams up to the Xbox. In the past, a webcam was just an extra - you didn't really need it to play any games. A few gamers hooked them up and used them but most people didn't. The Kinect is going to come with a whole new generation of super cool games that every kid will want. Among it's other features, the Kinect IS a webcam...and it's always on as long as the Xbox is on. In the past, your children could chat with or even talk to complete strangers while gaming on the Xbox. Now they can video chat with complete strangers as well. Kinect comes with Skype software that gets installed when you hook up the device. So it's not only a webcam to use while gaming, it's a webcam they can use whenever they want. Skype can be dangerous for kids (read my article from Sept. 17 here) and is definitely something that parents need to monitor and control.

I honestly don't know as much about Kinect as I'd like to. I don't own an Xbox and therefore can't test it thoroughly. My hope is that Microsoft has planned ahead for this potential security and privacy risk for kids and have good parental control features built in. Xbox's parental controls are ok though not great. I've read numerous articles on how cool the Kinect is and how high the quality of the webcam is, but I haven't seen anything about parental controls. If anyone has any info on this, I'd be very interested to see it.

I am certainly not saying to avoid buying this product. On the contrary, I think it could be a very cool, fun thing for kids. Anything that gets kids moving is a good thing right? What I am saying is what I always say to parents: don't just give this to your kids and walk away. This is technology...potentially dangerous technology...that you need to monitor and control. If you want to provide this to your children, it's your responsibility to learn about it so they can operate it safely.

Here is a link to Microsoft's Kinect website: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/kinect. They do mention "advanced parental controls" but they don't really describe them. Hopefully that's forthcoming. Here is also a summary description of the Kinect device from Gizmodo's website: http://gizmodo.com/5563047/what-is-xbox-360-kinect.

Finally...A Way to Monitor Pictures and Video On Your Child's Phone

2010-11-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

Thanks goes to my brother-in-law Scott out in Utah who caught the release of this product two weeks ago and filled me in. I would have hated to miss this one.

Mobile Media Guard from Parental Solutions LLC is the first smartphone app that actively monitors your child's Android or Blackberry phone and notifies you about and lets you look at every picture or video they take/record, send, and receive. This app fills a huge void in phone-based security and safety for kids and I am very excited that someone finally got around to creating it.

Think about how much trouble an unsupervised child can get into with a camera on a cell phone. We've all heard the stories on the news about sexting - some teenage girl has nude or semi-nude pictures of her taken "somehow" and they "somehow" get distributed to everyone. Yeah, I know what you're thinking...what are teenage girls doing taking nude pictures of themselves (or allowing others to do it) with their phones? It happens daily, in fact, few counties in the USA have been spared such incidents. The point is, kids don't always make the best choices and unfortunately, the result can be permanent damage to their reputations, privacy, and sometimes safety. I had a mother e-mail me last week about a problem in her child's school in Eastern Pennsylvania. Apparently junior high aged kids are having great fun taking pictures of their classmates while they are changing or going to the bathroom before/after gym class and sending them to everyone they know. The worst part is that by the time parents find out, it's already been happening for months.

Until now, parents have been extremely limited in their ability to control the camera on their child's phone. It's difficult to purchase a cell phone without a camera these days, and most of them do not provide parents the ability to permanently turn camera/video off. The mother from Pennsylvania solved the problem by having her husband take a small drill and drill into the lens of her kid's camera - extreme?...yes. Problem solved?...yes. The good news is that now, some parents can put away the drill and use this new app instead.

Mobile Media Guard works for Android ("Droid") and Blackberry based smartphones. What does that mean? It means it won't work with phones that aren't based on the Android or Blackberry operating system. How can you tell which phones are? Ask your service provider. Here's how it works:

The product works as a "app" on the phone, downloaded and installed from the phone's app store or market. The setup process is very easy and takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Once the phone has been set up, parents then visit Mobile Media Guard's website to set up an account and activate the service (another quick, easy process). Once the service is activated, parents receive an e-mail notification any time a new picture or video is taken by the child's phone and/or whenever the child receives a picture or video via e-mail (on their phone) or text message. So it not only monitors the pictures and video your child takes, it monitors what their friends are sending to them as well. When parents receive the e-mail notification about the new picture or video, they can go out to the parent control panel on the Mobile Media Guard website and actually view the image/video. I was going to post some screenshots and give you an overview of the setup procedure, but the Mobile Media Guard website does such a fantastic job, I don't need to. You can see for yourself here.

The cost? Not bad. The app is free to download and the service subscription is $49.99 per year (for the first phone...additional phones are $35.99 per year each). For what you get and for how easy it is to use, it's a great deal.

The downside? I know some parents are going to complain that the service is only available for Android and Blackberry smartphones. Most kids don't have these high-end (more expensive) phones. But honestly, the cost of smartphones is dropping, as are the supporting data plans and with the way technology is evolving, all phones will probably be smartphones in he next few years. The other benefit of smartphones for parents is that there are several good apps that help keep your kids safe (like geolocation/tracking and kid-safe browsers). And for the iPhone users out there, Mobile Media Guard isn't available...yet. But the guys at Parental Solutions are working on that.

I really like this product and even better, I like the company behind it. I had a chance to talk to co-founder Craig Spenner last week and got a strong sense that he and his partner truly believe in "the cause" of keeping kids safe online. I expect great things from this company in the future.

Find out more about Mobile Media Guard at the website: http://www.mobilemediaguard.com/

Digital Dating Abuse

2010-10-26T12:01:00.004-04:00

An emerging problem among teens is digital dating abuse. In short, a couple breaks up and one or both begin harassing the other online, through hateful messages, lies, insulting websites, social media harassment, and even circulation of nude or embarrassing photos. The number of teens who experience digital dating abuse is rising logarithmically in the US and is happening in almost every high school in the country.

In light of some recent digital hate crimes and cyber-bullying in the past few months, several media giants have done stories on digital harassment including dating abuse. MTV had a short series last month called "A Thin Line," Fox News ran related stories in conjunction with cyber-bullying and cyber-harassment, Anderson Cooper and other CNN analysts have been contributing similar story-lines lately. Today, the CNN website has a great article on the topic that I think every parent of teenagers should read.

Here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/26/teens.digital.dating.abuse/index.html?hpt=T2

A Young Adult's Guide to Safety in the Digital Age

2010-10-25T16:48:00.001-04:00

Here's the scenario: You've done your best to raise your kids to be decent digital citizens. Over the years you've had a few online issues but overall you've done a good job keeping your kids safe. Next year, they go away to college - far removed from your guidance and watchful eye. They are embarking on a journey into the digital wilderness alone. Waiting for them are not only the creeps, predators, and bullies you worried about when they were younger, but also a whole new troop of bad guys trying to steal their financial information, rip them off, catch them in a scam, or load their machines with spyware and viruses. Nervous? I will be when my kids reach that age (...in the not to distant future). What's a responsible parent to do? Jeff Sechler has the answer.

Jeff's book: "A Young Adult's Guide to Safety in the Digital Age" is intended for teens and young adults and is a survival guide of strategies that will help young people stay safe and maintain their personal integrity online. The book is written in a language that is easily understood, it contains simple rules and suggestions, and covers most everything a young adult might encounter.

There are several things I really like about this book.

It fills a void - Most online safety guides are written for parents or teachers of younger kids. Not much exists for young adults who are experiencing new freedom in the digital world. Late teen and college age kids don't necessarily need filters for bad words and offensive content. They need a whole different set of strategies that very few people are writing about. Sechler's book hits the mark in these areas.
It's comprehensive - The book addresses three primary risk areas: personal safety risks, personal property risks, and professional risks. The few books that do exist for young adults usually focus on one of these. The most common are books on protecting your personal safety (from predators, perverts, stalkers, etc.). The next most common are guides on online privacy and protecting personal property (like bank accounts, identity theft, credit fraud, etc.). Very few things have been written about professional risks, which is becoming a huge problem for many young people.
It's written for it's target audience - Easy to read, doesn't waste time with a bunch of background or historical info. This book says "here's the problem and here's the way to protect yourself." It's hard enough to get kids and young adults to read anything so why muddy the water with auxiliary, useless verbiage?
It's current...for now - The problem with any print book about technology is that it becomes obsolete so quickly. But I'm sure this is just a first step for Mr. Sechler and he has plans for keeping this guide up to date (and if he doesn't, he should). Right now this book addresses all the relevant stuff young people will face as they embark on their solo digital journey.

Of all of these positives, my favorite is definitely how comprehensive this book is. It tells young people that they have to worry about their personal safety and property as well as their professional integrity. How many times have heard stories of people posting their drunken "train wreck" photos on Facebook and then regretting it two years later when they try to get a job? Employers are definitely using social media as screening tools, and yet college kids remain selectively oblivious to the dangers of posting risky content. Sechler's approach to the three primary risk areas that young people face is extremely appropriate and timely.

Here are a list of the major topics in the book:

Sexual and Online Predators
Cyber-Bullying and Harassment
Cell Phone Texting and Sexting
Internet Addictions
Personal Property Risks
Identity Theft
Online Scams
Computer Viruses and Spyware
Professional Risks
Online Reputation and Applying for College or Jobs
Copyright and Plagiarism Laws

My recommendation? I think that this book should be required reading for every high school in the USA. The problem that Mr. Sechler faces with this book is getting it into the right hands. Kids that age are probably not going to go out and buy a book like this. Required reading might be the only way to appeal to large numbers. This book is valuable enough to make it part of any school's required reading and it is short enough and easy enough to read that it won't have too big an impact on the rest of the curriculum. My suggestion for Sechler: come up with a teachers guide on how to teach a short unit around this book. That would definitely drive adoption by school districts.

I definitely recommend this book, not only for young people, but for parents of young people who want to help their children stay safe online. I am also going to actively suggest it to the school districts I work with. It's cheap, easy to read, and covers some really important stuff.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Young-Adults-Guide-Safety-Digital/dp/1453618414/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1288022955&sr=8-11.

And here is a link to the book's website where you can get in touch with the author and/or publisher: www.digitalagesafety.com

WHIO TV Internet Safety Interview

2010-10-22T10:08:00.001-04:00

In July of this year, I was interviewed by WHIO TV in Dayton OH. I finally got my hands on a copy of the video. It was too big to post in one chunk so I had to split it into two parts. Here you go:

Part 1

Part 2

Thanks to WHIO TV for providing me a copy.

GoGoStat Parental Guidance for Facebook - Part II

2010-10-21T07:53:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the delay. I know I said I'd get to Part II of this article "tomorrow" but a death in the family and an unexpected trip to Colorado put me way behind.

So lets talk more about GoGoStat. As I said in my first article, I discovered the GoGoStat product through an article on an NBC News website. The article caught my attention because it was titled "Facebook Partners with GoGoStat to Improve Safety for Kids." Could it be possible that Facebook was acting responsibly? Don't get your hopes up. My interview with Senior Product Manager Ron Stevenson revealed that Facebook had nothing to do with the appearance of GoGoStat on the Facebook scene. GoGoStat is a Facebook app like a thousand other Facebook apps, all developed by third party entities to run inside the Facebook environment. Facebook offers an interface for programmers (called an API) that allows them to come up with games and/or gadgets that people can add to their page. I'm sure you've heard of FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and any number of trivia games. These are all applications that people other than Facebook create and then list on Facebook's site for people to add to their profiles. The point is, they are all developed independently from Facebook. However, they all must operate inside of Facebook's "rules of operation" including their privacy policy.

I found it interesting and ironic that the developers at GoGoStat had a difficult time creating their product within Facebook's rules. Facebook doesn't allow people to create apps that invade user's privacy or distribute personal information and that's exactly what GoGoStat does...in a good way. It monitor's a child's profile/page and reports information about it to another person - the child's parent. That functionality is against the rules. Here is GoGoStat trying to make a much needed tool to protect kids and here is Facebook making it difficult for them at every turn. BUT (and I can't believe I am writing this) don't be too hard on Facebook. Without such rules and requirements there could be a glut of really bad apps that could endanger kids even more. So, while the process was difficult for GoGoStat, it was a necessary evil. And their developers were smart enough to make it work despite the limitations.

The other thing I found interesting is that every time Facebook changes it's privacy policies, GoGoStat has to adjust their product so that it still works within the new regulations. Facebook "improves" their privacy policies about once every two months. That means the GoGoStat developers have to remain vigilant so that there is no lag in service. To date, the product has worked smoothly. Not bad for a free service. I personally think it's admirable that the GoGoStat people are that committed.

Kudos to GoGoStat. Keep up the good work. Consider me a fan and supporter.

Oh and one more thing. In the first article I talked about the Spanish version of the product. It was released last week.

GoGoStat Parental Guidance for Facebook - Part I

2010-10-05T12:21:00.004-04:00

Looking for a way to protect your kids on Facebook? Keep reading.

Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis put up with my frequent critical rantings about Facebook. It's a dangerous place for kids and Facebook does nothing to make it safer, despite their seemingly unlimited resources and success. Facebook's position: "It's not our job to police your children." That statement is two-sided for me. On one side...believe it or not...I agree with Facebook. It's not their responsibility to monitor what children do, it's the parent's responsibility. I firmly believe that parents who allow their children to run wild in Facebook without supervision are asking for trouble. Trouble from sexual predators, trouble from cyber-bullies, trouble from identity thieves, and trouble from the future as their kids' potential employers find the drunken train wreck pictures their kids post. On the other side of the statement, I disagree. If you are going to make a free product available on a medium like the Internet, you have to take some responsibility. Tobacco companies got slammed years ago because it was too easy for kids to get cigarettes. Those tobacco companies could have used the same "it's not our responsibility" argument Facebook does, but we as a society stepped up and said "you produce a dangerous product that threatens the health and welfare of our children...you must control it." Under that same logic, why are we letting Facebook get away with the same thing? The thing that bugs me the most is Facebook could do the right thing and use some of their billions of dollars to make their product safer for kids but for no good reason, they are choosing NOT to do the right thing.

My advice to parents has always been to keep your kids off Facebook until they are adults. With other alternatives like Yoursphere and (hopefully soon) Imbee, they can have a similar or better experience without the risk. But I realize that this advice is unrealistic. The genie is out of the bottle. So what now?

GoGoStat Parental Guidance for Facebook is definitely "what now." GoGoStat is a Facebook App that monitors your kids' Facebook pages and lets you know when their content is at risk. I learned about this product through an article on NBC's website and as soon as I did, I had to know more about it. So, I sent an e-mail to GoGoStat asking to talk to someone and they were gracious enough to comply. Yesterday I had a great conversation with Ron Stevenson, Senior Product Manager and collected some good information.

What it Does
GoGoStat runs in the background whenever your child is logged into Facebook. It monitors the content on your child's page and looks for "at risk" items. You will be notified when...

Your child posts pictures (any pictures)
Your child "friends" someone new (personal info of the new friend is provided)
Your child uses or receives words on their page or messages that meet GoGoStat's ever-growing, predefined criteria for at-risk content. This includes not only foul language, but language that is sexual in nature, drug references, suicide references, and language used in cyber-bullying.

Notification of at risk items comes to your e-mail address:

When you log into your GoGoStat parent control panel in Facebook you see something like this:

Reading the "Full Report" (green button) provides the details about the content in question

How it Works
GoGoStat is installed through a mutual agreement between parent and child. The parent signs up for GoGoStat and in the process, identifies his/her children's Facebook profiles. The child and parent are both sent special codes and both must exchange these codes outside of Facebook to complete the process.

Once GoGoStat is setup, it runs quietly in the background whenever your child is on Facebook. There are no indicators or graphics displayed on your child's Facebook profile that GoGoStat is running (nothing for them to be embarrassed about). One of the huge benefits of GoGoStat being a Facebook App is that it runs as part of Facebook. Many competing products like SocialShield, McAfee, and Norton run only on the machine where the product is installed. If your child logs into Facebook at a friend's house, no parental controls are enabled and their activities are unmonitored. GoGoStat is "on" whenever your child is on.

What it Costs
Nothing. It is totally free. Since I am usually suspect of anything free online, I asked Ron Stevenson if it really was free and how they supported it. He explained that the current version of GoGoStat will always be free. In the near future, they will be releasing a paid version of the app that provides additional features to parents, but even that will only be a few dollars per month (and you will still have the free version as an alternative). GoGoStat is one of several products the company makes. The big picture for them is to create a comprehensive platform of social networking products and offering GoGoStat for free gets people used to their product and brand name. It's the same marketing concept Google uses. Win for them...win for us.

Negatives
Not many. Some parents may not like that they have to have a Facebook profile in order for GoGoStat to work. But honestly, if your child is on Facebook you should have a profile to keep tabs on them. You used a baby monitor when they were new...think of this as an "adolescent monitor." The soon to be released premium (paid) version won't require a parent Facebook profile and word is the free version will go that route in the future.

Positives
Everything listed above plus the newly released support for Spanish language. The number of Spanish speaking people in the US is unquestionably on the rise. If your child is a native Spanish speaker, then rest assured the product will monitor them as well. If your child is not, you should realize that they can pick up some Spanish from native speaking peers. Using Spanish to hide conversations or words from parents is a rapidly growing strategy among teens. GoGoStat monitors both languages. Also, the fact that the product is a Facebook App means nothing to install on your computer and nothing to update (GoGoStat takes care of that).

Where to Get it
GoGoStat Website: http://www.gogostat.com/
GoGoStat Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=123402281032622&ref=ts

Ron was also nice enough to send me a pdf file that contained screen shots of the screens that parents and children encounter. You may find it informative. Download the document here.

I am definitely a big fan of this product and recommend it to all parents who have kids on Facebook. What do you have to lose? If your child doesn't want you to install it, too bad. Be a parent. Access to their Facebook account SHOULD be a condition for being allowed to have one. But parents should keep in mind that this product only monitors your child's Facebook site. It does not block anything or prevent them from doing anything. It just gives you the info, it's your responsibility to act on it.

I have much more good stuff on GoGoStat but this article is getting too long. Look for part II of my discussion about GoGoStat tomorrow.

Cyber-Bullying Awareness

2010-10-04T11:28:00.004-04:00

1 in 5 kids in the USA have experienced cyber-bullying in some form. So says a recent survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Cyber-bullying is an ever-growing problem that is becoming more difficult to control. It occurs in most every form of electronic/digital media that children access today:

On the Internet via social networking sites (e.g. Facebook and MySpace), chat rooms, instant messaging, YouTube (a favorite tool of cyber-bullies), websites, and e-mail
On video game consoles via online multiplayer games
On cell phones via text messaging, instant messaging, and e-mail

The reality is that kids today are near to one or more of these media sources 24/7 and as such, are unable to escape the trauma of being bullied. When I was a kid, you got bullied by "that kid" on the playground or in your neighborhood but the instances were short lived and when it was over, it was over. If you got bullied at school, you could go home and be safe, removed from the influence of the bully. Cyber-bullying is constant - kids can't escape it. It's also permanent. When a cyber-bully posts something hateful online, it remains until someone removes it. Go out to YouTube and search for "Star Wars Kid." Your search will return hundreds of variations of the same video - a video that was supposed to be the private property of one 15 year old boy - a video that was absconded by cyber-bullies who pretended to be the kid's friends and then posted online in an effort to humiliate the kid - a video that was posted over 5 years ago. The video has collected over 3 million hits since it was posted. Now imagine if that happened to your child.

Parents need to increase their awareness about cyber-bullying. Too many parents don't view it as a tangible threat. During one of my Internet Safety presentations, I had a father say "don't you think you are making too big a deal out of this...kids aren't actually hurt by cyber-bullying...you can't punch someone over the Internet." Really? Cyber-bullying results in suicide, depression, eating disorders, poor self-image, etc. Are these not real medical threats? If your child had these conditions as a result of being cyber-bullied, how would you deal with it...by telling them they are making "too big a deal out of it?"

CNN ran a great article today on cyber-bullying. You can read it here. Also, Anderson Cooper, in cooperation with the Cartoon Network, is airing an episode of Anderson Cooper 360 titled "Stop Bullying: Speak Up" tonight (Monday, 10/4) at 10PM EST. I will definitely be watching it and I would recommend all parents do the same.

CNN just posted another good article (interview with the father of a boy that tried to commit suicide after being cyber-bullied) on the subject. Read it here.

Yet another great article from CNN on this topic. Read it here.

What Is The Answer?

2010-09-29T10:04:00.003-04:00

My friend Tracy Mooney from McAfee (read her blog here) responded to my latest posting about Facebook with this question/statement: "Yes but how?" A very short statement that sums up a huge problem with the online world - how do we make it safe for kids? I can always count on Tracy to bring my lofty goals down to Earth :-).

In July, I wrote an article reviewing the Online Safety and Technology Working Groups (OSTWG) report on the current status of the online safety of children in the U.S. and their recommendations for improving the situation. In summary, their research produced extremely valuable data and their suggestions fell far short of improving anything. At that time I made some suggestions for how we as a nation might make the online world safer for kids. The two primary suggestions I had were:

Certified "Kid Safe" sites - a single organization (like the OSTWG) comes up with a set of standards and requirements that a website must meet to receive the certification. A company like Google creates a browser that only allows access to these certified sites. Schools and homes install this specialized browser on machines that children use. The federal government legislates steep penalties for organizations that abuse the certification.
Youth ambassadors/youth credibility - the message of good online citizenship must come from sources that kids view as credible. That means people who know the online world as well as they do and people that aren't viewed by kids as being out of touch with the problems they face. A national curriculum should be created (again OSTWG would be a good source for this) utilizing college age, young adults (much like youth ministers or camp counselors) to deliver the message.

Of course there is much more to this than the summary description I listed above. Read the full article for complete details.

While I still strongly believe these ideas are sound and should be explored on a national level, I don't think either of these solutions would solve problems like the one presented by Facebook. Here are the facts:

Facebook is unsafe for kids
Facebook is blatantly uncaring and uninterested in making their site safer for kids
Kids would still join Facebook despite my "Kid Safe" site certification idea.

In a perfect world, I would like to believe that sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. would live by the adage: "with great power comes great responsibility". All of these companies have become very lucrative and powerful from the success of their products. Stepping up to the "responsibility" part of the equation should be the next step. With all of their resources and momentum, they should set aside some money and R&D effort to come up with a solution. They are obviously smart enough. But apparently they aren't interested in being responsible and clearly we can't count on them to solve the problem. Without their leadership, we are back to Tracy's question "Yes, but how?"

I was laying in bed thinking about all of this last night when something occurred to me (bear with me here). In the early 1900's automobiles were the emerging technology in Europe and the U.S.. European government leaders recognized the dangers that these machines zipping around pedestrians and slow moving animals could create. In 1903, Prussian leaders created a set of mandatory tests that drivers had to pass before receiving a certificate of privilege to drive. Included in these requirements was a mandatory age, clear vision and hearing, and a baseline level of intelligence and responsiveness to typical scenarios drivers would face. The driver's license was born and the concept quickly caught on and was adopted by governments all over the world (the first in the U.S. was New York, 1910). Today the emerging technology is cyberspace. Is it time to come up with a license to use it? Maybe so.

Imagine a culture that has embedded the online world into every part of their lives - communication, entertainment, shopping, news and information, banking, business interactions, etc. Realizing the potential danger that abuse of such a system could cause, this culture's leadership comes up with a digital ID much like a driver's license. You receive it when you are born and use it through life to identify and verify yourself when you go online making business and commerce transactions. It would keep you out of harmful sites when you are young and give you more security when you shop and do your banking. OH WAIT...we are that culture...why haven't we looked into developing the digital ID for all citizens? Businesses have been doing it for years. The digital signature is common for verifying digital transactions and verifying data in the corporate world. The technology is there, why not take it to the next level and make a digital identity required just like a birth certificate and social security card?

This concept is nothing new and I certainly didn't invent this idea. Digital visionaries have been kicking the idea around for 20 years. The two big arguments that come up any time the concept of a required, national digital ID are:

The infrastructure it would require to manage such a system would be huge and expensive - who would assume that responsibility?
The "Big Brother" potential - people feel that this gives the government too much visibility into our private lives.

Here are my answers to those arguments. First, Social Security is a big system, as is the State driver's license system. But we do it because it's necessary. How long will we keep our head in the sand and not admit that we have progressed to a point where digital ID's are now necessary? Let's also not forget that the federal government is spending billions trying to stimulate new business - grants for anyone to come up with any hair-brained idea they have. Well, this would be a new business wouldn't it? Put some stimulus money toward developing this.

Second, come on...the Big Brother argument is no longer valid. If we as a nation were worried about government visibility into our private lives, we wouldn't be posting every mundane detail of what we do on our social media accounts. Do you really think the government doesn't have visibility into that? When George Orwell's book 1984 came out, it scared people and a huge push for individuality and personal privacy ensued. 60 years later we have willingly sacrificed every shred of our personal privacy in the name of entertainment. What we have done with Facebook and Twitter would scare George Orwell.

Someone has to do something. Our current solutions aren't working. It's time that society wakes up and confronts this problem realistically. What would have happened if our forefathers said "a driver's license is a silly waste of time"? Would you venture out onto the roads knowing there are no minimum safety requirements or accountability for the other drivers around you? No. Then why are we doing it digitally?

So, my new, number 3 item on my list of solutions is personal digital ID's. Let the nay-saying begin.

Fox News: Pedophiles Find a Home for Social Networking -- on Facebook

2010-09-28T11:37:00.004-04:00

Last week I was lambasted by a purported Facebook employee who said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's donation of $100 million to schools in NJ proves that child wellfare is extremely important to Facebook and that I was pretty much full of crap as a critic.

Today an article by Fox News reports that a national association for pedophiles - NAMBLA (yes, believe it or not there is one) uses Facebook as their primary source for communication. Read the article here (it's definitely a must read). Pornographic pictures of minors are exchanged, meetings with minors are arranged, and the so called "rights" of pedophiles are evangelized. Preliminary reports show that this group has used Facebook for at least two years and possibly more without incident (meaning Facebook has not shut them down).

Facebook's response to the article by Fox News was this statement: "We take safety very seriously and have a strict policy against the posting of child exploitive content or content that supports child exploitive groups. Facebook is highly self-regulating, and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive. Our team of investigations professionals reviews these reports, removes content that violates our policies, and escalates to law enforcement as necessary.”

If this statement were true, why is it that Fox News investigators found not only NAMBLA's disgusting site, but over 80 affiliated group sites and over 100 links from other group sites to the NAMBLA site? 80 groups don't pop up overnight. If Facebook made any effort at all to investigate as they say they do, they would have surely stumbled onto one of these sites (which should have lead them to others). The Fox News article reports that a simple search on "man/boy love" revealed many of the sites.

So I would very much like the Facebook employee who keeps sending me hate mail to comment on this article and their supposed commitment to child safety on their social network. And I would also very much like all those parents out there that let their children run amok on Facebook unsupervised to rethink that policy.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/28/pedophiles-find-home-social-networking-facebook/

UPDATE: Mary Kay Hoal of Yoursphere.com and Yoursphereforparents.com took the ball and ran with it even further. Be sure to read her article for even more information on Facebook and NAMBLA. Good stuff Mary Kay!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Because of Fox New's outstanding report, Facebook is finally dismantling the NAMBLA organization and their chapters sites. Read about it here. Thank you Fox News!

iBoss Router - Where Can I Get One?

2010-09-28T07:30:00.000-04:00

Several times I have spoken of the iBoss Router. Great product that solves many online safety problems in the home. If you want to know more about it, you can read my review here. The problem with the iBoss Router is where to get it. Phantom Technologies (who makes the iBoss) seems to be moving in an enterprise direction, marketing their equipment to large organizations. As a result, their website is becoming less friendly to the home users like you and I.

I got an e-mail yesterday from someone who was frustrated that they couldn't find iBoss home router information on the Phantom Technologies website. I went out and dug around and finally came up with it. Here is the link: http://www.ibosswebfilters.com/ibh_more_info_int.html.

Facebook Fires Back...Again

2010-09-24T09:51:00.002-04:00

If you read this blog, you know that I occasionally get e-mails from a person at Facebook complaining or disputing my many Facebook related posts. I got another one today, this one directing my attention to this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23newark.html

The article reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated over $100 million to schools in Newark NJ. The e-mail that I received had this message in it for me:

"You go to great lengths to point out how Facebook is supposedly harmful for children and that Facebook as a company has no interest in the welfare of children. This donation by our CEO proves that you are very wrong and, I believe, discredits you as a critic."

Really?! So you create a product that readily reveals private information about children, that facilitates cyber-bullying and harassment from anonymous sources, and makes it easy for pedophiles and sexual predators to stalk and hunt minors...and this donation is supposed to make that all "ok." Seriously?

Pablo Escobar was one of the most generous donors to schools and social services in his local community in Columbia. Did that make the drug empire he ran "ok"? Did that make up for the millions of people who's lives were destroyed from addiction to his drugs? I'm not saying that Facebook is comparable to a Columbian drug cartel (far from it), but a donation doesn't automatically fix the problems. Morality isn't something you can purchase. I would have rather seen Zuckerberg invest that money into efforts around making Facebook safer for kids. Then at least he would be accepting responsibility for the problems his product creates.

And of course I have to end with my usual sermon. The blame for exposure to dangerous Facebook features does not lie solely with the people at Facebook. Any parent who lets their child get onto Facebook without direction or monitoring is equally to blame. Ignorance isn't an excuse, it's a form of laziness. Learn about Facebook and if you must let your kids on it, be there with them. It's a dangerous neighborhood.

(note: the communication I have received from Facebook has been from an anonymous person who claims to be a Facebook employee. No official communication from Facebook has been issued, though I would very much like to start that dialogue with them)

Facebook Faux Pas

2010-09-21T13:53:00.001-04:00

This is both funny and scary at the same time. A British teen accidentally created a public event for her private birthday party and posted it to Facebook (including her home address and contact info). Within a few days over 20,000 people responded (and now know the girl's address and contact info).

You can read the article here:

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/21/5150049-teen-posts-birthday-party-invite-on-facebook-and-21000-rsvp

Parents, know what your kids are doing on Facebook. Kids make bad choices sometimes (intentionally or not) and Facebook does nothing to protect their privacy. It's definitely a dangerous place for kids.

Dangers of Skype

2010-09-17T08:44:00.000-04:00

Wow. If your kids use Skype, you have to read this great article by Stephanie Kohl.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Dangers of Internet for children highlighted by Skype incident

September 16, 2010
By STEPHANIE KOHL skohl@pioneerlocal.com

A 10-year-old Lake Forest girl was chatting with her friends on Skype about the first day of school and some homework assignments recently.

It was not unusual for the student to log into Skype -- which offers free video calls and instant messaging to others on Skype -- on Sept. 1, as she and her friends have been using it for awhile now. So, when a user with a screen name she didn't recognize requested to chat with her, she accepted, thinking it was a friend from the neighborhood, said her mother.

After the request was accepted, a video started. It was a naked, middle-aged man inappropriately touching himself and sending equally inappropriate messages to her. The girl screamed for her mother, who immediately called the police. The incident is still under investigation.

"She got so freaked out that she's not Skypeing anymore," the mother said of her daughter. (The pair wish to remain anonymous.)

Realizing if this happened to her daughter, it could happen to anyone using any online communication tool, the woman shared the incident with her friends. She also told all her children who use Skype and other cyber outlets -- like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter -- to communicate only with their friends and to never respond to requests from people they are not certain they know.

Read the rest of the article here

How to Disable Facebook Places

2010-09-14T12:36:00.002-04:00

Hopefully, you've read my rants on how dangerous I believe the Facebook Places feature is for kids. If you haven't you can read them here. My intention was to post instructions for parents and teachers to disable Facebook Places but my friends at Yoursphere.com beat me to it (not surprising since they always have great info for parents and teachers). So with their gracious permission, I am re-posting their content so you can be better informed about disabling this feature.

Here is their article (you can read the original article complete with pictures here)

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How to Turn Facebook Places Off

A GPS (Global Positioning System) can be a great tool when we need it--like for driving directions or when we need to find the nearest Starbucks. But when it comes to protecting our children from strangers--whether it's online or in real life--giving away the exact location of our kids is the last thing we want to do.

So we've put this guide together for parents who use Facebook, or have older children who are on Facebook. The guide gives you a thorough walk-through on how to disable Facebook Places to the best of your abilities. You'll have to dig through the Privacy Settings and Account Settings of your profile and your child's profile if you want to do it right, so follow each step carefully:
Privacy Settings: Step 1 - Log in your Facebook profile => go to Account => go to Privacy Settings.
Step 2 - From this page click on the little blue link towards the bottom called "Customize settings"
Step 3 - In the category "Things I Share" look for "Places I check in to" and click on the drop-down menu.
Step 4 - Choose "Custom". In the box that comes up, under "Make this visible to" select "Only Me".

This will make it so that in case you do ever "check in" on accident, with Places, the only News Feed it'll appear on is yours. (This is protection for you since Facebook doesn't allow you the option to "disable" or to completely opt out of this particular feature of Places.)

Step 5 - In the same category, uncheck the box called "Include me in "People Here Now" after I check in
Step 6 - In the next category, "Things Others Share", click on the drop-down menu next to "Friends can check me in to Places" and select Disabled.
Account Settings:
Step 1 - Go back up to Account => go to Account Settings
Step 2 - At the top, click on the Notifications tab.
Step 3 - Scroll all the way down to the Places category and uncheck BOTH boxes.
Step 4 - Click the Save Changes button below.
Click here for the full guide with pictures and all. You can also read Mary Kay's thoughts and concerns about Facebook Places.

Google Family Safety Center - Come On Google, You're Better Than This!!

2010-09-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

Last week, Google launched their anticipated "Family Safety Center" without much noise from the media. I knew this effort was in the works but didn't know when it was coming out. It's out :-).

I was excited about the possibilities that a project like this coming from an organization like Google could bring. Everything Google does is cool and cutting edge and I was hoping for another home run in their long list of successful ventures (YouTube, Picasa, Buzz, Blogger, Gmail, Chrome, and about a hundred other subsidiaries, not to mention their ever-improving search engine). Like a fan at a Red's game, I watched the pitch with great anticipation as the launch of Google Family Center approached...the swing of the bat...a hit....and...a short little blooper over the short stop's head. A single...but definitely not a home run.

A few months ago I did an article about Disney's lame attempt at child safety online. Companies like Disney...and Google, with all of their power and momentum, should be able to come up with something ground breaking; something that really advances the cause of Internet safety for kids. Instead, both came up with a lukewarm attempt that was just a repeat of stuff other people are already doing. Almost as if they were just looking to "say" they are doing something instead of actually doing something. Google could have done a lot more than they did.

So what does Google Family Center offer parents and teachers? Here's the list:

Google Safety Tools - this is the most useful feature of this new service (though that's not saying much). It contains directions for enabling safety features in Google search and YouTube.
Report Abuse - provides instructions for how to report abuse or offensive content found on YouTube, Buzz, Picasa, and Blogger
Advice from Partners - a list of links to the standard Internet Safety websites
Video Tips for Google Parents - a small collection of videos of (apparently) Google employees talking about Internet safety issues with their own kids.

Some of this stuff is useful, but consider this: With the exception of "Report Abuse," every feature Google Family Center offers...is also a feature of this blog (the one you are reading right now). Over on the right hand side you will see links to many of the "partners" they reference. You will also find directions for using Google's safety tools. On top of that, I try to post useful information as often as I can (often daily), which they are not doing. Last time I checked, I'm not a multi-billion dollar global corporation who could afford to pour tons of money into such an effort...and I'm practically out competing them in this space.

If it were anyone else, I would probably give the site a 4+ on my 10 point scale, but because of what Google COULD do if they really wanted to, I give Google Family Center a 3- (barely). Maybe this is just the first step. Maybe a year from now this service will be super cool. I hope so. But for now, don't waste your time. Come on Google...you're better than this.

Here's the link: http://www.google.com/familysafety/

Thanks to the Western Cincy Monthers of Twins Club

2010-09-10T09:17:00.001-04:00

Did a presentation last night for the Western Cincinnati Mothers of Twins club. Great group, very engaged in the dialogue and interested in child safety online. Thanks for having me.

Here is a link to their website.

If You Wouldn't Say It In Person...Don't Say It Online

2010-09-09T08:17:00.002-04:00

I've seen this video before but stumbled across it again yesterday. It's a great statement about cyber-bullying and it's only 47 seconds long. The message focuses on how easy it is for kids to say things about others online - things they wouldn't say to a person's face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmD8OKl8vVM

...And the Facebook Hits Just Keep On Comin'

2010-09-06T07:55:00.006-04:00

Clearly Facebook has crossed the line from being ignorant about child safety to blatantly not caring. The only place to go from here is for them to just admit they are a site that facilitates sexual predation and be done with it. They could start making money by advertising services to creepy perverts..."Rent dirty old ice cream trucks by the hour." Maybe because Craigslist did something good and decided to censor it's bad content, Facebook saw a need to balance the equation and do something bad. What am I talking about? This article on CNN this morning: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/09/03/facebook.stalker.button.mashable/index.html?hpt=Sbin.

Facebook has invented yet another gadget that will further violate your childrens' privacy and safety. The latest "gem" is a feature that lets you "subscribe" to a specific person. Once you subscribe to someone, you get notices, via e-mail or on your cell phone, every time they post anything onto their Facebook page. That means when little Suzie posts a message about making the cheerleading squad and going to her friend Janie's party to celebrate, her pervert stalker will know it instantly. To make it even scarier, if you combine this new feature with the equally reckless Facebook Places feature, every time your child reveals his/her location to Facebook, anyone who has subscribed will be instantly updated. Brilliant! So when Suzie arrives at the cheerleading party with all of her cheerleader friends, creepy stalker will be updated. Why don't the people at Facebook just go all the way and offer a "webcam in childrens' bedrooms" feature to complete the sexual predator suite?

Of course Facebook's defense is their usual "you don't have to use this feature." Again, that defense doesn't work for drugs and alcohol (Jimmy, you don't have to go get high with your friends tonight....really Mom?...ok, I won't), how will it work here?

Facebook has clearly left the child-safety building. I have lost all hope that they will ever be a safe medium for anyone under 18. To all you parents out there reading, I will say this: If your kids are on Facebook you better be closely involved. It's turning into a really bad neighborhood.

Facebook Stalker Continues to Harass 12-Year-Old Girl

2010-09-03T08:40:00.000-04:00

I got a very nasty comment from someone who works at Facebook last week about my posting criticizing their Facebook Places feature. The comment was very unprofessional so I didn't approve it to be displayed. In the comment the person said that "...child safety is one of the top concerns at Facebook." Yeah right! And then there is this article from MSNBC.com this morning that says otherwise.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Facebook stalker continues to harass 12-year-old girl
By Helen A.S. Popkin

Hot on the heels of a woman who's suing Facebook after the world's largest social network bounced her account (for reasons that remain unclear), comes a story from Australia about a mother who can't get Facebook to shut down a stalker using the site to harass her 12-year-old daughter and her friends.

"A Sydney mother-of-three, her daughter and daughter's friends have been subjected to a two-week ordeal at the hands of a Facebook stalker and they have been unable to get the social networking company to intervene," the Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday.

This dramatic tale of a Facebook stalker hacking and harassing young girls on Facebook speaks to a couple of issues regularly faced in this brave new world of social media — the dangers awaiting children online and Facebook's oft-complained-about lack of customer service.

According to the newspaper story, the stalker gained access to the daughter's account and used her identity to gather information about her (including her address) from her Facebook friends, unbeknownst to the girl. The hacker was discovered, but continued to harass the girl, her mother and friends with threatening messages, pornographic images and the like.

Unable to shut down her daughter's profile, "We tried reporting [the account] on Facebook," the mother said. "We got all her friends to report it on Facebook. Facebook won't reply. They don't want to contact us. They don't want to know about it, basically. You cannot ring Facebook."

In a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australia-based public relations firm that represents the social network in that country pointed out Facebook's 14-year-old minimum age requirement. The firm also said that "Facebook cooperates with Australian law enforcement agencies to help ensure that Facebook remains a safe place for our users to connect with friends and family."

Authorities investigating the case first told the mother they had the ability to shut down her daughter's account, but eventually contacted her telling her they were unable to, and the profile remains live.

Kid-Safe Homework Help Sites

2010-09-02T07:52:00.002-04:00

The school year is underway for most people and as a result, I've gotten several e-mails asking me about kid-safe websites that offer homework help. So instead of answering these e-mails one by one...and because I think any parent or teacher would benefit from information about such sites, I decided to post an article about it.

Many teachers already have preferred sites for student homework assistance. My advice to parents is, if your child's teacher recommends a specific site, use that site. If you still need more help, here are a few that I know of:

Smithsonian Institute Encyclopedia - http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/default.htm
KidsClick - http://www.kidsclick.org
Kids.Gov - http://www.kids.gov/
WebLens for Kids - http://www.weblens.org/children.html
AOL Kids Homework Help - http://kids.aol.com/homework-help

Certainly these aren't all the good homework help sites out there. So I am asking all of you...If there are any sites you know of that are... A. kid friendly (meaning safe) and B. free, leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I will add it to my list above.

Imbee...Follow Up!!

2010-08-31T07:15:00.001-04:00

Thanks to a very nice e-mail from someone at Imbee, I now have more of the inside scoop about their status.

First let me say that my last posting about Imbee was a little critical for two reasons, 1. I think they could be doing a better job keeping the interested public informed what's going on (why the delays?) and 2. I am anxious for Imbee to come back on the scene. With all the stupid choices Facebook is making these days, we need more kid-friendly social networking sites to give kids safer alternatives. Imbee was very cool...then it was gone...now I'd like to see it come back.

Here is some of the info in the e-mail I got last night from an Imbee employee.

"You are right in saying imbee was a great site, thank you. However, sadly in early 2008 our original founder passed away in a plane crash. After the tragedy, we had to shut our doors in mid 2009."

Apparently someone new bought them and once the once all the legal stuff got worked out, they started the wheels turning again. She went on to say...

"... in February of this year initiated re-building imbee 2.0. We have had some unexpected delays as most complex websites as well as start up companies do. We are currently on our plan and are working hard to ensure the site up by the end of summer. We still have about 3 and a half weeks left of summer so stay tuned!"

So I'm staying tuned. I want Imbee to be cool again and will keep you posted as to their progress.

Imbee...come on already!!

2010-08-26T10:36:00.007-04:00

Since I have been itching to review Imbee, I signed up on their e-mail list so that I could be notified when they finally relaunch the site. Imbee.com (which used to be pretty cool) is supposed to be a kid-friendly alternative to Facebook and MySpace and is in the same genre of sites as Yoursphere.com (which I love). Imbee seemed to be doing well and then suddenly a year or so ago, they disappeared from the web with no prior warning to their members. Their website claims a summer 2010 return.

I have gotten several e-mails from them in the past two months touting new, great features of Imbee, like the one I got yesterday:

"Dear imbee friends,

The hottest Dopest, Realest, most Epic Wrap-up ever just arrived on the internet today! (by the way -- pathetic attempt to get street cred with the kids)

DREW is your one-stop shop for up to the minute pop culture news. Through the DREW news wire, you will be the first to know what’s happening in the world of entertainment and lifestyle. Story posts will include events, red carpet appearances, daily paparazzi roundups, and much more!

All DREW post will fall into one of the following catagories (oh and "categories" is spelled c-a-t-E-g-o-r-i-e-s ....maybe they are the "dope - est"): Music, Film & TV, Events, Style, Technology and Sports.

Come check out DREW, we know you’ll love it!"

The problem is, when you go to Imbee.com to "check it out," there is no site. Just a message saying Imbee will return summer 2010. If I'm not mistaken, summer 2010 is almost over and still no Imbee.

Perhaps Imbee should be spending less time crafting spelling-challenged e-mails and producing YouTube video commercials about how cool their site is going to be and more time ....oh, I don't know...actually GETTING THEIR SITE WORKING!!! And change the message on the home page already. Don't tell me it will be ready summer 2010 when that obviously isn't happening.

These Imbee guys are a puzzle to me. Great site, going strong...disappears. A year later, lots of effort around generating hype but no results. I hope their content people are better than their marketing people.

Facebook GeoLocation -- Part 2

2010-08-24T09:19:00.004-04:00

Apparently I wasn't the only one bashing Facebook's new geolocation service: "Facebook Places." A recent article on CNN reflected a great deal of less than amicable feedback Facebook has been receiving about the service. You can read that article here. Facebook's response was to call their critics (like me) idiots and claim that the criticism comes form a lack of understanding about how the service works. They even had a press release explaining, to morons like myself, the finer details about how the service functions. Thanks Facebook guys but, I'm not stupid, I know how the service works, and it's still a really bad idea for kids.

Facebook's defense of their new geolocation service is the same old defense they use whenever they add a new feature that is unpopular with the general public...."you don't have to use it." Their explanation was that Facebook Places only reports a user's location if that user "check's in" by clicking a link on their page. They went on to say that if parents are concerned about the feature they should tell their children not to use it. Brilliant. That will work. Parents have been concerned for years about their children drinking and doing drugs...and for years they have been "telling their kids not to use it." How well has that worked?

If you put a gadget on Facebook, kids are going to use it. As I said in my last post about this topic, studies show that teenagers are drawn to and will use gadgets and widgets on sites like Facebook and MySpace, even if they aren't sure what they do. The more gadgets the better. A parent's request for a child not to use a feature isn't the solution.

What is the solution? I would like to think that limiting the Facebook Places feature to adult accounts would solve this problem, but it wouldn't. Kids will lie about their age to get onto Facebook as they have for years. I would also hope that limiting the the service to Facebook mobile would solve it but kids with smartphones would still use it.

So what does a concerned parent do? As long as there are irresponsible companies like Facebook making dangerous toys for your kids, the only thing you can do is talk to them. Explain why these features are a bad idea. Explain the risks involved. Set expectations and have consequences. If your child has a Facebook page, insist that you have access to it. Monitoring their page will reveal whether or not they are using gadgets like Facebook Places. Also, tools like Norton Online Family should report such usage.

I still maintain that Facebook is no place for kids. The company obviously cares little about privacy and safety for children and continues to make decisions that ignore these concepts. There are other alternatives (like Yoursphere.com) that give kids the same capabilities but in a safer environment without "sharp edges."

Long Term Danger of Social Media for Kids

2010-08-18T16:12:00.008-04:00

Michael Schmidt, CEO of Google, said some very interesting things in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about long term risks associated with children using social media sites. I would link you directly to the article on the WSJ website but since their public-facing website is one of the most non-intuitive sites in existence (I guess to inspire you to pay for their member-only website), I can't. So here is a link to an article from BBC on the interview.

The gist of the interview was that our kids are living in a time when every thing they do online -- every word they write, every picture they post, every website they visit, every song or video they download -- could potentially be recorded and discovered later in life. Mr. Schmidt theorizes that it may be the case in the future that young people have to legally change their names to hide their digital past from potential employers, future spouses, political rivals, etc. Interesting idea and probably not that far-fetched.

Whenever we think of risks to kids online, we think of the usual stuff: cyber-bullies, sexual predators, pornography, hate propaganda, etc. The parents and teachers I talk to on a regular basis don't bring up long term "reputation damage" as a risk they are concerned about. Maybe they should be.

We've all heard the scenario in the news...a young, new school teacher is denied a job or even fired because of some pictures or video he/she posted online while they were in college. Many employers who are trying to avoid the HR nightmare of hiring a "train wreck" will surf YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. for social information about a candidate. Those topless pictures from a party holding a beer in one hand and a bottle of tequila in another are probably not going to help young Jane land that first teaching job.

Let's look at some uncomfortable truths for a moment...kids are on social media sites, kids make bad decisions sometimes, kids live in the moment, kids often don't consider long-term ramifications of their actions. On my own Facebook page, I am friends with many of my younger cousins and children of my friends. I often see collections of pictures or videos they post the day after a big party and am shocked that they would post such compromising content. Last month, on my Facebook home page I saw a note that my friend's daughter (22 years old) posted pictures in a collection called "Frogfest 2010." In that collection she had pictures of herself, passed out drunk, in various poses arranged by her friends. She had obscene things written on her in some pictures, she was stripped nearly naked in others, and the coup de grace was her lying on the ground, topless, covered in her own vomit, with a whiskey bottle in her hand. And the text below these pictures indicated she was proud of her accomplishments. One tag was "don't tell me I don't know how to party." Once those pictures are placed on Facebook, they are the property of the world. Anyone can download them, post them on other social media sites, e-mail them to friends, etc. And let's not forget that the pictures probably were taken by cell phones, not cameras (which is another avenue of transfer). How will these pictures help this girl 3 years from now when she applies for a job as a kindergarten teacher at Virgin Mary Academy?

Think of these bad decisions as STD's (we'll call them social-media transmitted diseases as opposed to sexually transmitted diseases) because they behave much the same way. A bad decision in a moment of excitement can have damaging, long-term affects on the rest of your child's life. When your kids are old enough to have cell phones, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts, talk to them and explain the dangers. They'll still make stupid choices but maybe you can help minimize the damage.

SocialShield.com Article at AlmostSavvy

2010-08-17T14:54:00.002-04:00

An e-mail from Tom H. asks "What do you know about SocialShield.com?" Well Tom, I know that it is software that allows parents to monitor their childrens' social media sites (like Facebook) and I know they currently have commercials playing on the radio. Other than that, I don't know much about it. My only opinions about it so far are A.) It sounds like many of the services they charge you for you can get free from tools like Norton Online Family B.) Their board of directors are all advertisers or bill consolidators (which might suggest they are more interested in making money than in helping kids) C.) Their commercials are obviously preying on fear instead of delivering a positive message.

I was going to review SocialShield but my colleague Irene Koehler of AlmostSavvy.com did a fantastic job reviewing it, so I'll let you read hers. AlmostSavvy.com is a great resource for people trying to become familiar with social media sites, especially parents who are trying to understand the environment for their kids sake.

Here is a link to Irene's article and here is the actual article that she wrote:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Helping Kids Stay Safe Online. Is SocialShield the Answer?
Posted by Irene Koehler in Facebook, Social Media on June 18, 2010

As a parent, there have been many moments in my life when I considered locking my child in a closet. It would have been for her own safety, mind you. And, I would have let her out when she was, say, 30 or so. I realized that I might have had some legal entanglements to deal with along the way, but there were still those moments when I wondered “what if…”
It’s Scary Out There

Before you call the authorities to report me, there are two important things you should know:

1. No, I never really did this – not even for a second. But, it is a scary world out there. I also never used one of those leash-things with my daughter, but I did come to understand why some parents choose to do so.
2. My child is no longer a minor and perfectly able to manage her own life now. She somehow managed to make it through her formative years relatively unscathed, despite my occasional urges to save her from the outside world.

We all want to protect our children for as long as possible, yet we also want them to learn how to navigate the world on their own, making smart decisions along the way. How do we find that balance of holding on and letting go? It is already an enormous challenge in the real world. For many parents, the prospect of helping their children stay safe in the virtual world is even more overwhelming.

Enter SocialShield

If you are looking for a way to monitor your kid’s online browsing activity or chat/IM conversations, there are many easy tools which will allow you to do so. There are numerous keystroke-logging programs which record each word your child types on the keyboard, meaning you get to see everything – emails, passwords, the whole enchilada. These tools may let you know what your child is doing online, but tell you nothing about the identity of their friends or their friends’ activity. It is often this more meaty information that parents seek in order to prevent their children from falling prey to a bully or sexual predator.

Stating that their tools “give parents a 360° view of their kids’ social networking activities,” SocialShield has recently received quite a bit of media attention. After reading yesterday’s post on ReadWriteWeb about the new service, I decided to sign-up for the trial period and take it for a test drive.
Setting Up My SocialShield Account

SocialShield provides a free 14-day trial period. Like most services, this requires credit card information up front. Once the information was entered, I moved on to “Add a Child.” I wondered how they would be able to access my child’s information without knowing her password and how they would verify that it was indeed my own child I was adding. I was curious to see what would prevent me from monitoring a friend (or a stranger) by adding them to my account.

To add my daughter, I added all of her email addresses and selected “I attest that this is my daughter” from the drop-down list of choices. On the list are son/daughter, nephew/niece, grandson/granddaughter, other male/female. To test whether SocialShield magically knew if the person I was adding was really my child (of course, it can’t know this), I decided to add another person. Not wanting to spy on a friend or a stranger, I chose the one person in that comfortable middle-ground. I selected “other – female” and added my mother, feeling fairly sure I wouldn’t uncover anything scandalous.

Once you’ve added a child, there it is front and center: you need your kid’s passwords. If you were looking for the secret door into your kid’s accounts without having access to their login credentials, this isn’t it (hint: it doesn’t exist). And, simply being Facebook friends with them isn’t enough to get you the information needed for SocialShield to do its thing and alert you to potentially problematic friends and activity. At this point in the process, you can either connect SocialShield to their accounts yourself if you know their usernames and passwords or you can generate an email which is sent to the child asking them to allow access.

This will then lead the child to add their accounts to SocialShield by using Facebook Connect, for example. I discussed this with my daughter ahead of time and she authorized access to her account herself.

My SocialShield Report

I received a number of alerts for my daughter’s Facebook account. SocialShield highlighted her Facebook friends who were “significantly older” and those who have “adultlike accounts.”
To take another look at how alerts were triggered, I also added myself to my SocialShield account. As I did with my mother, I selected “Other – female.” I received 12 pages of alerts for my own friends, most of which were triggered by “adultlike accounts.”
SocialShield was able to find and display 150+ photos of me from Facebook, yet was not able to find any of my daughter’s 700+ Facebook photos.
SocialShield alerted me to an update posted by one of my daughter’s friends on her Facebook wall because it included the word head. Of course, each parent needs to evaluate the context on their own. In this instance, her friend was referencing a song which “got stuck in” his head.
While I did not request that my mother authorize access to her accounts, SocialShield did tell me that she has (wait for it…) a MySpace account. Really? My mother, whose 75th birthday is this weekend, is on MySpace? After the laughter subsided, I went to MySpace to search for her. Searching for her name delivered no results. Searching for her email address delivered one result – a 24 year old male with Tom as his only MySpace friend. Something seems wonky here. It seems someone may have used her email address to set up an account and that SocialShield did a simple search for her email address without any way to verify her identity.

The Important Stuff: My Overall Impressions

Straight to the point, my high-level thoughts:

SocialShield and other monitoring tools are gaining traction because there is real risk out there in the online world. The concept is a solid one. Many parents want a quick and, for the less savvy parents, easy way to keep on eye on their kids’ activity.
There is no way to automate parenting. We cannot assign responsibility to software or an online service to do the hard work for us. Nothing replaces having an ongoing dialogue with our children about the world and how to make the right choices. (More on this to come in an upcoming post.)
While the concept may be solid, SocialShield’s execution needs quite a bit of work (examples below).

Specific concerns (in no particular order):

One of the key points in the ReadWriteWeb article was the endorsement of the PTA. While I was able to find this information repeated on many other websites, I could not find anything about it on either the PTA or the SocialShield websites. If the endorsement is real, I would expect to be able to verify it easily.
The FAQ section should be much more robust. For example, when my results indicated “adultlike accounts” for a huge number of my own and my daughter’s friends, I naturally wanted to understand the meaning of this term. Nowhere on the site is this explained. Does this mean that these people have LinkedIn profiles (which usually means the person is an adult) or that they post porn to their Facebook accounts? I tweeted the question to SocialShield and received this reply: “An account like costco really should be only for adults, not kids. we may find someone who says he’s a kid has this=red flag. A red flag like that says there’s something wrong and you need to look deeper at that person or account. we look at more than fifty sites like this to see if we can find suspicious items.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Costco that triggered hundreds of my friends to be labeled as an “adultlike account,” but I get the idea. Either way, the triggers and definitions need to be explained in order to be useful to parents.
I think most adults don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes when granting access through Facebook Connect. It is entirely unreasonable to generate the email shown earlier, send it to a (presumably) young child, expect them to read/understand it and then walk through the Facebook Connect process. There is no way for the parent to know ahead of time what will be sent to the child.
Take the results with a big grain of salt. Given that SocialShield told me it could find no photos of my daughter on Facebook (despite the fact that there are over 700) and that it returned a false positive MySpace result for my mother leads me to question the accuracy of the report.

These are my initial impressions after using SocialShield for two days. In this time span, the report has shown no new activity even though both my daughter and I (and our friends) have been active online. Obviously, the tool is not intended for short-term use, so you may choose to try it on your own. I look forward to hearing your feedback and experience with this and other similar tools.
--------------------------------------------

Facebook GeoLocation...Really?

2010-08-13T10:35:00.004-04:00

There was an article this morning on CNN's website about Facebook's new foray into geolocation. You can read it here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/08/11/facebook.foursquare.cnet/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Geolocation is an emerging technology, especially among (but is not limited to) smartphones. Simply put, geolocation tracks the geographical location of a user and reports it. That information can then be used in a variety of ways - if I'm in a strange city looking for a restaurant, my smartphone can help me find one without much effort because it knows exactly where I am. That's cool. There are also apps that allow people to locate friends, recommend venues, and track family members, all based on their locations. Even this blog uses geolocation: scroll down to the bottom of the screen and you will see that I am tracking the location of all my visitors. Geolocation services can be useful in the right context.

So how will Facebook be using geolocation? There has been no formal explanation yet. In fact, though the reports of geolocation services are coming from anonymous Facebook insiders, the company has not commented on this feature to date. Many experts think it will mimic the functionality of Foursquare. Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. If that is the case, then Facebook's geolocation will have the capability of reporting where a person is when they are logging in to Facebook.

My first question is why? With all of the inane dribble that people post on Facebook, now we have to know where they are when they are posting it? "Hey everyone...here are pictures of my root canal and here is the exact location of my dentist." I would guess that Facebook is looking to compete with the increasingly popular Foursquare (whose popularity is a mystery to me) in the mobile space.

My second question is, have they really thought this through? I understand that this will probably be a service that members will choose whether or not to use. But the availability of it to children is concerning. Kids' don't always think things through. Kids also love new widgets and gizmos and studies show that kids will add new features to their Facebook page without even knowing what they do. Here is a tool that reports a child's exact location any time they log into Facebook - their home, their friend's houses, their school...do you see what I'm saying? Talk about making it easy for sexual predators. The "choice" about whether or not to use this service doesn't make it any safer. Kids' don't always make the best choices.

I view this as another reason why parents should think twice before letting their kids join Facebook and another reason why parents should constantly be involved with their kids' Facebook lives.

After Facebook's pathetic attempt to put up a "safety" smokescreen with their partnership with CEOP (read about it here), they add a feature like this? One step sideways, two steps back. You should be convinced by now that your child's safety is definitely NOT something Facebook cares about and you should react accordingly knowing your children are using Facebook.

The best analogy I can come up with about Facebook is this... If I told you that someone was building a brand new amusement park down the road that ignored every known best practice and precaution for safety, would you let your kids go there? Would you, at the very least, accompany your child when they visited? My growing disdain for Facebook's complete indifference over child safety alone tells me to not trust them. This latest feature is just another step toward a complete lack of privacy online. If adults want to make that choice, so be it. But the option shouldn't be available to kids.

Dispelling Some Myths about Private Browsing

2010-08-10T10:46:00.001-04:00

In doing my research for my last article, I came across several forums and blog postings that discussed the dangers of private browsing. Though I think it's great whenever awareness is raised, I discovered that many of these "credible" sources are falling short of their responsibility to ensure their information is accurate (which bugs me).

The latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox have a feature called "private browsing." In Internet Explorer, it's called "InPrivate" browsing and in Firefox it's just called "Private" browsing. In both cases it can be turned on or off from the Tools menu. With private browsing enabled, the browser no longer records which sites that it visits. You won't find record in your browser history, in the cookies folder, or even in the URL drop-down. It's a feature that was invented to keep people from getting in trouble at work by visiting non-work related sites. It's also widely used by kids to hide their tracks from their parents and teachers. It is definitely a feature that parents should be concerned about and I don't want to detract from that concern with this posting.

The incorrect information that I have seen scattered about the Internet is that private browsing is a way that kids can defeat tools like NetNanny, CyberSitter, K9 Web, McAfee Family Protection, and Norton Online Family. The myth is that if a child enables private browsing, then these parental control applications can no longer detect the sites the child visits. WRONG. Enabling private browsing doesn't mask the sites that the browser accesses, it merely prevents the site details from being logged by the computer. The site's URL and content are still examined by parental control software before it is allowed to open in the browser. Therefore, objectionable sites on your blocked list are still recognized and blocked. And even if they did get through by some freak circumstance, just because IE or Firefox doesn't log the visit with private browsing turned on, doesn't mean your parental control software is ignoring it in its log (so you will still see it listed).

I tested this extensively for all of the products I listed above and not once could I circumvent the parental control settings by enabling private browsing. If you have one of these products, rest easy. As long as they are configured correctly private browsing is no threat.

Norton Online Family

2010-08-10T10:13:00.004-04:00

Those of you that follow this blog have read my reviews of products like K9 Web and McAfee Family Protection. Symantec (Norton) also has a product in this space and I thought I'd take a moment to give you some info about it.

I have known about this product since it was introduced in February of 2009 but haven't had the time to really dive into it until now. Two weeks ago I installed it on one of my test machines and began banging away on it. For a free product, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Norton describes the primary function of this tool as providing insight to parents on their childrens' online activity and actionable tools to control that activity once they understand it. That's a good foundation to build on. One of the big problems with many of the big parental control software packages is that there are literally hundreds of different settings you could configure but the question is always, "how do I set this up to work best for my family?" Every family is different, every child uses the Internet differently, so a tool that first figures out your kids' online habits is off to a good start.

Norton Online Family provides the following:

Web monitoring and blocking
Configurable time limits for Internet access
Social network monitoring
Chat monitoring
Search monitoring
Customizable alerts that can be set up to contact you via e-mail or on your mobile device

The software is a "cloud" product (as in "cloud computing"), meaning the bulk of the application is handled by Norton's servers not your machine. In fact, the installation onto your machine is very small. It was very easy to install and setup (took me about 6 minutes, end-to-end). Once installed, it asks you to set up accounts for each of your children, specifying their ages and genders as you do. After you have the accounts set up, you can select from a generic/default configuration for filtering/monitoring, or you are free to customize the settings for each child. The default filter levels were very comprehensive and I couldn't get much past them. And in the rare case that I could get around them, the breech was recorded in the log and I could easily add the offending site to the block list.

Feature by feature the product worked as I hoped it would. It has the same strengths that you see in K9 Web and many of the same weaknesses that McAfee Family Protection struggles with. The monitoring tools work well, the default filter levels are comprehensive, the customizable alerts were a little slow (I got a message about my attempted access to Playboy.com about 15 minutes after I tried it) but worked as expected. Like McAfee Family, it filtered some of the major chat and IM sites but not all (though, like McAfee Family, you could add the sites it can't handle to the blocked list), it doesn't control messaging in online gaming, It is limited to the major browsers (IE and Firefox - though it did work with Safari to my surprise) and it makes no attempt to block webcam access (in fact, you have no program by program access control like McAfee Family offers).

Given these limitations, you may be wondering why I didn't give it as rough of a review as I did McAfee Family...because Norton Online Family is FREE. If I am going to pay for something (like McAfee Family) then it better live up to my expectations. Norton Online Family exceeded my expectations for a free product.

Overall, I would definitely recommend it to parents. It's a great tool with great features and for the cost, you can't beat it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a solid 7.

Here is the link to the site: https://onlinefamily.norton.com/familysafety/loginStart.fs

And in the interest of heading off the questions before they come in, no, you do not need to be running Norton's antivirus software to use this and yes, it will work with any antivirus software product.

Apple iPhone 4 - Two Things Parents Should be Worried About

2010-08-02T15:21:00.003-04:00

I was at a restaurant last week and saw a 13ish year old girl with Apple's latest iPhone, the iPhone 4. Not sure what parents are dropping that kind of money for a kid's phone but obviously someone is. There are several cool new features on the iPhone 4 but unfortunately, anytime a new technology is introduced into the mainstream, some creep is out there inventing ways to pollute it.

Worry #1

The AP released an article today titled Adult industry sees iPorn potential in new phone. You can read the article here. In summary it talks about iPhone 4's new videoconferencing feature called FaceTime and how several porn companies have already created pornography related services for it. The iPhone 4 has two cameras, one forward-facing and one backward-facing. The backward-facing phone allows you to use your iPhone to make video calls, allowing the recipient to see your face and if they have an iPhone 4, you can see theirs. Porn companies are seeing this capability as a golden opportunity to take the "1-900" concept to a new level, providing video conferencing phone sex (obviously for a per-minute fee).

Of course this revelation gives Apple heartburn since they have removed all offensive content from iTunes. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying "it is Apples mission to keep the iPhone free from pornography." I've blogged about it in the past and I think it's admirable that they put forth the effort. So you might ask, why doesn't Apple stop this new FaceTime porn? They can't. Using FaceTime is no different than making a regular phone call. Apple can't block you from calling certain numbers on your phone and that's really what you would be doing if you used FaceTime to access one of these new porn services. You're just making a phone call and turning on your camera (as is your recipient).

Undoubtedly, this new avenue to pornography is concerning but it's not Apple's fault nor is it their responsibility to control. I also think (and this might shock you) that the pornography itself isn't the greatest risk here. The greater risk is in how FaceTime works. I won't bore you with the technical details of how FaceTime functions, but know this: In order for you to use FaceTime with another person (including a porn service) they need to have your personal cell phone number AND, in order for them to use it in this fashion, you have to give them permission. Think about that...some sleazy porn company gets your personal phone number and your permission to use your phone number for their own purposes. Great idea. How long will it be before they start calling you and charging you $9.99 per minute for it? I've also read that some of these services won't be requiring a credit card to join and that for your "convenience" they will just add the charge to your next AT&T bill. At least the credit card thing will help keep some kids away but not the automatic billing.

What should a responsible parent do? Again, my first question is...does your teenager really need a $400 iPhone? That being said, if they must have one, talk to them and remind them that since you pay the bills, you will discover the use of such a service. Then watch your credit card and AT&T bill for strange charges.

Worry #2

It was announced last week that there is already a "jailbreak" available for iPhone 4. What is a jailbreak? The iPhone is built to only download apps and content from iTunes. From the manufacturer, the iPhone does not have the capability to access apps or content from any other site. A jailbreak is a program that unlocks the iPhone, allowing it to download apps from a multitude of other sites, many of them geared toward porn or illegal purposes (like providing viruses for you to send to your enemy's phones). Between iTunes policies against offensive content and products like the Mobicip safe browser for the iPhone, it is very difficult for children to access bad stuff with the iPhone. But if they jailbreak the iPhone they have opened the door to an entire world of bad things, including apps that can undermine every parental control you have installed on their device.

Here is the scariest part. Kids can run a jailbreak extremely easily. By visiting a site that hosts such programs with the iPhone, a kid can run a jailbreak with a single touch of a button. Most jailbreak's are free and none of them require proof of age to run.

Also, I have to mention that many iPhones have been ruined by idiots downloading an "underground" app after a jailbreak, only to find that it hides a virus that fries the phone. There have also been cases where people have written underground apps that seem to be one thing (like porn) but are really collecting all of your personal info from your phone and sending it to some unsavory character. Underground apps are a really bad idea because the creators of them are accountable to no one.

What can a responsible parent do? This one is tough. Unless you are savvy enough to monitor the sites your kid visits from his/her iPhone, you are out of luck. If you do look at your child's Internet history on their iPhone, look for websites with the word "jailbreak" in the title. I won't list specific site addresses here because I don't want to enable any devious kids who might be reading. Other than that, there really isn't much you can do but check your child's phone for offensive apps. If you see something related to pornography or illegal activities, they probably have jailbreaked phone (I know, bad English but that's the official term).

You could also explain to them that a jailbreaked phone is very susceptible to damage via viruses and that if their iPhone is ruined as a result, you will not be replacing it. That might motivate them.

Almost Disaster - A Brush with a Sexual Predator

2010-08-02T07:52:00.003-04:00

Got a call over the weekend from a friend in Montana who I haven't talked to in ages. After our initial "haven't talked to you in a while..." chit chat he told me the real reason he was calling. His 16 year old daughter had been getting very bizarre and inappropriate messages in a chat room from a guy who called himself "Travis." The conversation ended when Travis sent pictures of his genitalia to the girl and she told her Mom about it.

As an occasional reader of my blog, my friend remembered an article I posted last year about the skill of some of these predators and asked if I could re-post it to help him spread the word. So here it is.

---------------------------------------------------

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Mind of a Sexual Predator

A friend of mine is a post-doctoral student in child psychology at Indiana University. Knowing that I regularly speak about online safety for children, she sent me an excerpt from a study of convicted online sexual predators that she and a team of researchers were working on. The study itself was horrifying, but what struck me as particularly disturbing was the transcript of an actual chat room conversation between a sexual predator and his 14 year old female prey.

Here's some background. The chatroom in question was one of the more popular teem chatrooms online. To avoid lawsuits, I'll omit the name of the site (not that it matters - it could have happened at any of them). As I said, the potential victim was a 14 year old girl - good student, active in school, soccer player, very popular. The predator was a 37 year old male, recently unemployed from a snack vending company, posing as a 15 year old boy.

The conversation I am going to show you was originally comprised largely of textspeak - the online shorthand kids use to text and chat online. It has been translated to standard English so you don't have to spend time looking things up. What is also included in the transcript of the conversation are notes about the tactics that the predator admitted to using at various points in the conversation. The lines written by the child are denoted with a letter C and the lines written by the predator with a letter P. Ingenious and chilling at the same time. I will reveal the outcome of this situation after the transcript.

[the predator admitted spending 3 days monitoring a particular chatroom to get a feel for the conversations and the topics kids were discussing. During that time he had two browser windows open...one with the chatroom and one with Google where he would research the topics the kids brought up so he could sound like he knew what he was talking about]

C: ...Kevin Jonas is the hottest
P: Oh my god he is gay!
C: He is not. How can you say that? He has a girlfriend.
P: So. Still gay
C: You would know. Are you gay too?
P: No. I just think he acts gay.

[predator did a search on Yahoo Answers to find out who the most popular bands with teens are.]

P: Panic At the Disco is way better
C: Oh my god, I love them.

[predator does a search to find out the most recent time they performed]

P: I got to see them at the Hard Rock in Vegas
C: Shut up. You did not
P: Did too. Went with parents in July and we stayed at Hard Rock.
C: Were they awesome?
P: Unbelievable

[predator downloads a video clip of the show from the internet and forwards it as a video message to his cell phone]

P: I recorded part of it on my phone
C: You can get busted for that
P: They didn't catch me. I'm sly :-o
P: It's even awesome on my ghetto video
C: I want to see it
P: I'll send it to you. What's your number?
C: I'm not giving you my number. You might be a stalker ;-)
P: I'm just going to send you the video. Besides, you will know my number and then you never have to answer if I call.
C: True. It's xxx-xxx-xxxx

[Predator looks up the area code online. Then predator sends the video clip]

P: Did you get it?
C: Yes
P: You're from St. Louis? Oh my god I was just there visiting my uncle.
C: Really, where?

[predator uses Google maps to find a neighborhood in the suburbs of St. Louis]

P: Webster Groves
C: Oh my god that's like two minutes from me
P: Where do you live?
C: Kirkwood

[predator Googles the schools in Kirkwood]

P: Do you go to xxx high school?
C: Yes, how did you know?

At this point the child had to leave the chatroom to go to soccer practice. On the way to practice she started talking to her mother about the conversation. Her mother immediately became concerned and contacted the police. With the girls cooperation, the police went back to the chatroom and posed as her. The predator monitored the chatroom continuously until he saw her ID return and instantly engaged. After another hour of conversation, the predator had arranged a meeting with the child (actually the police) and one week later was apprehended by police while trying to meet with the 14 year old girl.

The scariest part about this...I can see how almost any child might be tricked into revealing personal information like this child did. Talk to your kids!

Yoursphere.com

2010-07-30T11:48:00.014-04:00

As promised, here is my review of Yoursphere.com. Both of my kids (12 and 13) created profiles and spent the day yesterday exploring. I got them connected around 9:30am and when I came home from work at 5:30pm, they were still on. What does that tell you?

What is Yoursphere.com? A kid-safe alternative to Facebook and Myspace. We all know how dangerous social networking can be for kids. Mary Kay Hoal, founder of Yoursphere, had a great quote that I love: "when our kids wanted to ride a bike, we didn't just get them a bike and drop them off on a freeway and say 'goodbye.' With the Internet we need to apply that same approach." I couldn't agree more. Yoursphere is a social networking environment for kids that provides a safe and creative environment for them to learn the ropes of online social interaction. The "About Us" page from Yoursphere (which, by the way, was very hard to find - come on Yoursphere guys! :-) ) says this: "Yoursphere is about supporting the positive, age-appropriate interests of our children by engaging them in purposeful activities in a social networking community while educating them about good online citizenship and internet safety." In my opinion, this site does just that.

How does it work? Kids can create an account in one of two ways: 1. they can go to www.yoursphere.com and click the "Sign Up" button and fill in some information, including a parent's e-mail address. Yoursphere then contacts the parent, notifying them of the child's request and asking for permission to proceed. 2. Parents can go to www.yoursphere.com and click the "Sign Up" button and create a family account, identifying his/her participating children and giving permission for the accounts. Once the accounts have been created, kids can set up profiles with safe information about themselves (nothing personal like addresses or phone numbers). Once a profile has been created, children are free to explore "spheres" which are topic specific categories that have a variety of activities and content. For example, there is a Photography sphere where kids can post pictures they've taken, read comments about their work, get tips, etc. Kids can also create their own spheres about anything they want. My daughter created a sphere about hiking. Then they can determine whether the sphere is open to everyone or just their friends. Inside of a sphere a kid can blog, post pictures, videos, documents, etc.

What are the positives? I was actually extremely impressed with Yoursphere. There are so many of these "safe online environment for kids" sites floating around and most of them miss the mark. My kids have tried out a few and in their words the majority of them are "lame."

Yoursphere is safe - No one over 18 can join or even browse the environment. Parents control their kids access and can cancel accounts at any time. For kids under 13, parents have a real-time dashboard view into what they are posting and who they are talking to. Safeguards are in place to block bad language and objectionable content, and the site is monitored constantly to look for potential problems.
Kids are in control - they choose whether their content is open to just their friends or the whole Yoursphere world.
Yoursphere has a BUNCH of stuff - this site is great at cultivating creativity in kids. There are so many different avenues for kids to safely express themselves. Kids can blog, they can post pictures, post videos, upload artwork, post poems or stories, and customize the environment to express whatever mood they are in. It also has games and content focused around sports, fashion, TV and movies, travel, performing arts, animals, and causes (e.g. UNICEF, American Cancer Society, etc.).
Cool look and layout - The site is slick and appealing to kids (unlike Facebook or Myspace), as well as being intuitive and easy to navigate. And so far it is free from ads.
Yoursphere put together the right team - I was impressed to discover that the creative force behind Yoursphere is not the typical corporate collection. Yoursphere includes a cross section of kids, the same age as those using their site, as part of their advisory and editorial staff. I believe this will help them to stay in touch with kids and remain relevant and credible.
UPDATE - Yoursphere IS free (thanks for the e-mail Yoursphere).

What are the negatives? Not many. My overall reaction to the site is very positive, however, there were a few things that caused concern.

What is the cost? The home page of Yoursphere.com has a very noticeable "It's Free" statement in plain view. However, online reviews of Yoursphere by reputable sites (like CNET) say it's free for 30 days and then it's either $4.95 per month or $39.95 per year. Which is it? Security to the extent that Yoursphere offers isn't cheap and I have NO problem paying a nominal fee to aid in that effort. But if there is a cost, there was nothing during the sign up process that indicated it. Yoursphere needs to be very clear about charges from the start and explain any/all things on the site that might require a fee (seems sneaky if you don't). If there is no fee, then make the "It's Free" statement a clickable link and explain that you used to charge a fee but don't anymore or something to discredit the countless reviews that say you do.
UPDATE - Already got an e-mail from Yoursphere on this. They are FREE. They used to charge but found the fee to be a deterrence. In the interest of doing good over making money, they have waived the fee.
Kids over 13 are out of bounds for parents - The parental monitoring of child activities on Yoursphere is fantastic...as long as your kid is under 13. I've got one under 13 and one over 13. My 12 year old's account has a dashboard where I can see everything he does online. My 13 year old's account does not. All I can do with her account is cancel it. I understand why they do this - they want kids to feel empowered and have a sense of privacy. I get that and kind of agree with it AS LONG AS they are kicking butt at the security stuff behind the scenes. Taking away my ability to monitor my 13 - 18 year old child's activities puts a great deal of trust in the Yoursphere people. Some parents will have a real issue with this. All I can say is the Yoursphere safety people better be doing their jobs.
Parents can't poke around - With the "no adults" safety feature (other than the parent dashboard), you can't see your child's profile or content they have posted unless they choose to show you. First let me say, parents, you should be setting rules requiring your children to let you into their online lives at any moment upon your request. It is, I believe, your responsibility to enforce this, not Yoursphere's or any other site. Again, I know Yoursphere does this to give kids a sense of privacy and empowerment (which are important) but I think parents will have a problem with this. Again, Yoursphere better work very hard at building trust with limits like this in place.

What are kids saying? Here is a statement from my 13 year old daughter: "I love Yoursphere. It is awesome and so easy to use. I like that there are games and that you can pick who you want to see your profile. I also like that you can write your own blogs, pick who sees them and make spheres. It is so cool that you can upload pictures onto your profile and put links to other websites that you think people will like onto your blogs. Yoursphere is great!"

In the "social networking for kids" space, there are, in my opinion, only two sites that get it right - Yoursphere and Imbee. Imbee was very slick and had some really cool features but they have two big strikes against them: 1. They got in trouble with the FTC for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by storing children's personal info without parents approval. How can you be a site that advocates child safety and violate COPPA? Someone didn't do their due diligence 2. About a year ago they disappeared off the face of the Earth. I'm not exactly sure why but with no warning to members or prior announcements, they just shut down. Their website now claims a relaunch in "summer 2010" but now that they have frustrated over 50,000 users, it may be difficult to regain trust.

Yoursphere is cool and has a great deal of potential. However, if they are going to keep today's kids interested, I think there are a few things they need (that I'm sure they have thought of and may be planning).

Music - Yes, they have a "Music" sphere where information about various artists is posted but that's not what I'm referring to. If they could somehow offer streaming or downloadable music it would be huge. I know this gets into some serious licensing issues but word on the cyber-street is that Imbee is planning to do it.
TV and Movies - again, yes there is a "TV and Movies" sphere where info is posted and kids can comment but streamed movie trailers, selected episodes of popular shows, movie clips, etc would be very cool.
Games - the games Yoursphere has are good but nothing groundbreaking. The genre of games that both my son and my daughter (and MANY of their friends) are into right now are simulation games like Farmville, Zoo Tycoon, Animal Crossing, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc. Games where kids create and cultivate something and interact with others while doing it. These games are entertaining and they keep kids coming back.
Limited Adult Access - Imbee used to have a feature where parents, teachers, camp counselors, youth ministers, etc. could create pages and post content related to a certain activity. This included class information and homework help, upcoming events, useful information, etc. The ability for a "safe" adult to create an educational, cause oriented, or otherwise helpful sphere would be awesome.
UPDATE - Again thanks to an e-mail from Yoursphere, I discovered I was not entirely correct in this bullet item. Yoursphere does allow educators to create class-based spheres and post educational content to them. Teachers can then interact with the class as a whole but not one on one with students (that kind of interaction belongs in the classroom anyway, right?).

Here's the link: http://www.yoursphere.com

Overall, I am extremely impressed with Yoursphere and definitely recommend it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 9 and with a little work, it could be a solid 10.

Great Write-Up on Yoursphere.com

2010-07-28T18:21:00.005-04:00

Wow! I got a very gracious write-up on Yoursphere.com's site. You can read the article here.

http://www.yoursphereforparents.com/2010/07/two-powerful-solutions-with-the-potential-to-change-the-internet.html

If you don't know what Yoursphere.com is, stay tuned. I'll write more about it tomorrow.

UPDATE
Ok, I know I promised you more today but once I got into this, I discovered it has so much stuff, I decided to take more time looking around. I signed up for a parent account and signed my kids up for accounts and am letting them bang around on it for a while. I will report back more when I have spent some time with it. All I can say now is...so far...so cool!

Thanks to Mary Kay Hoal for the kind words.

McAfee Family Protection 2010 Review

2010-07-28T14:43:00.005-04:00

On a scale of 1 to 10...I'd give it a 5.

In 2009, McAfee added a product called Family Protection to their suite of security tools. This product is strictly a parental control product that allows parents to monitor and filter the online content that their children access. It is not an anti-virus/anti-malware product (nor was it advertised to be) so don't make the mistake of installing this and thinking it's going to completely protect your computer. It won't and wasn't designed for that. What it will do...or should I say what it claims to do, is allow parents to monitor the websites, instant messaging, chats, and e-mail that their children are visiting, set up filters to block objectionable content, set time limits as to when children can access the Internet, and helps parents prevent kids from sharing personal information.

I really wanted to like this product when it came out. It was a great idea and I'm a fan of McAfee because I am familiar with their genuine efforts to help people and advance the cause of Internet safety. Sure they make money from Internet safety but they also do a good amount of pro bono work raising awareness, especially in area of child protection. I have been impressed with them numerous times in the past.

I downloaded the latest version of product (Family Protection 2010), installed it on a machine, and spent the next few weeks testing it out. I was actually surprised at it's shortcomings. McAfee usually "gets it" but it seems like this product was something they rushed out the door without thinking it through. It missed the mark on some important features AND they seemed to use an underhanded marketing ploy to sell it (I'm not sure if that was McAfee's fault or the online retailers), boldly proclaiming that it helps parents mitigate threats from cyber-bullying, communication with strangers, and posting confidential information; and then in the fine print saying "as long as you block social networking sites where these activities can happen". Come on! I can mitigate those threats by switching my computer off, but computer manufacturers don't sell that as a feature of the off switch.

Here is my experience with it:

It took me three tries to install it on my Windows 7 machine. Twice it hung in the middle of the installation process (I waited 2 hours on it and nothing) and the third time it told me that I had to close Firefox (which wasn't open) and after closing that message box 3 or 4 times it finally worked. Once I got it installed I started poking around. Windows 7 seemed to stumble on the different accounts I set up in the software, requiring multiple login attempts before I could get each account to work. After about 20 minutes of fiddling with it, it seemed to start working correctly.

It's easy enough to use - very user friendly. It didn't take much time or tech savvy to feel comfortable navigating around the interface. Basically it works by setting up accounts for each family member and then determining the limitations of each account. Great concept. I set up a few test accounts and configured them for different levels of filtering and monitoring. At first it seemed like it was working very well. It blocked the sites I told it to block for each account, it recorded an AOL chat, it allowed me to see what I had done on Facebook in one of the accounts. It was highly configurable and flexible. Very cool.

Then I did what any mildly competent kid would do: I Googled ways to beat the tool. First thing that came up...the software only works if your kids are using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Google's new "Chrome" browser is completely uninhibited by the limits set up in the software. You may or may not have heard of Chrome but it is a freely available and increasingly popular browser that millions of people are using worldwide. I downloaded Chrome to my test machine and sure enough, I was able to go to any site I wanted to despite the limits set up in Family Protection. I wonder how McAfee missed that?!? It also doesn't work with Safari - Apple's free browser that installs when you update your iTunes (in fact, you have to uncheck the Safari checkbox when you update iTunes if you don't want Safari). Yes you can block access to Chrome and Safari altogether with the software but come on, that's a cop out (that's like making tires that only drive on asphalt and not gravel, dirt, or concrete).

Instant messaging was also something that came up on my Google search. Apparently the tool only allowed parents to control chats on AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ. Any other Instant messaging service was immune to the product and allowed kids to do/say whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted. Using the IM feature in Skype, I was free to spew obscenities to complete strangers (not that I actually did that).

At this point I was remembering that scene from the movie Independence Day when the oddball director of research on the alien craft said "we've been down here 15 years...as you can imagine, they don't let us out much." Are the McAfee designers secluded in some underground lab with no access to the real world? In our online society right now there are 4 popular browsers and about 15 different instant messaging services. McAfee chooses to address only half the browsers and a fourth of the IM. I should also note that the product claims to provide control over webcam access but in truth it only provides such control if your webcams are being used via one of the instant messaging services it knows about OR if you just block the webcam software altogether (again...cop out).

My next investigation was into something else kids would do...online gaming. I was playing a variety of online games through the product and on some games (like Warcraft and a few other multiplayer games) it would randomly drop the connection. I know this isn't a big deal to parents but think about this: The more frustrated your child gets with the product, the more motivated he/she will be to seek out workarounds.

Another complaint I will add is not my own, but that of a coworker who owns the product. His installation process failed miserably and he had to call McAfee's tech support. According to him the tech support experience was a nightmare. He invested over 6 hours of time to resolve his issue - that issue being that the product wouldn't install correctly if you have AVG (free antivirus software) installed. His take away was that you probably better have some McAfee product as your primary antivirus software or you are wasting your money buying Family Protection 2010.

Ok McAfee...come on! This product has some real potential and a few features (like YouTube filtering) that are super cool. You need to put some more time and thought into this tool before you rush it out to retail. You've earned a better reputation than this with your other products and families deserve better. I'm a big fan of your company and I know you can improve this product. Let's see it.

Youth Safety on a Living Internet - Sorry Guys, You Missed

2010-07-26T13:49:00.014-04:00

A year or so ago, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) put together a special "work group" whose purpose was to research and formulate usable strategies for Internet safety among children in the U.S. This work group, titled the Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG), was comprised of some of the top names in Internet technologies (people from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Verizon, etc.), online safety organizations (WiredSafety, Internet Keep Safe Coalition, National Cyber Security Alliance, etc.), child behavior and psychology experts, family services organizations, and legislators. In short, the member list was a "who's who" of the Online Safety for Kids cause.

The result of their effort was a report that came out in June of 2010 (which you can download and read here) entitled Youth Safety on a Living Internet. I have recently completed reading the 139 page document and definitely have some opinions about their efforts and especially their recommendations.

My overall reaction to the report was a contrasting mixture of applause, annoyance, and frustration. I was thrilled that this topic was important enough for the Federal Government to put together such an impressive task force with the obvious vigor and concern that they did. This wasn't a lame attempt at creating an image of concern to appease voters and taxpayers. This was a genuine, well executed effort focused on the well-being of children in the U.S.. Never before has our government approached this topic with such energy. The statistics and results that came form the research were extremely valuable and concise. I was impressed. However, the recommendations the group produced as a result were, I believe, mild and ineffectual. After all of the excellent research they did, their list of suggestions was the same old list of "feel good" actions that any online safety site suggests: teach children to be good digital citizens, educate parents and teachers, improve parental controls in software, etc. These are important concepts to be sure, but they certainly aren't ground breaking and they don't really help us advance the cause. In summary, the group proved there was a definite, growing problem around the increasing risk to child safety online. Their suggested solution...."keep doing what you're doing...just do more of it." That just doesn't cut it for me. Their own research proved that what we have been doing isn't keeping pace with the growing threat. If it were, there wouldn't be a growing threat, right? So, in light of the old saying "you're either part of the problem or part of the solution," I will offer my own input as opposed to being someone who just complains and offers no solution.

The first problem I saw with their solution set was that it seemed out of touch with the real online world. While their research was very clinical and thorough, it didn't really exist in a credible plane. What do I mean by that? A good example is their proclamation that "we need to teach kids to be good digital citizens." I agree with that statement but the statement in itself, nor what it implies is a solution. 40 years ago we were dealing with traditional bullying (as opposed to cyber-bullying) and there was a big push inspired by Jane Elliott's study "A Class Divided" to teach children to be better citizens and promote respect. It was definitely a hot topic item in the early 70's. Did it make a difference? Sure - Awareness among teachers and parents was definitely increased. Did it inspire any dramatic changes in children? Not really. Has bullying decreased on playgrounds since that study? No. The results of any study can't be taken alone as a solution. Kids don't care about statistics. Reporting a rise in instances of bullying nationwide will not influence a class of 6th graders on whether or not they should bully each other. Saying "our study shows that A & B are bad so we need to teach children to avoid A & B" is a cop out. Yes, you should inform children and adults about A & B but you should also deal with A & B. This study made some very valid points and brought some great information to light. But the recommendations lack substance and, I believe, it is primarily due to their avoidance of some of the basic truths you must admit to when tackling the topic of Internet Safety.

What are these truths? Here you go:

1. The online world is fluid - it is always changing and it is always in motion. Think about this: The Internet as we know it was born in 1983 when the TCP/IP protocol was introduced. It took 7 years for technology to catch up to it enough that it was usable to the public. In 1994, the IMG tag was added to HTML and the first image appeared on a public website. That's 11 years from the appearance of the Internet to the appearance of the first image file. From 1999 to 2003 we saw the introduction of music file sharing (Napster), instant messaging, chatting, video posting, and wireless networks. In the past four years we have been publicly immersed in Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Skype, YouTube, online multiplayer video games, iPods, smartphones (with cameras and video), iPads, eBooks, GPS, the list goes on and on. The point is, we are now experiencing more change and new technologies in a span of a few months than we did in a few years, 10 years ago. The rate of change is already outpacing our ability to keep up from a safety perspective and it will only get worse.

2. We face the biggest crisis right now - Most parents, educators, and other responsible adults today were born before the online era. We remember when there were 3 or 4 TV stations, rotary phones, and Polaroid cameras. The online world being thrust upon is now is alien to us. In the OSTWG report, Mike Donlin of Seattle Public Schools referred to this group of adults as being "digital immigrants" and that kids today were "digital natives." At best we can only learn this foreign language but our children are completely fluent in it. The adults that are trying to teach children the correct way to navigate the information super highway don't know the road or the equipment like the kids do. It is far too easy for kids to outsmart and out maneuver adults online and that makes our task of keeping them safe extremely difficult. Some experts say "the good news is that when these kids are adults, they'll be better equipped to control things." Maybe...but think about this: The more they get away with now, the more the objectionable becomes mainstream. By the time they are adults, what will "acceptable use" be?

3. The online world doesn't change human nature - It amplifies certain elements of it. It's far too easy to blame the Internet for bad things such as pornography, sexual predation, and bullying. But the truth is those things happened long before there was ever an Internet and they will continue with or without it. We have to be willing to admit some behaviors as attributes of human nature, especially in children, and accept them if we are ever going to deal with them correctly. For example, the biggest consumers of online pornography in the US is boys between the ages 12 and 17. Will taking away online pornography reduce the drive boys feel to explore the female body? When I was that age, it was boys waiting for the opportunity to sneak into someone's father's closet and look at Playboy magazines. The Internet didn't create the desire, it only made the object of the desire more accessible. The same is true with bullying. Bullying has existed probably as long as humankind has walked this Earth. "Cyber" didn't create "bullying" it simply changed its delivery. Creepy perverts are going to exist whether they are cruising neighborhoods in beat up old vans or they are cruising the Internet with state of the art computers. Online is not equal to evil, it is just the latest tool-set being used for the same old purposes.

4. Kids will seek out ways to defy rules - Has it ever not been this way? It is, in kids minds, part of the passage to adulthood. By defying rules and society's conventions, they are declaring their independence and showing their ability to break away from their parents (or so they think). The pursuit of things that are considered "taboo" by kids has always existed for this reason. In the 50's it was smoking, drinking, and sex. In the 60's it was sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Today it's pornography, sexting, chatting/flirting with strangers, playing graphic/violent video games, exploring counter-cultures (like anorexia or suicide sites), cyber-bullying, etc. Our teens and pre-teens are striving to differentiate themselves from their parents in the hopes that they will be recognized by their peers as adults. Being online doesn't cause this, it's just a medium that makes it easier.

So, what do these truths have to do with creating a practical strategy? Anyone trying to formulate a plan to improve online safety for children MUST embrace these concepts as reality and plan around them. This group did not. When a group of intelligent people spend over a year doing research and recommend things like "the improvement of parental control software" as a viable solution, it proves they haven't admitted these truths. At the exponential rate at which technology is changing, by the time they have improved parental controls, a new technology will be released that wasn't accounted for. In other words, by the time their new safety software comes out, it's obsolete. Their own research proved that change is accelerating online. How is a solution that is currently not keeping up (we are already producing/improving parental control software like NetNanny and Cyber Sitter hand over fist) going to improve the situation in the future?

Another suggestion produced by the OSTWG is to "better educate adults (parents and teachers) about the online risks and ways to prevent them....in order to enable them to teach children to be better digital citizens." WE are going to guide THEM? That's like having a Boy Scout teach a Navy SEAL about survival and combat tactics. Most adults today know little about the online sandbox their children play in. Teachers and parents lack the credibility to influence children's online decision-making and behavior. The minute a child can say "you don't know what it's really like" you've lost. True, this may not be an issue 10 years from now as the adults then will be digital natives. But we still have to do something now.

I could go on and on citing examples of how the OSTWG nailed the conclusions and botched the suggestions but enough negative. I know what you are thinking "...Alright smart guy, you seem to have all the answers, how would you solve these problems?" Well, I don't have ALL the answers but I have two ideas that might work if we (as a society) can think a little outside the box.

First, someone has to come up with a digital "stamp of approval" for online content. One organization sets one standard (this would be a great job for the OSTWG). For a website to get this digital stamp of approval, they have to meet a strict set of criteria that defines their content, including restrictions about other sites they link to. Get a company like Microsoft or Google to make a browser that only opens "approved" sites and have schools (and parents) only use that browser on their machines. Safe search sites could be set up to only show results that have the "stamp." One of the good suggestions by the OSTWG was to encourage industry leaders like Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Verizon, and others to assist in online safety efforts by adopting policies recommended by the group. Well, here is their chance. I believe any reputable site that hosts educational content would absolutely go through the process of getting their site approved so their sites could be viewed in schools. In the 80's and 90's Apple recognized the value of indoctrinating children in their technologies by providing free or low cost computers to schools. Their hope was that the familiarity would generate revenue as children grew into adults and purchased Apple machines. I believe other sites like Google and Microsoft would also benefit from such an arrangement and therefore would be willing to create kid-safe, "approved" sites. And once the giants lead the way, other organizations are sure to follow. What would the federal government's role be in this scenario? Aside from possibly facilitating the definition of standards (via the OSTWG), they could also legislate very severe consequences for organizations that abuse the system (e.g. changing their content after they have earned the "stamp of approval"). I know that similar systems such as digital security certificates for websites have floundered over the past few years. Opponents could say the same thing will happen in my scenario. But part of their problem is that digital certificates are complicated, aren't well understood by the general public, and many people are willing to risk visiting a site that doesn't have a digital security certificate if they think the site has what they want (and lets not forget that you can continue on to a site despite its lack of a certificate). It is a system that is not well defined, not well promoted, not well enforced, and not really cared about. If done correctly, a system utilizing a digital "stamp of approval" could work well. You could also extend the functionality to smartphones, iPods, and video gaming systems. Individuals could get "approved" so that they could access safe chat rooms and social media and then sites could be set up to allow people to report them if they abuse their "approval" (thereby losing it). There are many possibilities with a system like this.

Second, channel the message through a credible source. I work for an IT consulting company. Our clients are some of the top companies in the US (very smart people) and they readily admit that they don't have credibility in planning and executing large IT projects. That's why we remain in business. The same principle applies here. We as digital immigrants don't have credibility to guide kids through the process of being good digital citizens. What can we do? Bring in consultants. We need people who are old enough to be responsible and "get" the bigger picture of our cause but are young enough and hip enough to maintain credibility and an aura of "coolness" among kids. I'm talking about college kids. I'm talking about the older brothers and sisters of our online children. I'm talking about people who are still in touch with what kids today are going through and are equally familiar with the technologies. Churches figured this out long ago. How many churches have college kids as counselors in summer camps? It's a concept that is sound in principle and has been proven to work. Parry Aftab of WiredSafety, with all of her national resources, would be the perfect person to spearhead something like this. Summer or weekend camps, weekly workshops, etc. where kids get together in a safe environment, to play games and interact with each other online and then take time to talk about their experiences with each other and with counselors who have credibility - counselors who can guide them through proper usage - by example not by lecture. It is the typical retreat/summer camp scenario applied to the online world. There are organizations out there that are dabbling in this as PART of their camp or retreat curriculum. Now is the time to stop dabbling and make it mainstream. It is, I believe, the best way to get the message across. Of course, for this to work, the counselors would have to be the "right" kind of kids. But this is also true of church camps and they have accomplished proper selection for years.

No, these two ideas will not completely solve the problems we face. Both efforts would take a great deal of work to implement and be slow moving at first. But you have to start somewhere. We can't keep doing what we are doing (just more of it). We are dangerously close to being lapped by the bad things lurking on the information super highway. Online technologies gain popularity because they are new and different - their creators have thought out of the box. It's time we do the same.

Holy cow that was a long post!

Disney Joins the Cause (Barely)

2010-07-22T08:28:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure how long this site has been around. I've never come across it before. In any case, Disney has a site devoted to keeping kids safe online. It's not very substantial and most of the content is a clone of the same old stuff you find a lot of places (in fact I think most of their content came from Wiredsafety.org). Honestly, I think with their reputation for excellence, Disney could and should do better than this "luke-warm" attempt. Maybe this is just their first step into the pool. But at least they're in the game right? Here is the address:

http://home.disney.go.com/guestservices/safety

FOLLOW UP: A reader who works at one of Disney's resorts e-mailed me and said this: "...this site was created as part of Disney Guest Services. Most resorts have Internet access and Disney felt if children are getting online while on Disney property, they should post something to notify parents and kids about potential dangers. It was never intended to be a serious resource, more of a warning or disclaimer."

That makes more sense. However, I still think Disney should make a strong effort. Who better than them to help advance the cause of Internet safety for kids?

Facebook's New Child Safety Features...Am I Missing Something?

2010-07-19T11:44:00.003-04:00

Several articles last week touted Facebook's latest step toward making children safe on their site. Facebook has partnered with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre from the UK to offer "a new suite of features designed at keeping the Facebook experience safe for kids." I spent a few hours looking into these new features and honestly....I don't get it. I can't figure out how these new features are going to offer any real protection for kids while on Facebook.

The big problem for me is that I can't find any clear description about what CEOP is bringing to the table. The language describing the partnership is very vague. Here is an example (this text is posted on both Facebook and CEOP's sites):

"Access to the ClickCEOP button will be provided via an application that users can add or bookmark so that it appears on their homepage as not only a constant source of help and reassurance for them but also as a strong visual signal to their friends, family and others that they are in control online."

The appearance of an icon or button on someone's page doesn't actually do anything. From what I understand, when clicked, the button takes the child to an "information page" where they can also report abuses. Reporting abuses sounds promising until you learn that Facebook is making no commitment to do anything about reported users and CEOP is only building a database of reported incidents (for what purpose, no one seems to know). The "information" they refer to is a list of the standard Internet safety advice you can find on a thousand different websites (like mine). In other words, the button does nothing tangible that can help a child at the crucial moment when their safety is being threatened.

Here is the link to the description of the service: http://www.ceop.police.uk/mediacentre/pressreleases/2010/ceop_12072010fb.asp

From what I understand, here is what it doesn't do:

It doesn't block offensive content
It doesn't block unsolicited messages from strangers
It doesn't prevent children from "friending" strangers
It doesn't give parents any control or even access to their child's profile or content

Seems to me that these are the things you need to do to make Facebook safe for kids.

Is a 14 year old going to respond to bullying or a sexual advance by searching the CEOP site for "relevant information?" Do these people even know what a teenager is? Will teenagers continue to use the "reporting" feature once they realize it does nothing? Is a sexual predator going to leave a child alone just because of a bookmark that appears on the child's profile page?

Maybe I'm missing something here and I would love for someone from Facebook or CEOP to fill in the missing pieces. If the information I have is incorrect or incomplete then Facebook needs to do a better job communicating to their user base. My current opinion is that this is a smokescreen to divert attention from the reality that Facebook is still a fairly unsafe place for kids. Since the 2007 lawsuit from the State of New York over child safety, Facebook has struggled against a lot of bad press about kids and their site. I hope this is more than just a lame attempt to improve public opinion. Kids and parents deserve more than that.

Oh, and by the way, you now have to be just 13 to have a Facebook page.

The Danger of "The Fade"

2010-07-16T12:13:00.002-04:00

Typical scenario:

Dealing with a 6 year old

A responsible parent wanting their 6 year old to be safe online - isn't extremely tech savvy but is willing to learn. The parent does some research, purchases filtering software, sets up parental controls, and moves the family computer to a "public" area so that they can monitor the child while he/she is online. The parent takes the time to learn which sites are safe for kids and sets up bookmarks to kid-friendly sites for games and activities. In short, the parent is very involved in the child's digital life.

Dealing with a 16 year old

Responsible parent cant keep up with all of the different ways their child is connecting online - cell phone, video game console, iPod, not to mention the laptop their school requires them to have which they take into their room or over to friends house to do homework. Child has MySpace, Facebook, Meebo, and Twitter accounts and two different e-mail addresses. When parent tries to set up parental controls or filtering software the child complains. When the parent asks the child about their online activities they get resistance and accusations of "invasion of privacy." In short, the parent gets frustrated and gives up. I call this "The Fade" as it represents a parent who was very involved and eventually faded away.

The scenario above is extremely common. In fact, it has been documented in many cases that have ended tragically. In released court documents in the case of a Long Island teenager who took her own life as a result of cyber-bullying back in March, the mother is quoted as saying "I didn't watch what she did online. Every time I tried or asked she would get angry..." It's so easy for parents to be involved in their children's online lives at age 6. At that age, children expect guidance and rules from parents and honestly, many 6 year olds don't have the socialization to be tech savvy yet. That means they probably can't even get online without Mom or Dad's help. 16 year olds on the other hand typically don't want Mom or Dad's help and would prefer if their parents left them alone to do as they will.

The irony in all of this is that the time your kids are resisting your involvement in their online lives is the time when they need your guidance the most. At 6, the online avenues to harmful content are extremely few. When my kids were 6 we had links to sites like Webkins, Popcap, and National Geographic Kids bookmarked in the browser. When the kids got on the computer, they clicked one of those buttons and went to that site (and remember, the computer was in the kitchen so even if they stumbled onto something bad it could be addressed immediately). At 6 kids don't know about what else is out there and they don't care. All they want to do is entertain themselves. 6 year olds are typically not entertained by bullying people online or pornography.

At 16, it's a different story. They are much more interested in content that could be harmful to them. The largest consumer of Internet pornography in the United States is boys between the ages of 12 and 17. I've got a friend whose son injured himself pretty badly trying to copycat some idiot online who posted a YouTube video on how to make a bomb out of a plastic bottle and some Draino. The teenage years are when the cliques are forming and the mean-spirited harassment of other kids really kicks into high gear. It is also the time when more and more understandable options are available to them to connect online. A 6 year old would probably lose interest in Twitter pretty quickly or be confused by all of the configuration required when setting up a Facebook page. Teenagers aren't so inhibited. They seek out new avenues to gain popularity, express themselves, and explore their adulthood.

We also have to keep another truth in mind. The teenage years are the hormonal years. Various urges are waking in kids that make them do things they've never done before. Boys will likely seek out information on the female body online. Girls will seek out social media sources to chat about boys and ultimately bicker about boys (which can lead to cyber-bullying). Their minds and bodies are actively...hungrily seeking out new stimuli.

So lets go back to our scenario above and word it a little differently. Just when your child has reached an age where they know how to use every source of social media and Internet connectivity available...just when they reach the age when they are seeking to exhibit their own adulthood by exploring things that are "taboo"... just when they reach the age where they are hormonally supercharged... the parent decides to give them free reign of the Internet?

As a parent, I understand how difficult it is to struggle with your teenagers to get anything done. You say "pick up your dirty laundry" and they seem tho throw more on the floor. The teenage years are the most difficult for many parents because it is when their authority is most challenged. I know it's hard to stay involved in your children's online lives but think about it this way: You've got a pipe bringing fresh water into the house. If your teenager decided to take a bucket and collect water from a dirty, oil filled puddle along a road somewhere and then bring that water home to drink and bathe in would you allow it? What if they said "I'm an adult and I should be allowed to make my own choices?" Would you back down? Probably not. Then why do you back down when they challenge you about their online lives?

Let's not forget something here...you are the parent, they are the children. You pay the bills, you own the house, you provide them with a wide variety of services (food preparation, laundry, clothing, education, etc.). You are certainly permitted to have rules and they are obliged to follow them. Parents seem to step up and get tough when their kids do something stupid that could physically harm themselves but for some reason, the Internet is overlooked. Is it because that computer, cell phone, or video game console doesn't explode if they misuse it? Would it change your mind if it did? Misuse of the internet can cause depression, suicide, anxiety, misdirected sexuality (and in some extreme cases, rape), abduction, violence, vandalism,...the list goes on and on. Are these not threats to your child's health and well being just like contaminated water would be?

The teenage years are when you should be most involved in your child's online lives. Know who they interact with online. Make them provide the login credentials (username and password) for their social media (e.g. Facebook) and e-mail accounts. Reserve the right to get onto their phones or iPods at any time and poke around. And above all else, you have to actually do these things (not just say you might). Think of the Internet as a potentially contaminated stream of information that could harm your child. Guide them through it. Your job as a parent is to protect them, even if they don't like all of the choices you make.

McAfee Continues to Impress Me

2010-07-15T19:59:00.001-04:00

I received a very kind comment from Tracy at McAfee about my posting highlighting McAfee's "Secret Lives of Teens" study. Tracy is the author of McAfee's Security Insights Blog. I am embarrassed to say that I didn't even know the blog existed (sorry Tracy). I do now and I'm hooked.

I took some time to read over the blog and am very impressed with both Tracy's writing and the effort by McAfee to provide useful information to the public, free of charge (doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do).

The blog focuses on cyber-safety. Some of the postings are on content similar to this blog and others are on topics such as keeping your computer safe from hackers, virus and malware prevention, Internet privacy, personal data security, etc. So for those of you who regularly ask where they can get information that is not directly related to keeping children safe online, here is your source. And for the rest of you, Tracy's blog is a great source more more information about online safety for kids.

Thanks Tracy.

Here is the link to the blog: http://siblog.mcafee.com/category/family-safety/cyber-security-mom/

WHIO Channel 7 in Dayton

2010-07-15T13:26:00.002-04:00

For those of you who live in the Greater Dayton OH region, I will be on Channel 7's Sunday morning community service program on Sunday, July 25 at 11am, discussing Internet safety for children. Eventually I am hoping to get the video to post here.

Thanks to WHIO for helping me get the message out.

Internet Safety Blog Mention

2010-07-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

Hey look. My blog was mentioned on another blog. Very cool. They got everything right except the gender of my kids. I have a boy and a girl, not two boys. Still a good article though.

http://blog.internetsafety.com/2010/02/05/keeping-kids-safe-online-reviews-safe-eyes-mobile/

The Secret Lives of Teens (Online)

2010-07-14T09:58:00.003-04:00

Back in 2008, McAfee, the maker of the popular antivirus and computer protection software, partnered with several research agencies to conduct a study titled The Youth Online Behavior Study. This study focused on online behavior patterns of children age 12 to 17 - in other words, what sites were they visiting, how were they using online media, how were they getting around safeguards, and what were they hiding from their parents. The study came out roughly in the same time frame as a study by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and despite the fact that each study focused on a different geographic region, their findings were very similar. Together they provided a very good base of knowledge about the online habits of teens.

Last month, McAfee conducted a followup study called The Secret Lives of Teens. Since two years had passed...and more importantly, since the technological landscape changed so much with the advent of new social media (e.g. Twitter) and the explosion in popularity in chat sites and services like Facebook, McAfee wanted to bring these new technologies into the fold and include relevant statistics. They also were curious how the numbers had changed from 2008 to 2010.

I won't list a bunch of statistics from the study - you can and SHOULD read the study yourself (available below). The bottom line result of the study reinforces the same lesson internet safety advocates have been preaching for years...parents and educators MUST put the time in; they must get involved in the online lives of children and they must extend beyond their comfort zones and keep up to date with evolving and emerging technologies if they want their children to be safe.

What I think lends merit to the study and gives credibility to McAfee is this: here is a company who sells software designed to keep your computer and your family safe from online threats. It would be to their benefit to say that their products "automate" online safety - that their tools make it so easy and do all the work for you. But they don't do that. In fact, their study shows the opposite. No matter what tools you use, you have to be willing to put the time in. No software product or online service will take the responsibility out of the hands of parents and guardians.

Take some time and read this study. It's not horribly long (10 pages), it's very easy to read, and it is loaded with valuable information. I wasn't surprised by any of the findings but I am immersed in these statistics every day. However, there may be some surprises for you.

Kudos to McAfee for taking the time to do the study and making the results freely available to the public.

Click here to read/download the 2010 study The Secret Lives of Teens.

Or you can read a summary of the report on this article from McAfee.

iKeepSafe.org

2010-07-13T10:53:00.001-04:00

I am increasingly impressed with iKeepSafe.org. They are a non-profit collaborative partnership between state and local governments and agencies as well as industry leading corporations. I have downloaded and looked over their free content and it's pretty good. If you are an educator or school administrator looking for curriculum for Internet safety, they are a good source. There are also resources for parents and for kids as well. Here is the "About Us" statement from their website:

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Internet Keep Safe Coalition

The Internet Keep Safe Coalition is a broad partnership of governors and/or first spouses, attorneys general, public health and educational professionals, law enforcement, and industry leaders working together for the health and safety of youth online. iKeepSafe® uses these unique partnerships to disseminate safety resources to families worldwide.

Mission
To give parents, educators, and policymakers the information and tools which empower them to teach children the safe and healthy use of technology and the Internet.

Vision
To see generations of the world’s children grow up safely using technology and the Internet.

iKeepSafe educational resources teach children of all ages in a fun, age-appropriate way, the basic rules of Internet safety, ethics, and the healthy use of connected technologies.

Resources for Elementary Grades
Through the storybook adventures of Internet safety icon, Faux Paw the Techno Cat®, elementary school children learn about:

Internet safety basics
How to handle cyber-bullying
Balancing real life with screen time
The risks and dangers of downloading

The iKeepSafe.org website reinforces the lessons taught in the books with educational materials, including PowerPoint® presentations, activity sheets, coloring pages, quizzes, and educational games available for free download.

The Faux Paw® curriculum is based on research from Harvard’s Center on Media and Child Health and created in partnership with the iKeepSafe Global Research Team, Penn State University Department of Education, and the University of Maryland. It is central to a nationwide Internet safety campaign with pilot programs running this year in Australia, China, and India. Faux Paw stories are also available in Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cambodian, Vietnamese and other languages.

Resources for Teens

Comcast’s Emmy award-winning “Student Voices” on cyber-bullying
‘Tween and teen video presentations and tutorials

Resources for Parents
Parent resources are available in the iKeepSafe.org Parent Resource Center, including:

Video tutorials on current Internet safety topics:
10 Actions Parents Must Take
Social Networking Sites
How to Handle Cyber-bullying
MySpace Safety Know-how
Family Fun Lessons: to help parents teach Internet safety at home
DARE Activities: coloring pages, activities, and instructions for parents
Online Safety Digest: recent news stories covering online safety issues

Most iKeepSafe resources are available for free download.

The Internet Keep Safe Coalition is a registered 501(c)3, non-profit organization founded by Jacalyn S. Leavitt, former First Lady of Utah (1993–2003).

Making an iPad Safe for Kids

2010-07-09T13:43:00.000-04:00

I've had a couple of people ask me about parental controls for the iPad. Here is a good video from CNET on just that topic.

http://cnettv.cnet.com/make-ipad-safe-kids/9742-1_53-50087212.html

PC Pandora Review

2010-07-08T08:22:00.000-04:00

I want to thank the people at PC Pandora for commenting on my Capitol Hill posting. The rule with this blog is that, unlike other bloggers, I DO allow some sales-based comments if I think the commenter is making a genuine effort to comment intelligently (hence the presence of PC Pandora's comment). However, if you are a company who is using a comment to promote your product, that product will most likely get an open and honest review from me or one of my associates. You may not like everything I have to say but my job is to keep the best interest of kids and the people who protect them at heart. So PC Pandora...sorry for the bad pun but you opened the box :-). Here is your review.

First, what is PC Pandora? It is software that invisibly monitors and records computer activity and content (like a Tivo for your PC) and offers administrators (or parents) some controls for blocking objectionable content and sites.

I have to say that I didn't feel qualified to review the product alone. My only experience with PC Pandora is in a corporate setting among my company's clients. From that perspective I can tell you that as a tool for stealthy monitoring of daily computer activity, it does it's job extremely well. In the three companies where I know it is being used, the employees don't even know it's there. The only comment from the administrators (and I wouldn't call it a complaint) is that their large employee base requires them to purchase great amounts of storage (hard drives) to save the records and data created by the software. But they were prepared for that going in so it's certainly not a negative against the manufacturer. One company in particular saved themselves a great deal of money in legal fees after an employee tried to sue for wrongful termination. The records produced by PC Pandora allowed them to prove the employee spent over 3 hours a day on non-work related websites (mostly MySpace). So from a corporate perspective, PC Pandora is great, but keep in mind that the goal in the corporate world is not to use the software to block sites and content like a school or parents would (corporate firewall and network security software usually takes care of that).

Because of my lack of experience with this product in regard to children, I asked around and discovered that one of my colleagues, a technology coordinator in a suburban Dayton, OH school district, is using the tool in her district. She was more than willing to share her opinion about the product. Here are her comments (thanks Angela):

"Our initial purchase of the software was unfortunately due to a suspicion about a teacher, not any students. There was a rumor circulating and eventually a complaint from a parent that one of our teachers was sending inappropriate e-mails to students and accessing inappropriate websites on a classroom computer while children were present. Our first attempt to investigate without the Pandora product revealed nothing. However, the teacher was known to be tech savvy and could have very easily deleted his browsing history. We installed Pandora and recorded the PC for a month without the teacher's knowledge. The data revealed no inappropriate e-mails sent to students (from that machine) by the teacher and though the computer did attempt to access several offensive websites, none of the attempts were made using the teacher's login credentials and many of the attempts were made when a substitute teacher was present.

Given our success with the product for that particular case, we decided to try it in other applications. Our standard content filtering software does a good job blocking bad sites, however, for various reasons, there were a few machines in the district that seemed to ignore the filters put in place and allowed students to access offensive material on a regular basis. In some cases is was due to students' technical know-how and in others it was the age of the computer that made it incompatible with our security software. So we thought we'd try Pandora and see what happened.

The filtering/blocking features worked ok but didn't filter as much as we would have liked. One of our biggest problems is kids accessing chat sites at school and most of the popular chat sites couldn't be blocked by Pandora for some reason. We also found the interface for administering the controls a bit confusing. In addition, we discovered that if a website is a secure HTTP site (which many members-only pornography sites apparently are), Pandora couldn't filter them out either.

Overall, my opinion is that if you are looking for a tool to quietly monitor what's happening on a PC, there is no better product than Pandora. But if you want to filter/block content, there are several better options."

PC Magazine offered a similar review to Angela's. You can read it here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2247334,00.asp.

Here is a link to PC Pandora's website: http://www.pcpandora.com/.

An Opinion about Internet Safety from Capitol Hill

2010-07-07T10:38:00.002-04:00

My family and I just got back from a very educational and tiring vacation to our nation's capitol. Though I try to abstain from politics and would never use this blog as a forum of support for any political figure or candidate, I do have to acknowledge the courtesy and hospitality extended by our Congressman's (John Boehner) office during our visit. We wrote Mr. Boehner's office before the trip and arranged a tour of the Capitol Building (very cool) and though we didn't get a chance to meet Mr. Boehner (he had just left for the holiday weekend), we did get to spend some time talking to members of his staff.

As a history fanatic, I had a million questions for the aide that conducted our tour. When we got back to Boehner's office, we spent some time talking to other members of his staff. We were fortunate enough to spend a few minutes talking to one of his senior staff members (who I will not name out of political courtesy) and I told him about my efforts around keeping kids safe online and asked him this question: "what do you think the federal government's position should be in promoting or enforcing internet safety for children?" I thought you would all be interested in the answer. And though I will not claim this to be a word-for-word quote/response, I will say that it is very close to the answer I received:

The topic you are asking about has definitely come up many times. It is a politically ambiguous and somewhat dangerous topic as any effort to enforce regulation along such lines could very easily stray into infringement of First Amendment rights. As much as most public servants in government find pornography and other content that might be harmful to children objectionable, the right to produce and display it is guaranteed by the same Constitution that guarantees our right to object to it. I believe, and Mr. Boehner might agree, that the role of the federal government is to promote a safe environment for children online by facilitating safety and education through grants and well-conceived programs that encourage and enable content and sites that operate in the best interest of children. The content available online, just like printed content, is not within the power of the government, nor should it be, to regulate or censor. It is and should be the responsibility of the parent, school, or any adult who allows children to connect to the Internet to monitor and control the information that their children are allowed to access.

From a legislative standpoint, the government should be willing to create laws that protect children once the reach and impact of objectionable content goes beyond the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Luring children to objectionable sites, pushing offensive content out to minors, the use of communication media for illegal activities, and certainly the use of the internet by sexual and other predators is the province of the government and along those lines, every member of Congress agrees that efforts should be made to dissuade offenders and create harsh consequences for those that use social and public media to violate the rights of others.

As much as I think this answer is politically safe, I agree with it. I'd love to know what you all think.

Droid

2010-06-21T12:51:00.003-04:00

As much as it goes against my professed disapproval of those "Crackberry" phone addicts who can't put work down for two seconds, I did just get a Droid. For those of you who don't know, there are basically three levels of cell phones: regular phones (lowest level), smart phones (middle level), and pda phones (highest level). Droid is a pda phone that rivals the iPhone, running a myriad of possible apps and delivering high-speed access to my e-mail and the internet. I hate to admit it but I love it so far. It does so many cool things, I can understand why people are waiting two months to get one...and why every teenager wants one. It's got an 8 megapixel camera and a camcorder, it plays mp3's and video, it's got GPS built in, and it has an app for pretty much anything you would want to do...in fact, I am posting this article from my Droid, not my computer. It's electronic candy for adults.

Although it's unlikely that most parents would run out and purchase a Droid for their children (especially at its $500 price), I felt compelled to share some observations about the Droid, in case anyone has recently come into money and felt like their child deserved such a device.

First, let me restate my position on kids and phones: No child needs a smartphone or a pda. Texting and calling family and friends does not require Internet capabilities or a data plan on the phone. If your children or the post-teens at Verizon are telling you otherwise, they are pulling a fast one one you. Most basic phone services will allow your children to call or text. So my best advice is don't get s Droid or even an Internet/data enabled smartphone of any type for your kids.

Now, with that out of the way, the Droid does do a lot and is a very useful business tool. But it does pose some threat to kids that every adult should know about before they hand their phone over to their kids to play a game or especially before they buy one for their child.

Back on February 25th, I posted an article that praised Apple for taking all objectionable apps off of its iTunes store. It's still that way and Apple continues to deserve kudos for it. Droid, however has it's own version of the iTunes store it calls the Apps Market or Marketplace. In fact there are several different sites you can download Droid apps from, unlike iTunes that only allows apps downloaded through iTunes. The Marketplace has not removed objectionable apps and there is a veritable department store full of bad apps that can be downloaded: pornography, sex-based video games, hate-based apps and games, violence/vandalism-based apps, I even found a "Neo Nazi Quote of the Day" app. Some of these apps require a credit card to purchase but most do not.

Keep in mind, apps have nothing to do with the Internet. Yes there are a few safe browser apps that will run on the Droid and make your child's internet experience safer while online via the Droid. But apps don't run through the Internet. They are their own self-contained program that will ignore the filters you set up for the safe browser you install. If you were to install something like SafeEyes on the Droid, then porn sites may be filtered out while your child is browsing the Internet. But they can close the browser and open the "hottie of the day" app and look at all the naked pictures they want. And if they know what they are doing, they can install the app, look at the pictures, and uninstall it when they are done, leaving no evidence for you to find on the phone. Free apps can be downloaded over and over again, as can most paid apps, once you have purchased them.

So give it some thought before you give in and buy your kid a Droid... or even hand your Droid over to your kids to play a game. I love m ine. But my kids won't get one until two things happen: 1. They are 18 and 2. They can pay for it themselves.

Strategy for a Safe House - Follow Up

2010-06-18T07:37:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the reader yesterday who posted the comment about the latest NetGear wireless router. The fact is that the latest routers by both NetGear and Linksys have much improved parental controls. If you know what you are doing and can figure out the router interface and protocols, you can definitely set either of these routers up to do almost the same thing that iBoss does. The benefit is that both of these routers will be considerably faster than the iBoss. The downside is twofold - first, you need to be a little more technical (or patient and good at following bad directions) to set them up and second, the routers by NetGear and LinkSys don't receive the filter definition updates from iBoss. If you read my February 14 posting on the iBoss, it receives the same filter definition updates that most schools get and it is updated by iBoss regularly. That's a huge plus. You can make your own lists on the NetGear and LinkSys routers but think about how time consuming that task would be (to research and build lists of objectionable keywords and countless sites you want blocked).

But if you are savvy enough and speed is an issue for your home network, these other wireless routers may be an option for you.

Thanks again to the anonymous poster.

Just for kicks, here is how iBoss compares to other routers in terms of speed. I know NetGear isn't listed but it's pretty close to LinkSys:

Strategy for a Safe House

2010-06-17T13:53:00.004-04:00

A friend recently called me and asked me to help him create a strategy to keep the online experiences of his children safe no matter what they were doing in his house. Not a small task. Depending on their lifestyle, it could be time consuming and expensive to really lock everything down. Before I started suggesting anything, I gathered some information.

Here are the specs on his family/house:

He has 4 children that range in age from 9 to 17
He has 5 computers in the house - his machine in his office, his wife's machine in the kitchen, the "family" computer in the family room, and each of the two high school age children have a laptop for school. All connect through a wireless network
3 kids have cell phones (2 of them smartphones with the data plan)
He and his wife have cell phones (both smartphones with the data plan)
All kids have an iPod Touch
They have a PlayStation 3 and an X-Box 360 in the basement which connect to the Internet via their wirelss network
They also just bought a new flat-creen TV with wireless Internet capability

Here are the challenges in a situation like this:

The school-provided laptops do not permit the installation of any parental control software or reconfiguration by the parents.
The older kids take their laptops into their bedrooms to do homework
The video game consoles (which can connect to the Internet just like a computer) offer no filtering or monitoring options.
The kids friends often visit with their own laptops, cell phones, iPod's etc.
The smartphones with data plans allow Internet access but do not have any content filtering capabilities

Given these circumstances, my friend said "what can I do to make the house as safe as possible?" The hard part is controlling the devices you have no control over - school laptops, friends' iPod's, etc. Software can help with some of these devices but smartphones and video game consoles do not have parental controls and the school laptops are hands off.

Here's what we came up with. The iBoss Router, which I reviewed back on February 14, is a key component in the strategy for my friend's house. This single device will control the Internet content for everything that connects to the Internet in that house using the traditional internet. This includes the family computers, the school laptops, the iPods, and the video game consoles. The great thing about the iBoss is that it is one device to configure instead of many and it is a "locked box" so to speak that is out of the reach of tech savvy kids who might be able to figure out how to get around some settings. So instead of installing software on each computer and each iPod, you can control the majority of content filtering in one place. Of course my friend could still take the time to install monitoring/filtering software (like NetNanny or K9 Web Protection) on his computers and similar apps (like Mobicip) on the iPods if he wanted to be extra sure (which I recommended he do as well). And the best part is that the iBoss offers protection for the video game consoles - protection that isn't available anywhere else.

We went about setting all that up. We got the iBoss, configured it, and turned it on. Worked great. We also installed K9 web protection and turned Windows parental controls on for the home PC's and installed safe browser apps on the iPods. After all that effort, things seem to be working well. He and I tried very hard to find objectionable content online and it was a considerable challenge. And the cool thing was, any bad stuff we did find, we could specifically add to the "blocked" list in both the iBoss router and the software we installed.

The downside? Yes there was one. The internet connection offered by the iBoss is slower than a traditional router and it did have an effect on the gaming experience. Kids who game can tell you that when they are playing online, a slow connection will ruin the experience. "What do we do about that?" my friend asked. My answer - tell the kids to live with it or bring the video games up out of the basement and put them in a more public area. Those are really the only two choices that I know of.

Now on to the smartphones. There is nothing that can be done to lock down smartphones that have a data plan unless those smartphones are iPhones or Droids (in which case a safe browser app can be installed). These particular smartphones were not so he was out of luck. When he asked me what he should do about it I answered with my standard answer..."why does a kid need a data plan?" He answered "so they can text." At that moment I knew he fell victim to the same trap many parents fall into. You don't need a data plan on a cell phone to text. Those teenagers who work at Verizon will say you do in order to make a sale. Your kids will say you do so they can get the internet and e-mail. But you don't. Most standard cell phones have packages for voice, text, and data and you can choose which of those three you want. My friend was a little perturbed that his kids pulled a fast one on him and he assured me that he would be canceling the data plan (and saving himself a good deal of money - more than enough to pay for the iBoss router).

All in all, he was very pleased with the results. It's been 3 weeks and everything seems to be working smoothly. The teenagers aren't happy about their lack of cell phone internet but I'm sure they will manage. I made it through high school when there were no such thing as cell phones - I think they will survive.

Thanks to the Catholic Telegraph

2010-06-03T07:37:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the Catholic Telegraph for their recent article about my presentations at John XXIII in Middletown.

You can read it here.
.

The new FaceBook for 6 - 10 Year Olds??

2010-05-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

Just saw this article about "Togetherville":

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/19/wired.togetherville/index.html?hpt=T2

Not condoning or supporting it in any way yet but I will definitely do some research.

At first glance it looks promising but I wonder if it will catch on.

John XXIII School Middletown Rocks!!

2010-05-13T23:34:00.001-04:00

What a great day. After the cyber-bullying presentations for the kids I did my standard Internet Safety presentation for the parents and met some great people. Everyone was very attentive, inquisitive, and kind to me. Thanks so much for having me come up.

The resources I referred to in my presentation tonight can be found in the archive of this blog. If you look on the right side of the screen under "Blog Archive" you can click on the arrow next to 2009 to open the entries form last year. Then if you click the arrow next to November you will see the title "Handouts from the Presentation." This is where you will find the resources and how-to documents for the stuff I talked about (like setting your search engine filters).

E-mail me at mpdermody@gmail.com with comments or questions.

Cyber-Bullying Presentation for Kids - First Run

2010-05-13T14:28:00.001-04:00

Thanks to John XXIII School in Middletown I had my first run of my new cyber-bullying presentation for kids this morning. We did two sessions, one for the younger kids and one for the junior high kids and it went very well. What a great bunch of kids and my compliments to the faculty - you have a great school. GO FALCONS!! Tonight I'm doing my Internet Safety presentation for the parents. Looking forward to it.

The materials for my new cyber-bullying presentation are now available here:
Gradeschool Presentation: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5gdVOuWJv-cZWVkYTQwNjEtYTk2Yi00Y2E5LTkxYzYtNmYzN2Y0ZmU2ZDQ5&hl=en

Junior High Presentation: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5gdVOuWJv-cYmVmNjQwNzMtZWE4ZC00N2ZkLWFlY2YtNmU1ZjRjMWYxMDk3&hl=en

Great Cyber-Bullying Video

2010-04-20T14:01:00.006-04:00

I thought this video was very well done (good for kids to watch - only 6.5 minutes long). It was produced by an organization in the UK called Digizen (digital + citizen = digizen). Good resources on their website about being a good digital citizen, especially for teachers and administrators: http://www.digizen.org.

Click the video to start, click again while playing to enlarge.

How to Not Raise a Bully

2010-04-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

With all of the attention lately on cyber-bullying, I thought this article at Time.com was timely. The things that make a kid a bully are the same whether they are bullying in cyber-space or on the playground.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1982190,00.html?hpt=T2

K9 Web Content Filtering Software

2010-03-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

I got a call a couple of months ago from some friends who were panicked. Their kindergarten son was over at the babysitter's house and he and the babysitter's daughter (same age) had accidentally stumbled onto some pornography. Here's the disturbing part...they were on the My Little Pony website dressing ponies in different outfits when a window popped up showing a very graphic scene. No, My Little Pony isn't promoting porn. The machine had a hijacker on it that would open new windows and show whatever website it wanted whenever someone was on the internet. Hijackers are one of many programs referred to as malware that reside on your computer and take control of your browser, redirecting you to different websites. Some sites use hijackers as a marketing ploy - when you try to leave their site, they wont let you - they keep redirecting you back to their site. Other hijackers are posted by people who just want to cause trouble. Either way, they are bad things to have on your computer and they are all over cyberspace.

How frustrating is this for parents? You spend the time researching sites before you let your kids on them and try to set limits but it doesn't matter. Webkinz, My Little Pony, Pop Cap...all the harmless kid sites are now a threat if your machine has a hijacker. The only way to keep your kids from seeing porn is to turn the machine off. Aren't you glad you spent $1,500 for that new machine?

My friends wanted to know what they could do to keep the same thing from happening on their computer at home. The first thing I told them is to get their computer clean. Not being extremely tech savvy, they didn't know what to do other than fire up Norton's scanner so I took their machine and went through it with a fine tooth comb (437 malware infections to their surprise). Once the machine was clean, I recommended they put some web content filtering/parental control software on it. The problem was that the machine was older and my friends didn't want to spend a lot of money on software like NetNanny or CyberSitter (both excellent programs but costly). So I did some research and came across K9 Web Protection Software from Blue Coat.

So far, I really like this product. First and foremost, it's free. Setup is easy and their website does a good job of helping parents through the process. Once installed it filters the websites that your children access by a variety of methods. Parents can log into a control panel that allows them to tweak the settings to customize access specifically to their own standards. The program receives updates automatically from K9's website and is always on whenever your children are on the internet. The best part for me (other than the content filtering of course) is that it doesn't slow your computer down. Many filtering applications cause lags in connection speed and slow browsing down considerably. I didn't even notice that K9 was running while I was testing it.

There were only three drawbacks to the software that I noticed: 1. It doesn't filter chats or messaging. 2. It doesn't filter files that you download (which would be very difficult to do so I don't really hold this as a strike against K9) and 3. K9 sends the administrator access info to the parents e-mail address so if you are a parent who (like many) leave their e-mail open all the time, it wouldn't take much for your child to find the password and disable K9 (but again, how else could K9 handle this? - I don't hold this as a strike against them either).

Overall, I am pretty impressed by K9. It does as good a job filtering as some of the expensive programs and it's free. You really have nothing to lose in trying it out. I would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Here is a link to the K9 website for more information:
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/aboutk9/index.php.

Mobicip Safe Browser Review

2010-03-11T10:16:00.000-05:00

It's taken me a month or so to get to this but I finally got to spend some time with Mobicip. Last month one of my readers turned me on to Mobicip and asked me to review it. So here goes.

I try to start my reviews with a statement of my overall opinion. I like Mobicip, more than SafeEyes Mobile. Though I'm not going to rush out and get it for my kids because I've already purchased SafeEyes and Mobicip didn't outperform it enough for me to want to make the change. For those of you who don't know what Mobicip is, it's a web browser for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. If you follow this blog, I have reviewed SafeEyes Mobile in the past. Mobicip does the same thing though it behaves a little differently.

The big difference between Mobicip and SafeEyes Mobile is that SafeEyes is a program and Mobicip is both a program and a portal. What does that mean? When you install SafeEyes onto your device, all of it's settings are contained within the program itself. It does not connect to any third party for updates or to get it's "instructions" for how and what to filter. Mobicip does connect to a third party service and this has definite advantages and a few drawbacks.

The advantage of Mobicip and it's third party connection is that is receives it's "orders" from a central location sponsored by the company that makes Mobicip. The settings it uses to filter objectionable content are a clone of the settings most schools use to protect students from bad stuff. Instead of you deciding which sites should be blocked, you can rely on the same expertise that makes those decisions for schools (though you still have to put some time in). It also gets updated whenever that master list gets updated so your filter list will always be current. This functionality alone is a huge plus.

The downside of connecting to a third party is that it affects browsing speed, though speed drops were seldom and the amount only slight. Before you get to any internet site you have to first travel through Mobicip's site for the filtering to work. The busier their site is, the longer it takes you to get through. But I have to be honest with you, I used it at various times of day and I never noticed much of a performance hit.

Another cool thing about Mobicip is that it looks exactly like Safari, the browser that comes on iPhones/iPods. SafeEyes has it's own browser that looks different. If your child is embarrassed by not having the same browser his/her friends have, then this should do the trick. Except for a splash screen that appears for about 2 seconds when the program is opened, there is no way to tell you aren't using Safari.

Mobicip's main features include:

Real-time Internet content filtering
Data encryption for added security over public WiFi
Simple setup using predefined web filter configurations used in schools
Easy, intuitive filtering administration
Support for 3G, EDGE, Home WiFi, Public WiFi (including hotspots that require purchase or agreement)
Safari-like User Interface, including pinch and zoom, bookmarks, tabs, landscape view, etc
Operates with no load on the device and no noticeable delay.

The control panel for parents is pretty easy to use. After downloading Mobicip, the app immediately walks you through creating a Mobicip account and setting filtering settings at different levels. Ideally, the setup should be done by whoever will administrate the account so that the account will not be editable by your child. The account settings and control decisions are made by the administrator (you) at mobicip.com, which also has a very simple and easy to use website. You don't need not be an expert to set up and edit the account.

The best part about Mobicip is the price. $4.99 as opposed to $19.99 for SafeEyes.

All in all, Mobicip worked well, and is something I would definitely recommend to any concerned parent. But make sure that once Mobicip has been installed on your child’s iPhone, the Safari browser has been taken off via the restriction settings. Otherwise there really is no point to downloading it. If you need help disabling Safari, turn to Google and search on "disable Safari iPhone". That's how I figured it out.

Teen Texting

2010-03-03T08:49:00.000-05:00

Wow! I knew teens texted a lot but not this much. See this article from Channel 9:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story/Texting-Teens-Out-Of-Control/gbhMCqLGm0OL7a9AnEeXUQ.cspx

Apple is Cleaning Up it's App Store

2010-02-25T08:13:00.004-05:00

Good article about Apple's latest efforts to make it's App Store (where people buy applications for their iPhone or iPod Touch) more family friendly:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35529860/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

iBoss Router

2010-02-14T13:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Nancy asked me about the iBoss Router. iBoss is a router for your home that filters and monitors the internet on every computer that connects to the internet through it. I was intrigued so I decided to get my hands on one and try it out. After two weeks of working with it, I feel a little more confident to write a review.

The first thing I have to say about it is, while it works well and does a good job, if you have or plan on getting Windows 7 on your computers at home, then you may not need iBoss. iBoss costs only $40 to buy and then another $60 per year and while it does do several things that Windows 7 can't do, I personally wouldn't pay the extra money. BUT then again, I am technically saavy and can tweak my computer and internet settings on a regular basis to make sure they're safe.

iBoss is basically a plain old wireless router like Linksys or NetGear would make. Most wireless routers have parental controls built into their software but iBoss is better in two ways: 1. It is easier to setup and configure than most routers and 2. It offers many more options for filtering and monitoring content. Setup took about 15 minutes and was pretty intuitive. Unlike most routers, iBoss connects through the web to the manufacturers website to get definition and configuration updates on a regular basis. That means that the filtering capabilities will stay up to date, unlike a typical router which receives no such parental control updates.

iBoss lets you control every computer in your house that connects to the internet, provided they connect via the iBoss. You can configure each computer individually or use a preset level of protection for any and all computers. That means when someone brings a laptop or mobile device into the house, it will be filtered as soon as it connects to the internet (that, I liked). Many area high schools require students to have laptops and if your kid's buddy brings his/her computer over to the house, its internet connection will be filtered as soon as it comes online.

iBoss also gives you more options for filtering content than Windows 7. iBoss uses the same technology/software as most schools to filter content so it is fairly reliable. I could configure not only the type of content I wanted filtered from each computer, but I could also add specific websites to my "blocked" list. I could also set certain times of day that I didn't want computers to access the internet. So if my kids were home for an hour or so before either parent, then I could block the internet during that time. Windows 7 allows this as well but it was nice to have all the features rolled into one package.

As a parental control device, I was impressed with iBoss but as a general wireless router, I was a little let down by it. It was slow, especially when multiple computers were connected. I tested 4 consecutive connections and it definitely had noticeable performance issues when all 4 were accessing the internet. It also had a more limited range than a typical router. I can put my Linksys wireless router in my basement and still access the internet on the second floor with no problem. The iBoss didn't have such a range. If you need three stories of coverage, it's not going to cut it. At best you'll get two floors out of it. It also did not work well with mobile devices like the iPhone or iPod Touch that use wireless to connect to the internet. It still filtered the content that these units received but the pages didn't render correctly and sometimes not at all. It was definitely frustrating trying to browse the web with a mobile device using the iBoss.

So what is my advice? It's definitely a good unit. It does its job well and is easy to use. As long as you can deal with speed, coverage, and mobile device limitations, it's worthwhile. I personally wouldn't buy it but I can do the work to get the same results without it. However, most parents may not be able to roll up their sleeves and work with each computer to set the parental control options. OR, you may not want to mess with configuring 4 machines individually and enjoy the convenience of a single interface to control all content in your house.

So Nancy, I think you bought a good product and it was worth the money. But the techy geek population may be let down by it's limitations.

Here is a link to a review on Cnet: http://reviews.cnet.com/routers/iboss-home-parental-control/4505-3319_7-33669195.html#cnetReview.

And here is a link to the iBoss website: http://residential.iphantom.com/

Mobicip and iBoss Reviews Coming Soon

2010-02-12T15:50:00.000-05:00

I love the feedback from readers. Based on a couple of requests, I will be reviewing two different items (actually, I have been reviewing one for the past week and will start reviewing the other today). They are:

The iBoss router - a web content filtering and internet activity control device for your home
Mobicip - a web content filtering and monitoring device for mobile devices (like SafeEyes).

Check back soon for both reviews and thanks to the readers who submitted the requests.

Dueling rulings on school MySpace discipline

2010-02-05T08:16:00.000-05:00

Interesting article on schools ability to discipline kids for what they post on MySpace (or Facebook).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35244016/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Safe Eyes Mobile - First Hand Experience

2010-02-04T09:11:00.003-05:00

Back in December I posted a segment introducing you to an "app" for iPhones and the iPod Touch called "Safe Eyes Mobile." At the time, my experience with it was limited to what I had read online and a few opportunities to see the app in action on friend's devices. For Christmas, my kids (11 and soon to be 13) both got an iPod Touch, so naturally I wanted to make their online experience with their new toys as safe as possible (and let me remind you that the iPod Touch can connect to the internet through a wireless connection just like a computer). I purchased the app for $19.99 and loaded it onto both of my kids' iPod Touch.

Installing it was easy. There were a few screens of setup I had to do on each iPod and it required me to create a master administrative account so that I alone could change settings. During setup I chose the types of site content I wanted filtered out (like adult, violence, hate, etc.). Naturally I checked most of the options only to find that it filtered EVERY site out, including most news sites and even National Geographic Kids. Lesson learned - you can't go crazy with blocking things out or it will block everything. The nice thing about the app is that I can change settings as we go along. When a site is blocked that shouldn't be, I can add it to the "allow" list. If a bad site slips through the filters I can add it to the "block" list. The app will obviously have to evolve as my kids use it which means, like any filtering/monitoring software, it will require my time to maintain and adjust it. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it, when it comes to keeping your kids safe online, there is no magic application that you set once and walk away from. If you want the software to do its job you have to put some time in.

Safe Eyes Mobile is actually it's own browser, it is not a filtering device for the iPod/iPhone's native browser (called Safari). When you install SafeEyes, your kids must access the internet through it or it will not work. That means that you have to disable Safari once Safe Eyes is installed. The cool thing is that when you install Safe Eyes, it reminds you that you need to disable Safari and walks you through the steps to do it. And, don't worry, you can always enable it later if you want to (though your kids can't). You should also keep in mind that there are other browser apps out there that your kids can download and install. If they do, then Safe Eyes is worthless. Check your child's device often and look for other browsers. Honestly you should be checking them regularly anyway so you know what is on them. If you don't know what an app is, make them open it up and show you.

So far so good. I like Safe Eyes Mobile. For $19.99 it was worth it. I would certainly recommend it to other parents. Here is the link again if you are interested: http://www.internetsafety.com/safe-eyes-mobile-iphone.php.

Facebook's New Privacy Settings Not as Good as Everyone Thought

2010-02-02T10:52:00.000-05:00

I've been reading about this on various IT blogs for a couple of weeks and now it has appeared as a story on USA Today's website. If you are a regular to this blog, you know that I have written about Facebook's ever evolving privacy settings, the last batch coming out about two months ago. Facebook claims that their new privacy settings allow users to be very selective about what the public sees on their page and this claim is absolutely true. The catch is that you have to take the time to set it all up and if you don't you are actually authorizing Facebook to share the information that you haven't locked down with the rest of the world.

Think about a teenager anxious to get their new Facebook account up and running, are they really going to take the time to go through the seemingly endless security and privacy settings? Even if they did would they really comprehend the implications of their choices? Most kids will just blast through all of the "technical" garbage and get their page posted...thereby opening the door for Facebook to share information that should be kept private. Facebook calls it "flexibility" but it seems to be turning into a trap for young people who don't take the time to pay attention to the fine details.

Since Facebook is by far the largest social networking site in the world, it has been given the title as the most dangerous. Personally, I think MySpace is worse since they A.) Advertise objectionable content in their ads section of everyone's pages B.) Sell your (and your friends) e-mail addresses to spammers though they claim they don't and C.) Provide far fewer privacy options to users. But MySpace isn't used by as many people so if you look at sheer numbers, Facebook would be the biggest threat.

Here is the article: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/02/facebook-viewed-as-riskiest-social-network-by-companies/1?loc=interstitialskip.

Teen Chat Decoder

2010-01-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

Thought this was amusing. You can enter any chat phrase like "LOL" and it will translate it for you.

http://www.teenchatdecoder.com/

More on our ongoing MySpace saga

2010-01-26T07:47:00.000-05:00

In my last post I talked about how one of my daughter's friends entered her e-mail address into their MySpace page to invite her to become a MySpace friend. Luckily it was captured by Kidmail and never made it to my daughter's inbox. This morning I went into the Kidmail parents' console and there were 21 spam messages waiting to be approved and sent to my 7th grade daughter including an advertisement for AshleyMadison.com - a website setup to allow married people to cheat on their spouses discretely. It was just the kind of advertisement I want my almost 13 year old girl to see...a picture of two people, half naked, in bed together and the title "These people are married...but not to each other. Life is short, have an affair."

I am certain that the addition of my daughter's e-mail to one of her friend's MySpace account was an innocent act. But look how it's turning out. I wonder if the parents of this child know that sites like AshleyMadison.com advertise on their child's MySpace page.

My child ended up on MySpace without trying.

2010-01-25T10:53:00.000-05:00

Two stories I want to share with you. First, as some of you know, my children have e-mail accounts through Kidmail.net, one of the services I recommend for parents. Thanks to Kidmail's filtering system, I get copies of the e-mails my kids get and I get an opportunity to filter out messages from new/unknown addresses when they come in. In the past week, my soon to be 13 year old daughter's inbox has been flooded with e-mails from MySpace. She does not have a MySpace account (nor is she even interested in having one) so one might ask, why is she getting e-mails from MySpace if she doesn't have an account? One of her friends apparently has setup an account and listed my daughter's e-mail address as a friend he/she wants to invite to join MySpace. Great. Not only does this open my daughter's e-mail account up to loads of spam, but it also posts her private e-mail address on a public forum for anyone to see. I am in the process of trying to find out which of my daughter's friends did this and ask the parents to have their child remove my daughter's address from their page. However, the die is cast...though the e-mail address won't be posted any longer, my daughter will continue to get MySpace spam indefinitely. Once they get a hold of your address, it's over. The nice thing is Kidmail allows me to filter that kind of spam out so she will never see it (though it creates more work for me).

As much of a pain as this experience is and will be for me, it's nothing compared to what happened to another child at my kid's school. This poor young man (a 7th grader) had an account set up on MySpace on his behalf without him knowing. A group of boys who don't like this poor kid set up a MySpace page, complete with pictures of the boy and his e-mail address, saying horrible, untruthful things. Just like people slowing down to gawk at a car wreck, the site was so bad that it gained a bit of a local cult following and had many people viewing it. It wasn't until the site had been up for a month that it was noticed by someone responsible and actions were taken to remove the page. Kudos to my kids' school for stepping up and intervening, despite the fact that none of the mischief happened on school grounds. The kids who made the site were punished and the site was taken down. But the damage was done.

So before you sit back and say "my kid would never," remember that they don't have to. There are plenty of other people out there to do it for them.

3 Facebook settings every user should check now

2010-01-23T21:04:00.000-05:00

Great article about Facebook's new privacy settings and what users should do:
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/20/20readwriteweb-the-3-facebook-settings-every-user-should-c-29287.html?em.

Thanks Scott L. for bringing this to my attention.

Privacy is Dead on Facebook

2010-01-14T08:02:00.000-05:00

Interesting article about Facebook privacy. As much as we would like to think the things we (and our kids) post on Facebook is private or limited to a select group of "friends," nothing is truly private.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34825225/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Something you may not have thought about regarding smart phones

2010-01-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

We tend to get caught up with how to filter the content our children view on their smart phones (like the iPhone or Droid...really any phone that can access the internet as well as make calls and text) but this article from CNN reminds us that losing the phone could be the biggest safety risk of all.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/05/cnet.smartphones.security/index.html

A lost smart phone can supply a creep with pictures of your child, their address, access to their e-mail, etc. The article gives good tips on how to keep these devices secure even if they are lost or stolen.

What is Anonymizer and do I need to worry about it?

2010-01-05T15:41:00.001-05:00

I received an e-mail today from a concerned parent asking me about Anonymizer and Anonymizer.com. She had heard some rumors about this product/site and was wondering if it were something she needs to look out for. The short answer is no.

Today, Anonymizer is a software product that you can buy to hide your personal information from the websites you visit. Whether you know it or not, many websites collect personal information about you and your computer every time you visit them. They then assign this information to a unique identifier that they store on your machine. With those two bits of info, they can do stuff like show ads for Nike if they see you visit ESPN a lot. Get it? Anyway, Anonymizer prevents them from seeing your personal info (what city you are logging in from, what kind of computer you have, what sites you have visited, etc.). Actually, it sounds like a good thing right? Don't rush out and buy it yet.

The rumors that this parent had heard about Anonymizer were that if her kids got online through the Anonymizer.com website, they could go to objectionable sites and her filtering software wouldn't detect it. This rumor was actually true...10 years ago. But not today. Years ago, Anonymizer had a free web app that allowed you to browse the web and visit any site anonymously. The sites knew nothing about you and most filtering software thought you were just on the Anonymizer website, not the objectionable site that Anonymizer was funneling to you and therefore did nothing to block it. It was also a way for kids to get around their schools' filtering software and visit whatever site they wanted. When I taught at Finneytown, we had an issue with this.

But that's all ancient history now. Anonymizer.com doesn't have this app any longer, probably because it was a maintenance nightmare on their end. All the website does is try to sell you their software (http://www.anonymizer.com/). The software itself does not circumvent your (or your school's) filtering software and in fact, it has some parental controls of it's own built in. But like I said before, don't rush out and buy it. Internet Explorer 8 has the same functionality for free. It's called "In Private Browsing" and it's accessible via Tools --> InPrivate Browsing. And no, there is nothing to worry about with it either. Your filtering software or parental controls will still filter the sites.

So Susan, thanks for the question but rest easy. You've got nothing to worry about with anonymous surfing.

New Internet Safety Hazards

2009-12-30T16:31:00.001-05:00

This past Christmas brought both of my kids into the "iPod" age - both getting iPod Touch's as gifts. They really are very cool devices (I want one now) but, as I've discussed in other postings, they introduce a new realm of safety concerns, as do the latest video game consoles for your television.

I came across this article today that discusses some of these hazards. This is nothing new, I've discussed about 75% of what this article says in past postings. But what was very useful about this particular article is that it summarizes many of the points I've made in various postings and offers some great links to helpful websites (like parental controls for Playstation and Wii and helpful suggestions about iPod's and iPhones). Here's an excerpt from the article:

"

Even if you have parental controls set on your home computer, your kids may still be at risk from Internet safety hazards with all of the products in your home that are connected to the Internet.
Surprisingly, your child may now get connected to the Internet through their:

iPod Touch (via WiFi)
iPhone and other smart phones
Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite (via WiFi)
Nintendo Wii
Sony Playstation 3
Sony PSP (via WiFi)

Again, that can be fun, offering kids access to online games and multiplayer online gaming, but it also allows them to chat with people and some include a web browser. Although parental controls are available for most of these devices, the average parent who doesn't use the device himself isn't likely to think about turning those controls on.

Before getting one of these devices that is Internet-ready or hooking up an Internet-ready gaming system to your home Internet network, be sure you know how to turn on any available parental controls:

What about parental controls for the iPod Touch or iPhone? Unfortunately, there really aren't any yet. You can go to Settings > Restrictions, enter a passcode and then set restrictions to access:

iPod songs with explicit lyrics
Safari
YouTube
iTunes
Installing Apps
Camera

Unfortunately, except for the explicit iPod settings, these are strict restrictions to the use of these applications and not filtering. For example, restricting Safari means that you can't use the web browser at all, which removes many of the more useful features of the iPhone or Internet-enabled iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch is likely still a good choice for kids to listen to music, play games and use other applications, but until there are better parental controls, it might be safer to set the restrictions and leave its WiFi Internet connection off (and don't give your kids the password to your home WiFi network if you have one).

"

The link to the entire article is: http://pediatrics.about.com/od/safety/a/109_intrnt_sfty.htm

Shocking Results of a Recent Survey on Texting

2009-12-15T14:35:00.002-05:00

I knew mobile phone "sexting" was common but I didn't think it was this common. Check out this article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/15/pew.sexting.survey/index.html

Facebook - Getting Safer for Kids but....

2009-12-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

Facebook announced yesterday that it is stepping up efforts to protect children who use their social networking site. My first thought is "it's about time." Shouldn't these measures have been part of the initial architecture? But I don't want to be negative and I have to say that this latest effort is definitely a step in the right direction.

Facebook teamed up with 5, well known and highly respected child safety advocacy groups to form an advisory board that will help them steer the future direction of Facebook so that it is safer for children. Making up the advisory board are Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and the Family Online Safety Institute. Along with the formation of this board, Facebook also launched some new features that increase privacy on individual pages and postings. You can read about it in an article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/07/facebook.security/index.html.

I think this is great news and I also have confidence that with organizations like WiredSafety and Common Sense Media on board, they will eventually head in a better direction and make improvements that truly protect children by giving parents some control. However these latest privacy features that Facebook launched along with the announcement of their new advisory board demonstrate that the people at Facebook don't really understand the problems associated with keeping kids safe online. Why?....because these latest features DON'T give parents control.

Among the latest safety and privacy features launched by Facebook are mechanisms that allow the Facebook user to be very selective about who sees the content they post on their site. It even goes so far as to allow certain content to be visible to a select group of "Friends" while keeping it hidden from other friends. In other words, you can set levels of trust within your friend list and then publish different content to different groups based on this trust level. Sounds pretty cool right? The problem is that it still relies completely on the judgment of the user. This isn't a tool that allows parents to make the decision about who sees what. This tool allows the user him/herself to make that decision. If that user is a child, then what have we really accomplished? The best a parent can do is say "make sure you are careful about what you let people see on your Facebook page." How is that any better than saying "make sure you don't go to any pornography websites when we aren't looking?"

For a feature to be truly protective of children, it has to put the power to control access in the hands of parents and/or teachers. What Facebook needs to create is a way for parents to set up pages for their kids, monitor those pages, filter objectionable content, and control who sees what. Only then will the site be truly safe for kids.

So while I applaud Facebook for creating the new advisory board, I am critical of their new privacy features. I hope that having these great organizations as advisers finally steers them in the right direction.

Content Filtering App for iPhones and iPod Touch

2009-12-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you that have heard the word "App" (as in the "there's an App for that" commercial) but aren't sure what it means, an App, short for application, is just a small program that runs on mobile devices. Many apps are games, some are as sophisticated as GPS software and others are as simple as a cool looking clock. There are Apps that do almost anything from calculating tips to translating words and phrases to other languages.

A company called InternetSafety.com has created an App called "Safe Eyes Mobile" that allows parents to filter the content that their children see when surfing the web on their iPhone or iPod Touch mobile device. If you weren't aware that they could get to the internet on these mobile devices, see my posting from November 18th.

The tool has mixed reviews. The primary complaint is that it is difficult for parents who are not tech savvy to operate. But keep in mind that it is in it's infancy and will probably evolve into something better in the future. After all, what good is an App aimed at parents if parents can't operate it. I think the App is a great sign that the industry is finally taking internet safety on mobile devices seriously. Hopefully that trend will continue.

You can check out a good review on the product by the LA Times here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/03/appiphilia-safe.html

Or you can go to the Safe Eyes product website itself here: http://www.internetsafety.com/safe-eyes-mobile-iphone.php

Interesting Articles On Sexting

2009-12-03T12:12:00.002-05:00

If you don't know what "sexting" is, here is your opportunity to learn:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34257556/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

And here's another article about sexting that appeared in the Enquirer today. Something a little closer to home:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091203/NEWS010702/912040325/Suit+++Sexting++led+to+suicide

A Great Book

2009-11-30T07:43:00.001-05:00

I often refer to this book in my presentations:

It's a great guide for parents and teachers who feel overwhelmed by the online world. It doesn't offer any great strategies or best practices for keeping your kids safe (as the title implies), but what it does is help you get up to speed with the terminology and concepts that are at the core of the Internet. It is a great starting place and a great reference guide for parents and educators who are trying to keep up with their kids. You can find it at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/How-Protect-Your-Children-Internet/dp/0275994724/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259584639&sr=8-6.

Did You Know Your Kid's Video Games can Access the Internet?

2009-11-23T10:45:00.000-05:00

Responsible parents...doing their part to keep their kids safe online. They've installed monitoring and filtering software on their computer, they utilize parental controls, the keep the computers in common areas in the house. They've done their homework and put their time in. And yet, their 14 year old son has a massive collection of pornography and access to extremely objectionable websites at will. How is this possible? Surely this boy is accessing this content outside the home since the parents have locked everything down. Nope. This boy is building his collection via a source parents usually overlook - his video game console.

Wait a minute...I'm a responsible parent....I insist that no hard core games come into my house...I rely on the video game rating system (ESRB). Good for you...keep it up. Only I'm not talking about video games. I'm talking about Internet access.

Think about the typical video game console scenario. You don't want all of that junk (15 different types of controllers, video game boxes, etc.) messing up the TV in your family room, so what do you do? You put the video game console on the TV in the basement or their bedroom. Video game consoles today are nothing more than specialized personal computers. There really isn't much difference between your family PC and that XBox connected to your television. They both have monitors, they both have hard drives and RAM, and YES, they both have Internet access. Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft XBox all have browsers that allow your children to connect to the Internet. And since they all have hard drives and other storage media, they have a place to save anything your kids find online. To make it worse, even though these machines are essentially home computers, they do not run typical operating systems and therefore, parents can't install typical filtering software on them. These units provide the user fairly unlimited access to the internet. That means chat rooms, pornography, hate propaganda websites, you name it.

So what can you do as parents? Well, you could just unhook the device from the Internet. However, most kids today are playing games that are multiplayer online games that require internet connection to play. If you disconnect the Internet, you might as well not have spent the $300 for the unit in the first place. You could also disallow video game consoles altogether from your home. But let's be reasonable. We can't let our fear of bad stuff online cloud our overall vision. There is nothing wrong with a kid having a video game console - it's a great source of entertainment that doesn't involve drugs or alcohol (there are worse things). So what can you do? Be smart. If the computer isn't allowed in a private area, then a video game console shouldn't be either. Get smart. Learn how to get into the video game console and look around at saved files and browsing history. The good thing about the lack of traditional operating system architecture is that it's nearly impossible to hide files from view - if they are on the machine, you'll probably come across them. Look for the signs - if your kid turns the unit off every time you walk in the room, something is up. You should also watch for kids using removable media with game consoles (memory cards and USB drives) and ask your kids to open that media occasionally in your presence if they are using it.

Like everything else that is connected online, you have to put the time in to monitor it. Create some rules and acceptable use policies for your home and ENFORCE them (a rule isn't a rule unless you enforce it right?). If you catch them with bad stuff on the video game console, it's gone, and they can't ever have another while they live under your roof. Zero tolerance. Yes, they can get it somewhere else...but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do the right thing and send the right message.

Fortunately right now, handheld video games like Gameboy, PSP, Nintendo DS, etc. have limited Internet access (if it does have access it's only to connect you to other players, there is no browsing available)...for now. But it's coming there too. The I-Pod Touch is rapidly becoming a popular handheld gaming device and guess what, it has a browser and Internet access. It's just a matter of time and they will all be connected.

Don't be paranoid...don't go on a witch hunt, but don't be an ignoramus either. You are smart enough to have a career, manage a household and all of your finances, you can probably figure out a video game console. Put the time in and get online with your kids. When they were little, you took them to the park and watched them play to keep them safe. Think of the Internet as a virtual park. They need you to watch them play there as well.

Accidental Access

2009-11-23T07:50:00.000-05:00

Here is an older article that I read when it first came out two years ago. The message is still good. It talks about bad stuff appearing on a computer without anyone even trying to get it. As this poor teacher discovered, an innocent click on a website link opened up what the online community refers to as a "porn storm," an endless barrage of pornography pop-up windows that can't be stopped without shutting the machine down. Within 5 seconds, over 100 windows with pornography could be opened automatically. Scary.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/sexdrive/2007/02/72786

The Mind of a Sexual Predator

2009-11-19T15:11:00.002-05:00

Review of Parental Control Software

2009-11-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

If you are thinking of buying parental control software for your computer, you may find this website to be useful.

http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/

It compares the top 10 software products available and gives you a side by side comparison of the features.

When considering parental control software, you should realize that they can fall under three catagories:

1. Monitoring software: This is software that simply monitors the websites visited on your computer as well as e-mails being sent and received. Monitoring software does not filter objectionable content. If monitoring software is all you need, check out the link to GoMcGruff in my links area on the right side of this blog. GoMcGruff is free and works well.

2. Filtering software: This is software that actually filters out websites that are tagged as "adult" or "offensive" or websites that parents choose to block. Some filtering software can even filter e-mail messages.

3. Usage software: This is software that allows you to control who uses the computer at certain times. So if you don't want your kids online while you are at work and unable to monitor them, you can keep them off.

Many of the leading parental control packages do all three of the above (and more). Just be sure you know what they do before you buy anything. Also, you may want to check my posting about the parental controls built into Windows as that might be a free solution for you.

The last piece of advice for you is this. If you are looking for something that you can install and walk away from and have it take care of all of your parental control needs, there is no such product. These are tools that help parents perform a task, not perform it for them. You can't lay a hammer and chisel on a pile of wood and say "make me a cabinet." You also can't expect parental control software to do all the work. Your time as parents is REQUIRED.

Teens and Twitter

2009-11-19T09:08:00.003-05:00

I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker this morning. He was talking about Twitter and how he and his wife love it - not that they "Tweet" (that's what it's called when you post a message on Twitter) but because they use it to keep tabs on their teenage daughter.

Let me explain how Twitter works. Let's say I have a Twitter account. I can post messages or even pictures on my Twitter page from a computer or from my cell phone (via texting) at any time. My page then has "followers," people who sign up to view my page and are notified whenever I post a new "Tweet." Whatever I post, they see. It's like a virtual bulletin board that I can update from anywhere. There are no age restrictions on Twitter - anyone can start a page. Personally, I think it's a colossal waste of time - who cares if I'm getting ready to leave for work or I just watched a movie that I liked? Are we so bored as a society that we need to focus in on the most mundane details of other people's lives? But the 12 - 30 crowd loves it. Go figure.

Back to my co-worker and his teenage daughter. I asked him exactly how he and his wife use Twitter to keep track of their daughter. He said that they have a computer in the kitchen and they keep their daughter's Twitter page open all of the time. She is apparently addicted to Twitter and Tweets every time she does anything. They get messages like "leaving volleyball practice" and "heading to Shannon's house." By monitoring the page, they know exactly where she is and what she's doing. I asked him if they thought she'd ever lie about her whereabouts and they explained that she has a bunch of friends who follow the site too and she wants them to know what she's doing (so why would she lie?). Plus they trust their daughter and feel they raised her right and know she's responsible. Essentially, they have a website that reports their daughter's whereabouts all of the time. AND, there is an added bonus...since her friends all know where she is, no one is calling the house looking for her. Sounds good right?

I continued asking my co-worker questions hoping he would come to the scary realization I was already considering. The first question I asked was "is your daughter's Twitter account set to private or not?" Setting a Twitter account to private means that only approved people can view it. By default, they are not set to private, you have to go into the settings and make it that way. His answer to my question...."I don't know." If the account is not set to private, anyone in the world can follow it, which means anyone in the world will know exactly where his daughter is at any time. And because she regularly posts pictures of herself, anyone would know what she looks like. Talk about a goldmine for a sexual predator. I explained that to him and he said "I guess we better make sure her account is set to private." I guess.

Even with the account set to private, there is still a danger. Teenagers don't always use common sense. Many times they will approve anyone who wants to be a friend. Studies show that the 16 - 25 crowd views the number of friends or followers they have on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter as a status symbol. The more friends the better. Kids will often eagerly friend someone they don't know, just to up their numbers.

Private or not, Tweeting your location and pictures of yourself at frequent intervals is a very bad idea for kids. If your kids MUST use Twitter, set some rules: First, you have to be a follower of their page (make them show you how to get onto it if need be). Second, no Tweets that would let someone know where to find them. Third, no pictures of themselves or their friends (anyone who is a minor). Fourth, you have to know who their followers are at all times. If they don't like your rules, then take the phone away.

Twitter, like so many other things in our online world can be fun and useful but the flipside can be very dangerous. Kids should not be left to make important decisions about their safety and well being alone. Be a parent. Know what they are doing and enforce some rules.

Do Kids Really Need the Internet On Their Mobile Phones?

2009-11-18T16:00:00.001-05:00

I field a good number of questions from parents and teachers as a result of my presentations. Sometimes they are from parents who come up at the the end of my presentations and sometimes they come in e-mails days later. I recently got this question from a parent:

"What is available to filter Internet sites that my kids go to on their mobile phones?"

First of all, YES, there is porn and other bad stuff on the mobile phone Internet. Here is a good article from ABC News about it: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GadgetGuide/story?id=3612541&page=1. Now, let me give you a little technical background. The Internet that people get to from cell phones is not necessarily the same Internet that you access from your computers. There is an entirely separate Internet for mobile devices where companies like Yahoo and Google make sites that look very much like their regular Internet sites but are designed for small screens (however, some of the new mobile devices can actually connect to the regular Internet or the WAP (Wireless Access Protocol - the technical name for the mobile device Internet)). The growing concern is that the mobile device Internet has few mechanisms for filtering out objectionable content.

So back to the question I got from a parent...what should this person do to keep their kids safe while accessing the Internet from their mobile phones? My answer to this parent was actually another question (much to her dismay): "Why do your kids need the Internet on their mobile phones?" Kids have access to the Internet at home, at school, at their friend's houses, at the library, and even many restaurants and coffee shops, do they really need it from their phones too? It's not like they are climbing the corporate ladder and need to remain in touch with key clients. They're kids for Pete's sake. They need to be able to communicate with their parents and their friends and that's it.

It turns out that this poor woman had been "snowed" by her kids. They led her to believe you couldn't do texting on your phone without Internet. UNTRUE! You can't do e-mail on your mobile phone without Internet access but you can certainly make calls and text people all you want.

She was a little surprised and angry that her kids lied to her. I was a little surprised that she didn't just ask the person at the Verizon store about it (you have to stay informed as parents). Save yourself the $30+ a month. If your kids must have a mobile phone, settle for a plan that allows calling and texting and nothing more. Leave the Internet on the computer.

Just my 2 cents.