McAfee Continues to Impress Me

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

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

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)

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read it here.
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The new FaceBook for 6 - 10 Year Olds??

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!!

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

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