Police chief: Hack your kids' Facebook passwords

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

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

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

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

 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

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

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:

1. 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)
2.  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.
3. 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.
   
4. 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. 
   
5. 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"

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

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

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

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

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?  
4. 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

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

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

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.