Online safety guide for parents
Controversial social networking sites like MySpace abound in cyberspace. They're hugely popular with teens, who swap way too much personal information. That’s why parents need to get involved.
The Wired Safety site is filled with tips for parents and information about fighting online threats.
Blog Safety offers a very handy guide to the lingo and secret acronymns and code phrase kids use to fool nosy parents.
Then there are the secret surveillance tools like Keystroke Recorder, a $29 application that creates a file of everything done on a computer so parents can monitor their kids activity.
Even more powerful is $100 program called Spector Pro that takes a snapshot of Web sites or pictures or anything that appears on your child’s screens for you to review.
Finally, when you’re at work and the kids are home at the PC alone, another $100 program called eBlaster will instantly email you an exact copy of everything your child does online… all the e-mail, all the instant messages, who they are talking to.
Here's another parental tip: Learn leet speak. Need help? Try this translator to see how it works.
Here's my NBC-TV "High Tech Talk" report:
September 28th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
This is a great list of stuff, I’d also recommend the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children site, they’ve got some great resources and tools. They also host Cybertipline, where you can report predators - then they follow up with authorities. MySpace’s Parents page also has some good links.
Overall I favor talking to kids about safety and what’s appropriate and inappropriate online over some of the spyware that’s out there.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Hi Mike,
Back in May you wrote about online safety for parents. Kids are networking at lightning speed and most parents are far behind. Please consider covering this subject again and visiting Internet Child Safety Expert Linda Criddle’s site www.look-both-ways.com to see if there is any content you might be interested in excerpting. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Regards,
Debbie Parisi
Media Consultant
916-630-9139