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ELECTRONIC TALKING IN TONGUES
Tip of the Week - By David Einstein, San Francisco Chronicle , 6/11/07
Are you looking for software to control where your children go on the Internet, and when they can use it?
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HOW TO BEST UTILIZE YOUR UTILITIES
By James Derk, Scripps Howard News Service , 6/05/07
There are some great tools out there to help your computing experience. I receive a lot of questions about what utilities to use for what so I thought it best to put it all down in one place.
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WEB SURFING WATCHDOG
By David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post, 4/26/07
Today I would like to salute a creature without whom life would be much less secure. Of course, I'm talking about the canine, who works endless hours patrolling the Internet, making sure that all who surf on your PC's browser stay safe. He will loyally prevent your kids - or you - from getting themselves into cyber-trouble, bark when danger approaches and even chase down and scare off Net intruders who get too close to your cyber-fence.
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INTERNET PARENTING OUTSIDE THE HOME: IS YOUR CHILD PROTECTED?
By John Carosella, Cleveland, Akron, Lake/Geauga Family, 4/07
Cities and towns around the globe are sponsoring, experimenting with, and experiencing an explosion in free wireless Internet access – or WiFi for short. Free public WiFi enables anyone who has a wireless device to get Internet access wherever the wireless signal reaches. Typically, these wireless "hot spots" are in and around downtown areas, libraries, or college campuses and their footprint is growing rapidly. ABI (Allied Business Research) recently reported that municipal WiFi network coverage worldwide will increase to 126,000 square miles by 2010, representing an 84x increase from 2005's coverage.
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NO SAFETY LOCKS FOR THE WIRED GENERATION
By Stephanie Olsen, CNET, 3/30/07
The fast-growing mobile Internet, meanwhile, may pose even tougher challenges for parents because it adds portability, as well as richness and risk, to social networking, and makes rules such as "keep the home PC centrally located" seem quaintly archaic. Not only can kids get online at their friend's house, they can access the Web via browser-enabled cell phones and game devices.
Even gadgets such as the Sony PSP portable game player include chat capabilities via Bluetooth technology, which gives kids the ability to connect wirelessly to other players within a 300-foot radius. Nintendo's new game console, the Wii, includes a Web browser too.
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USER-GENERATED VIDEOS CHALLENGE PARENTAL CONTROLS
Jan Zindler knows how easy it is for children to stumble across pornographic photos while they surf the Internet. Now she has to worry about pornographic videos, too.
By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET, 3/30/07
A mother of three from Austin, Texas, Zindler got a jolt several years ago when clearing out the "sent" folder of an e-mail account she shared with her teenage daughter. One of the e-mails in the folder contained a pornographic image.
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INTERNET FILTERS PROVIDE PARENTS ANOTHER TOOL TO KEEP CHILDREN SAFE FROM PORN
By John Gale, BYU NewsNet, 2/12/07
With a $57-billion-a-year industry, 30,000 new links and 5,000 new sites every day, pornography is a business that has become a serious force to battle.
One way of guarding against pornography is to install Internet filters on personal computers.
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WI-FI A NEW CHALLENGE FOR PARENTS
By Will Oremus, Palo Alto Daily News, 12/23/06
It's at Starbucks, Happy Donuts and Best Western. It's at 26 Peninsula libraries. In Mountain View and Foster City, it's everywhere - and it could soon cover all of Silicon Valley and San Mateo County as well.
Free wireless Internet access is booming in the Bay Area, bringing with it a host of benefits such as better communication for public employees in the field and expanded access for people who can't afford to buy their own service.
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INTERNET BEHAVIOR IS PUBLIC BEHAVIOR
By John Carosella, Cleveland, Akron, Lake/Geauga Family, 11/01/06
If parents have kids at home using the computer, they are a first generation Internet Parent. They are probably struggling to recapture - or perhaps establish for the first time - authority over their kids' Internet behavior. It's a serious challenge, and mastering it is critical to being an effective parent. Trust me, I know. I have three teenagers at home.
No invention in the history of man has had a more dramatic impact on a child's world view, in such a short period of time, as the Internet. The entire range of human behavior, from the most noble to the most depraved, is available to children online. A parent's job is to manage and modulate their kids' exposure to this wide range of content, good and bad. Unfortunately, credibility on the topic is hard to come by with kids. However, there is a solution: Approach the problem from familiar ground. You're the parents. You're responsible for the family. And in particular, you're responsible for the family's behavior in public.
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SOCIAL NETWORKING ON THE INTERNET
What's a Parent to Do? - By John Carosella, Montgomery Parents, 11/01/06
MySpace and other social networking sites can be the most dangerous places on the Internet. They are youth-oriented, easy to use, and are magnets for predators. Internet predators go where the prey hang out. MySpace and other sites like it are made-to-order hunting grounds.
Legislation and stepped-up self-monitoring by MySpace and other sites are unlikely to be sufficient to ensure that children do not post inappropriate personal data and photographs that make them vulnerable to predators. Neither is "teaching your kids," because, after all, they're kids. Parents, on the other hand, can effectively protect their children. It's hard work, but it can be done. And the more your entire community participates, the easier it will become.
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KEEPING KIDS SAFE ONLINE
Expert Recomends Setting Boundaries on Internet Usage - By Cheré Coen, Acadiana Parent, 10/06
Ask a mother if she provides a safe environment for her children and protects them from harm, and undoubtedly she will say yes.
Ask that same parent if she curbs her child's Internet usage and installs filters to block potentially harmful Web sites, and the answer may be different.
But the dangers are the same, says Internet parenting expert John Carosella, who has produced software to filter Internet usage.
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CONSUMER WATCH
Tips offered to protect kids on the Web - By Iris Taylor, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10/29/06
So, your youngster thinks that Myspace.com is one of the coolest places on the planet to meet new friends and create a network of pals?
Careful, parents. Youngsters who reveal too much private information on social-networking sites like that can become magnets for cyber predators, warned Salvatore Girgente, a computer-crimes investigator for the Virginia state police.
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FRIENDS, FUN AND FADS
Staying Internet Savvy - By Kelly Burgess, Teenagers Today, 06/29/06
Syndicated technology columnist Larry Magid wants parents to start networking just as their kids do. This may not mean getting your own MySpace (although that might be fun), but he does think that the best way for parents to keep their kids safe is to understand the online community themselves. That means keeping up with trends and understanding just what it is that the kids can do and are doing.
Magid, who is the founder of BlogSafety.com, says kids have so many options these days for going online that merely monitoring them at home is not sufficient. "Nowadays, kids go online at school, at the library, at friends' houses and via their cell phone," he says. "The dialogue between parents and children has to go beyond putting computer restrictions in the home. Parents have to be aware of what their kids are doing."
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WHY MOM ENLISTED AN ONLINE SLEUTH TO KEEP TABS ON CHILD
By Daniel B. Wood, The Christian Science Monitor, 06/21/06
LOS ANGELES - Author Vicki Courtney in Texas keeps close tabs on her 13-year-old son, Hayden, by monitoring his instant messages (IMs) from a computer in the next room. Sometimes Hayden knows. Sometimes he doesn't.
Carolina Aitken, a mom in Santa Rosa, Calif., took her two teenage sons on the Dr. Phil show after she exposed their Internet misuse. She had contacted them via e-mail as "Candy Sweetness," a fictitious 16-year-old girl, to see if she could get them to give up their home phone number. One did.
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CHILDREN CAN BE A PARENT'S BEST WEAPON AGAINST ONLINE DANGERS
By Samantha Critchell, Associated Press, 06/19/06
NEW YORK (AP) - It's virtually impossible to protect children from dangers that their parents don't even know exist.
That's the problem with the Internet: Children often know more than the adults around them. Kids are the ones who know how to share files and they're the ones fluent in online acronyms. They're the ones posting profiles on social-networking websites such as MySpace.com.
The kids and the bad guys.
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FREE SOFTWARE FLOWS AT INTEROP
By Denise Dubie, NetworkWorld.com, 05/04/06
Some companies offered more than free management; they put their protection tools to work for free. Blue Coat Systems used Interop to showcase its K9 Web Protection software that home users can download to their desktops -- and the company used canine help to demonstrate the point.
The Internet filter is a scaled down version of the proxy vendor's content filtering tools that company representatives say will enable customers to better monitor their home computer use. It runs on a desktop, passively monitors Internet traffic and is programmed to block more than 55 different categories of content, including pornography, hate speech and sites that promote violence or permit gambling, the company says. It enables users to monitor and control what sites their children access, and enables them to block offensive or potentially dangerous sites, including the popular Web site MySpace.com.
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TOP 9 INTERNET FILTERING SOFTWARE
By Marcie Zitz, About.com
K9 Web Protection is free for home. It blocks inappropriate Web site from appearing on the computer.
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ABOUT K9
