According to a survey by Retrevo, one in five iPhone users watch porn on their iPhone.
Twice as many iPhone users view porn than their Blackberry owning counterparts. I’m not sure if this is more a statement about the mentality of the iPhone user vs the Blackberry user, or about the capabilities of the two devices.
Retrevo obviously was bent on uncovering the personality profile of an iPhone user in the survey, and the results are not pretty for those of us with the Apple Smartphone. Not only are iPhone users twice as likely to view porn, they are apparently extremely shallow as well. One in three iPhone users find out-of-date gadgets to be a turnoff in a partner, and the same number has broken off a relationship via text or email (perhaps for owning an out-of-date gadget).
Thanks to Retrevo for a little light humor on a Friday, but this survey also serves as an important reminder for parents thinking of buying their child an iPhone or iPod touch for the holidays that these devices are closer to computers than they are to what we think of as cellphones. If you don’t want your child exposed to everything that’s out there on the Internet, including pornography, consider downloading a safe-browsing filter like Safe Eyes Mobile.
According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, most Americans don’t think that viewing pornography is harmless or morally acceptable.
I found this rather interesting since pornography is one of if not the most readily available entertainment genres in this country and across the world. This is, of course, because it is easily available for anyone on the Internet, instantly, at no cost. Pornographic sites currently make up 12 percent of all sites on the web.
If you think about how vast and varied the modern cyberscape is, that is an astounding number. 2006 estimates put the number of pornographic sites on the net at 4.6 million, with 460 million pages of pornography. Considering that some estimates say 260 new porn sites are added to the Internet each day, the number of sites will be closer to five million by the end of this year.
The survey was conducted at the behest of Morality in Media, an organization which carries an obvious bias against anything pornographic, but when one looks at the actual questions of the survey, the claim that 76 percent of Americans don’t condone pornography has veracity. You can review the questions here.
The originators of the survey make a salient point when they say that the consumption of pornography does not necessarily indicate acceptance of it. In other words, just because people are looking at pornography does not mean that they approve of what they themselves are doing, which certainly lends credence to the theory that pornography is an addictive substance like some drugs. We do know that viewing pornography can trigger some of the same neurochemical reactions in the brain.
So, the bigger question from this study must be, if the majority of Americans don’t find online pornography acceptable, why do so many Americans let it into their home?
Safe Eyes is among the first parental control products to earn the “Compatible with Windows 7” Logo from Microsoft Corp. The certification ensures that the software is able to block access to objectionable websites for upgraded or new Windows 7 computers utilizing both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Internet Explorer. Most content filters will not filter the 64-bit edition of Microsoft’s browser even if they are successfully installed on a Windows 7 machine, leaving children vulnerable to pornography and other inappropriate content.
The Microsoft “Compatible with Windows 7” logo indicates that a product has passed Microsoft-designed tests for compatibility and reliability with its newest operating system.
64-bit computing is entering the mainstream, and many parents may be buying 64-bit computers without realizing it. Unfortunately, most parental control software is still only 32-bit compatible, so it doesn’t work with the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. Parents need to choose filtering software that carries the ‘Compatible with Windows 7’ logo to be sure that their filter does the website blocking it’s supposed to do.
—InternetSafety.com CTO Aaron Kenny
If your filtering software does not have the Windows 7 logo and you want to be sure your kids are protected on all browsers, just visit internetsafety.com/switch to take advantage of a special offer.
Does this picture remind you of any recent customer service experiences?
Globalization has claimed many casualties, and customer service is often among the dead or dying in global business. That’s why we have focused on customer service here at InternetSafety.com, and as part of that, our home office in Acworth, which houses all of our customer service reps, celebrated Customer Service Appreciation Week in style.
To start, all of our reps enjoyed a free car wash at the hands of our research and development team, as pictured below:
In addition to that, our Customer Service Manager Gerald Stinson decided to let his reps blow off a little steam by literally taking one for the team, via pies in the face.
It was my way of allowing employees to relieve some stress. I’m in their face a lot of the time, so I let them get in mine for a day.
—Gerald
So why all the attention to customer service?
It was our way of recognizing the importance of customer service as well as the people who serve and support our customers day in and day out. The customer service rep is our main contact point with our customers. Without them, we’d lose the battle between customer appreciation and customer depreciation.
—Gerald
If you have a passion for helping people and are looking for a rewarding job in a fun environment, click here.
Even though the health community hasn’t officially decided if Internet addiction is actually addiction, CNN.com reports that teens with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Depression are more likely to become Internet addicts.
The study surveyed over 2,000 teens in Taiwan, and found that teens with depression, social phobias, and ADHD, were more likely to spend more hours playing online games or on social networks.
Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, was not surprised with the findings and said that kids with ADHD would naturally gravitate towards the fast pace of online gaming or social networking. He also added that it would be natural for a child suffering from depression to be more interested in taking on a new identity afforded by an avatar or online persona.
Though the jury is still out on whether or not the Internet poses a legitimate “addiction” threat, this report does serve as a reminder to parents of children with these conditions that they need to be extra-vigilant about their child’s online activities.
A recent survey found that workers in office jobs will spend at least two full working days shopping online this holiday season.
Shopping online on the company dime is nothing new, but employers can expect sharp increases in workers shopping while on the clock. Earlier surveys have found that workers with computer jobs spend on average 20 percent of their workday on non-work-related Internet activity, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that number has come up in recent years thanks to the exponential growth of social networking sites.
There is some debate about whether or not some net leisure time is actually helpful to a workforce, as a recent study out of the University of Melbourne has found that workers who engage in “Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB)” are actually more productive than those who don’t. However, the study caps WILB at 20 percent of the day, and notes that for certain personality types allowed WILB will have the opposite effect.
This demonstrates that employers need to regulate not just where their employees can go on the web, but how long they can spend on non-work-related activities. Being able to regulate employee time on the web, a feature of InternetSafety.com business filtering solutions, allows employers to allow the right amount of WILB without it hurting their bottom line.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, that nation’s leading authority on children’s health, recently suggested that all parents use tracking software (another word for filtering software like Safe Eyes) to monitor their children’s online activity.
The article, Guidelines for making children’s online experience safer, recognizes dangers such as online predators, cyberbullying, and identity theft, and outlines several strategies for meeting these cyber-dangers head on. Some of their recommendations are:
Surf the Web with your children, especially those under theage of 10.
Put the computer in a central area like the denor kitchen tomake it easier to monitor online activities. Computersshouldnever be placed in a room where a door can be closedor a parentexcluded.
Use tracking software to monitor whatWeb sites children arevisiting.
Visit sites that childrenand teenagers go to like MySpace,Club Penguin and Facebookand understand how they work.
Limit screen time to no morethan two hours a day, which includescomputer usage, televisionwatching and video game playing.The less children are online,the lower the risk of them comingacross dangerous material.
The last bullet is especially important as different forms of media take up more and more of our time, and not just for children but adults as well. As wonderful as the Internet is, too much of anything can be a bad thing. That’s why we designed Safe Eyes with time limits that can be set for each individual user.
Another thing this article does well is cement that filtering and good parenting work together. Too many parents see installing a filter as a substitute for good parenting, or good parenting as a substitute for a filter. The truth is neither work very well without the other. Using a filter to reinforce the agreements your family has made regarding Internet use is both good parenting and smart technology.
The above image is what employees of our Atlanta-area office saw when they looked across the road a couple of weeks ago. Normally they would see a little league baseball field, but on this particular day it was a lake instead.
The floods that occurred in Atlanta two weeks ago displaced hundreds of people, many of whom lost everything in the flood. Relief agencies kicked into high gear collecting school supplies and clothes for the flood victims. When Julia Flattes, an InternetSafety.com employee, was dropping off clothes at the Paulding County flood center, she noticed that the center was badly in need of buckets of cleaning supplies that people needed to get their lives back to normal.
Julia spread the idea around and soon other employees were contributing to a bucket fund that was used to create “flood buckets”. These buckets contain practically everything a family would need to begin the massive clean-up typically required after a flood.
InternetSafety.com has been helping families online for more than a decade, and we were glad to be able to help offline as well.
Flooding remains a threat in the Atlanta area as rain continues to fall across the Southeast. To find out how to donate your own bucket of supplies, visit the paulding county flood relief web site.
According to a survey by Retrevo, one in five iPhone users watch porn on their iPhone.
According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, most Americans don’t think that viewing pornography is harmless or morally acceptable.
Safe Eyes is among the first parental control products to earn the “Compatible with Windows 7” Logo from Microsoft Corp. The certification ensures that the software is able to block access to objectionable websites for upgraded or new Windows 7 computers utilizing both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Internet Explorer. Most content filters will not filter the 64-bit edition of Microsoft’s browser even if they are successfully installed on a Windows 7 machine, leaving children vulnerable to pornography and other inappropriate content.
Does this picture remind you of any recent customer service experiences?
A recent 
The American Academy of Pediatrics, that nation’s leading authority on children’s health, recently suggested that all parents use tracking software (another word for filtering software like Safe Eyes) to monitor their children’s online activity.
