When the Kindle Fire broke onto the scene as the low-cost tablet from Amazon, we noticed that the modified OS effectively prevented any content filters, such as McAfee Family Protection for Android, from working on the device. The native Silk browser would not play nice with our app or anyone else’s.

Amazon has provided parents some basic controls in their latest update, allowing parents to lock down purchasing, content in their library, and the device’s Silk browser.

Most Kindle Fire users with kids will welcome this update, as one commenter bemoaned $50 in charges rung up by the kids, and another noted that their Fire suddenly had two full seasons of Phineas and Ferb after being handled by a youngster.

Hopefully soon Amazon will move to a filtered browser which allows kids access to the Internet but blocks inappropriate content.

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Throw another headline on the pile:
Young Girl Bullied on Facebook.

Yet Alex Boston, and her parents, do not seem likely to let the bullying she experienced become another statistic to be compiled for the next special on Anderson Cooper. After the 14-year-old teen from Acworth, Georgia, discovered that two classmates had created a fake Facebook page with her picture and had been posing as her on the site, sending hurtful messages to Alex’s friends, she took action.

Fortunately Alex went immediately to her parents, who also took action. But no one the parents went to would. The school said their hands were tied, the police seemed disinterested, and reporting the page as abuse did not bring it down. So the Bostons decided to handle the matter in the courts, and are now suing the two girls responsible for the page for libel and defamation of character, and are very likely to win.

These incidents are nothing new, but the action taken by the Boston family shows that both teens and their parents are not going to put up with cyberbullying. Parents need to sit up and take notice of the potential consequences of their children behaving poorly towards their peers on the Internet, and recognize that due to the public nature of the Internet, what used to be simple meanness is now legitimately described as defamation and libel.

This story also shows that parents should not falsely assume that the schools or websites themselves are going to deal with the problems. Parents of victims will often have to seek out alternative methods of recourse to protect their children, which can mean involving both law enforcement and civil courts, in addition to the Web site where the cyberbullying incident takes place.

As always, we encourage any parent with a child using the Internet to discuss proper online behavior early and often, and to use parental control software on the home computers and mobile devices to both control access and monitor activity. The Boston’s were lucky that their daughter approached them immediately, as Pew reports that only 36% of teens who have experienced online cruelty sought advice from their parents. This is why maintaining a running conversation and using monitoring software is so important.

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Earlier this month, TechCrunch gave parents good reason to think twice about choosing a Windows phone for their kids.

Blogger Matt Burns notes that the operating system’s significant lack of quality third-party apps has opened the door for another problem: the proliferation of adult-oriented “dirty apps.”

Burns is not blowing smoke. 14 of the top 50 Entertainment apps (and five of the top ten) are explicitly adult. At first glance the Windows marketplace looks like an online adult novelty store.

Adult apps also enjoy first-page placement on categories of Music+Video, Lifestyle, and Health. I did check the Kids+Family section and that was thankfully free of pr0n.

Burns notes that Microsoft likely does not want to promote adult apps, but by not courting quality app designers to its platform, it is allowing the lower-quality apps to easily achieve top-billing.

Since Windows smartphones are priced lower to appeal to broader audience, which Burns notes is intended to include first-time  smartphone owners, parents need to pay attention to what is readily available in the Windows Marketplace.

We expect that Microsoft will introduce a solution soon that better separates adult-oriented material from the general Marketplace audience, but until then parents should consider alternatives such as iOS and Android phones, which have cleaner App Marketplaces by comparison (Apple has a strict policy against x-rated apps, and the Android Market only revealed 2 adult-themed apps out of the top 73 in Entertainment).

As always, if you are getting your child a smartphone, make sure to install parental controls (iOS, Android).

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Our last post detailed how five high-school girls in Australia made a prank video offering sexual favors for money.

The latest study out of the UK finds that four out of five 16-year-olds regularly access online pornography, and the title of the article cites that 1 in 3 10-year-olds have encountered online pornography, but that statistic is not referenced in the article.

Since the article appears in the Daily Mail Online, I am hesitant to link to it, as 3 of the top 5 sidebar articles feature pictures of scantily clad women.

Which really brings us to the situation that kids are facing today: an ever-increasing pull towards sexual imagery that is literally everywhere. Even in articles talking about the problem of the early and incessant sexualization of teens in the United Kingdom, appearing on one of the top news outlets in the U.K., anyone reading the article is practically assaulted with sexual imagery.

So if you are a teenager, and are already dealing with not only raging hormones but insatiable curiosity about sex, how are you supposed to resist? It’s like asking an alcoholic to start each day with a tour of a distillery and never take a sip.

The story comes amid debates in the U.K. Parliament about whether the government should begin filtering out pornography at the network level, requiring users to opt-in to receive pornographic material. The study questions the long-term effects of an entire generation growing up with constant access to hardcore pornography, a question that has been echoed on this blog and many others like it countless times.

While some of the statistics quoted seem inflated (12 percent of teens in the U.K. are sexting, while the Pew Internet and American Life project recently found that less than 2 percent of teens surveyed had engaged in the practice) the essential question being raised is one that needs serious thought: how will this generation raised on porn view genders, relationships, and most of all normal sexual relationships.

The other question: What are we going to do about it?

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When is a prank not a prank?

Perhaps when it not only gets you suspended, but also makes you an infamous Internet celebrity overnight, and likely damages your reputation for life.

In an apparent attempt to parody the Kony 2012 video, three girls from Mitcham Girls High School in Australia are recorded on video offering to exchange sexual favors for money. The video was uploaded to YouTube (since pulled down, good job YouTube) and in 24 hours received 10,000 views. The news has grown large enough to prompt comment from Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and the Australian police have weighed in as well.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that the girls haven’t realized the consequences of what they’ve done… People don’t understand how it can be copied, uploaded and changed,” says police commissioner Mal Hyde speaking to 7news Adelaide. “The laws are very strict when it comes anything that is related to underage sex, so people might think that it’s funny or whatever to send friends something which might have a sexual nature to it, but they could actually be committing offenses.”

The school has a cybersafety curriculum in place and one can assume that the five girls involved in making the video were exposed to that curriculum, which involved six individual sessions last year. So it certainly seems that education, in this case, was not lacking.

The problems that could logically result from this video:

• The girls have placed a blemish on their reputation that will be very hard to shake
• They have alerted predators not only to them but where they go to school
• They have also given the impression to same predators that they are sexually active

This incident highlights the problems of an education-only approach. As smart and wonderful as children can be, they are also naturally impetuous and not trained to think of long-term consequences. They are also easily influenced. Today’s kids are growing up in an age where adult content is not only more available than ever, but is also increasingly becoming part of mainstream culture. Children do not have to seek out pornography to be exposed to porn culture.

The solution? Truth is there is no solution to keep young kids from doing dumb things. But parents can limit their children’s exposure to pornography and porn culture by controlling what media they allow into their kids lives through parental controls. TVs and game systems come with parental controls, but the Internet does not. That’s why we produce Safe Eyes, to extend that parental control to the Internet.

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With so much happening in online safety, it can be hard at times to know who to highlight. This is not one of those times.

Two girls have partnered to spearhead an initiative to get teenage girls to simply be nicer to each other – and the campaign is aptly named KIND.

According to the website kindcampaign.com, Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson, both affected by female bullying, decided to create a documentary and non-profit that would ultimately change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across America. The girls have gone on three national tours, spreading their school assembly program and documentary film in hundreds of schools and communities across the country.

Their campaign has produced a magazine, school programs, a documentary, as well as a national team of “Kind Girls” who are committed to spreading the message of kindness to other girls across the nation and the globe. The website features a blog, a tour guide called “Kind Country” where folks can catch up on the latest talks, showings, and programs, as well as media and store with merchandise to support the movement.
Check out kindcampaign.com to see what the movement is all about and how you might be able to participate.

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We would embed the video but we have policies against IT on tech violence.

After 28 million views and countless spoofs and comments, Tommy Jordan’s very public discipline of his daughter has captured the national conversation on raising your teen online.

Mr. Jordan’s rant and subsequent laptop-cide have prompted both kudos and outrage from all over the country and the world, but we see a few things that Facebook Dad did right and a few things he did wrong.

What He Did Right

1. He monitored his daughter’s Facebook account and held her accountable for her behavior.
2. He created a clear set of consequences for abusing Internet privileges.
3. He was involved in his daughter’s online life and sought to take steps to correct what he viewed as damaging behavior to his daughter’s reputation.

What He Did Wrong

1. He punished his daughter for cussing publicly by cussing at her, publicly. Parents need to emulate the behavior they want to see in their kids.
2. He punished his daughter for taking family problems public on Facebook, by taking their family problems public on Facebook. See above.
3. Wanton destruction of technology. Granted, ending the video by plugging the laptop full of hollow-point rounds undoubtedly had the visceral impact that he desired, but we have to take issue with both the waste of something that could have been useful to someone, and removing technology from a teen as a way of punishment. Removing technology from teens in order to punish them for misuse of the technology seems like a simple solution to a simple problem, but the punishment might not fit the crime. After all, computers and the Internet are learning tools in addition to being entertainment, and removing the child’s access to both could negatively effect the child’s ability to learn, perform well in school, and thus the child’s college and career prospects down the line.

One has to imagine that Facebook Dad has softened a bit on denying access to the Internet for the foreseeable future, and we hope that he considers the use of parental control software so that he can take a more effective, less drastic measure like restricting access to Facebook without removing access to the Internet altogether.

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Resources Additional Safety Tips

Social networking sites are a great way for kids to connect with each other, make new friends, and expand their world in a positive way. Most of these popular websites care about the safety of your children and offer stringent privacy policies and valuable tips for parents who want to make sure their kids’ online experience is enjoyable and free of problems.

Facebook

• “Working Together to Keep You Secure” by Jeff Williams
• Reporting abuse
• Privacy

Google+
• User conduct and content policy
• Reporting abuse
• Privacy policy

Club Penguin
• Club Penguin’s safety measures

Webkinz
• Parent’s area
• General privacy policy

Resources – Security Software Checklist

Another way to safeguard your family against threats that may arise from social networking sites is to install appropriate parental controls software. Here’s a checklist of features to look for:

Web blocking prevents your children from viewing inappropriate content

Program blocking blocks games, peer-to-peer file sharing, or any other program you specify

Social networking features record postings of inappropriate or personal information and conversations to help determine if cyberbullying activity is taking place

Explicit Lyrics Prevent previewing and downloading explicit material through iTunes

Time limits help you manage the amount of time your children spend online

Instant Message features monitor and record instant messaging (IM) chats to help you find out if your children are engaging in inappropriate dialog with friends or people they’ve met online

Usage reports provide you with a complete view of all Internet and IM activity, which you can use as conversation starters to educate your children

Email alerts notify you when your children attempt to access objectionable material

YouTube filtering enables you to block objectionable videos while allowing your children to enjoy other videos

McAfee Social Networking Guide is avaiable at: http://mcaf.ee/l581v

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There’s plenty you can do to guard your family against invasion of privacy, malicious impersonation, and identity theft. By teaching your children some commonsense practices, you’ll gain peace of mind, and they will have a safer, more enjoyable time socializing online.

Educate your kids
• “Talk to Your Kids and Set Limits”

Be proactive
• Check to see whether people are impersonating your children. Search your children’s names online along with variations and nicknames. It’s a good practice to do this often.
• Review your children’s friends list—You may want to consider letting them only be friends with people they know offline
• Create your own profile and share the social networking experience with your kids

Use technology
• Use the privacy and safety setting options on social networking sites, such as private profiles, blocking and pre-approving comments to control who your children communicate with
• Have up-to-date computer security software to protect your computer from malware, viruses, spyware, and other threats
• Consider using software that lets you monitor your children’s online activities and helps protect them.

McAfee Social Networking Guide is avaiable at: http://mcaf.ee/l581v

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If your children aren’t careful on social networking sites, they could become victims of invasion of privacy, malicious impersonation, or identity theft.

Invasion of privacy can happen easily if your children share their passwords, are not selective about who they add as a friend, or are not careful about what information or photos they post online. The level of visibility to friend lists, profiles, or photos varies from site to site, so it is wise to be aware of the privacy options on the sites your children use. The key to preventing invasion of privacy is to make sure your children are careful about what they share, who they share it with, and that they understand that nothing is private when it is posted online, no matter how many controls are in place.

Malicious impersonation occurs when someone pretends to be your child and does malicious things, like posting profanity or inappropriate images. The easiest way for someone to impersonate your child is to get your child’s password. Once someone has the password, they can post inappropriate material that looks like it is coming from your child.

Malicious impersonation can also occur when someone pretends to be someone other than who they really are and interacts with your child online. The case of the cyberbullying mother described in Lesson 3 illustrates how malicious impersonation of this type can have unfortunate consequences. Also, online predators often “friend” teens online and misrepresent themselves as peers to lure their victims into a sexual encounter.

Identity theft and phishing scams are becoming more and more commonplace on social networking sites where so much personal information is available to hackers. Phishing scams are attempts to trick you into giving up personal information, including passwords, social security numbers, and credit cards numbers, through phony requests or solicitations that appear to come from legitimate sources. Identity thieves who have gotten their hands on members’ passwords not only gain access to their profiles, but also to their network of friends. It’s an easy way for identity thieves to use victims’ accounts to send phishing messages to large numbers of people in hopes that some of them fall for their scams and turn over confidential information.

McAfee Social Networking Guide is avaiable at: http://mcaf.ee/l581v

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