Also, don’t forget that Santa encourages you to make all your holiday gifts for the little ones safe and age-appropriate. If you’re giving a laptop, Macbook, iPad, or iPhone to a young one, please make sure to put software on the device to protect them from harmful content and interactions, like Safe Eyes or Safe Eyes Mobile.

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In the “Mcafee Cares” program, McAfee volunteers educate students of all ages on cybersecurity and online safety, through speaking and classroom teaching. Last year, the program reached 3,200 kids at more than 200 schools located near 6 major North American McAfee campuses.

Based on last year’s success the program will branch out allowing more North American and global sites to participate.  The 2011-2012 program will feature fully updated teaching materials for the classroom and adults, brochures, and new videos including some in Spanish.

This program, along with the McAfee Cybermom program, extensive research, and producing technological solutions for parents, is part of McAfee’s relentless pursuit of online safety for kids.

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In case you’re one of the 200-some odd people who haven’t heard, Scarlett Johansson has become the Internet’s latest cautionary tale.

Johansson is alleging that someone hacked into her cell phone and stole the nude photos she took of herself (only two have surfaced on the web) and is enlisting the FBI to investigate who is behind it, according to the Washington Post. The photos depict her topless and bottomless, and have the grainy quality consistent with self-made shots from a phone.

This incident should remind us all of two things: That our personal data is far more vulnerable than we all think; and that we should always think before we click.

Coincidentally, the news of Johansson’s leaked photos came on the same day that McAfee released its annual “Most Dangerous Celebrities” list, where Johansson is listed #9. I’d imagine that today’s news has vaulted her up a few spots, if not straight to the top, as hackers and spammers are undoubtedly already using the massive public interest in the photos to plant malware and spambots across the nation’s PCs.

According to the Most Dangerous Celebrities report released today, “cybercriminals often use the names of popular celebrities to lure people to sites that are actually laden with malicious software. Anyone looking for the latest videos or pictures could end up with a malware-ridden computer instead of just trendy content.”

Of course, the lesson here is two-sided: we need to be careful what we click on the web, but also careful about what else we do via clicks, which in this case was the click of the digital shutter. Our youth look up to celebrities, and this is yet another case of a Hollywood starlet taking nude photos of herself that have now caused her great embarrassment and trouble. Parents would be wise to take advantage of this incident to have the “sexting” talk with their kids. We already know that sexting is wildly popular among teens, and that they are quick to follow the actions of their Celebrity idols. This case in particular is a good one to use since Johansson did not intentionally leak the pictures and is clearly very concerned about them being on the web.

To find out more about McAfee’s Most Dangerous Celebrities list, click here or click the image below:

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But no matter what your title—Grandma, Meemaw, Abuela, Papa, Papi or G’pa—have you ever wondered about online safety for your grandchildren? When your grandchildren are at your house and they want to use the computer do you hesitate or do you say “Sure, go ahead!”

If you hesitate is it because you worry about their online safety? If so, I have a few suggestions for being a good grandparent in the digital age.

• Ask your grandchild(ren)’s parents what their online safety rules are. If they have none, ask them if they have looked at the Online Safety Gameplan, or if they looked at software for family protection.
• The rules can govern anything from time limits on Internet use, to access to social networking sites, to proper use of phones and smartphones. Once you have created the rules sit down as a family and discuss these rules.
• Talk to your grandkids about online safety and why it is important. Instead of saying “because I said no,”  try “because I need to keep you safe.”

There are many online resources available at InternetSafety.com, in addition to our YouTube channel and this blog. If you are looking for something specific, the search tool can likely find articles about your specific problem.

Also remember if you have an app on your tablet, smartphone, or computer that you are wondering about, ask the grandkids. You could be surprised by what they know!

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McAfee Offers Back-to-School Tips for Promoting Good Online Behavior

 The explosion of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers has raised a new concern for parents as they pack their children off to school for the new year: potential disciplinary action by school administrators for cyberbullying, sexting and other online misbehavior taking place on school grounds.

In the past few years, many states have enacted laws authorizing schools to suspend students for cyber-misconduct, and schools from coast to coast have responded aggressively to student abuse of online privileges. For example:

• In January 2010, 28 middle school students in Seattle were suspended for joining a Facebook page dedicated to harassing one of their classmates.
• February 2011, a 15-year-old student in California was suspended for offensive Facebook comments about his biology teacher.
• In April 2011, 10 junior high school students in Arkansas were suspended for sending sexually explicit text messages.

“Schools are imposing harsh punishments for cruel, sexual or otherwise objectionable online behavior, not only because it has led to tragedies like the widely publicized 2006 suicide of Megan Meier but also because of concerns about the school’s own liability,” said Shane Kenny, McAfee Director of Sales and Marketing. “Parents need to be as aware of these issues as they are of threats like stranger danger and the wrong choice of friends.”

Kenny recommends that parents take three steps to prevent school discipline against their children for inappropriate online activities:

• Determine the school district’s policies for dealing with online attacks against fellow students, teachers and/or staff.
•  Discuss those policies with children and warn them that they will face punishment at home as well as at school if they violate the rules.
• Require adherence to the same rules at home to ensure consistency, lessen the likelihood of problems like cyberbullying at school, and help children become good online citizens.

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New Hanover County school district in North Carolina, along with at least two other districts, is enacting a new social media policy that prohibits students from being friends with their teachers and vice versa. The school board says they are enacting this policy because it keeps students and teachers from engaging in any inappropriate behavior.

Unfortunately, the school board has good reason for worry, as there have been documented cases of students harassing teachers via Facebook. In Illinois, three students were charged with hacking their teacher’s Facebook account, and across the country, teachers and tech experts are questioning whether student-teacher Facebook relationships are a good idea.

Parents who have kids with Facebook and other social network accounts should inquire to their school staff or school board whether their school has enacted new social networking policies recently. By knowing exactly what the rules are, parents can help guide their kids to the appropriate relationship with teachers and other school staff, as well as use this moment to go over proper online behavior. If a parent is unsure how to start or have these conversations, our Gameplan is a great place to start.

While these new restrictions on relationships are certainly understandable, and advisable from the teachers point of view, it’s too bad to see schools having to pull back from utilizing all the communication tools at their disposal. Perhaps as more and more homes adopt software to help children learn appropriate online behavior, schools will once again be able to open technological avenues for teachers and students to connect.

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This is a presentation I gave in June about McAfee’s approach to online safety. Put simply, we believe that the optimal environment for a child online can be achieved only through a combination of educational dialogue about the dangers posed to children online, as well as utilizing tools to ensure safe online behavior and a safe and healthy online environment for every child.

We try to achieve this by focusing development on parental control software and features that are increasingly relevant to the problems children face, and increasingly intuitive and natural to the parents that need to use them. We also recognize that the Internet is everywhere, which is why our products work on PC, Mac, Android and iOS.

We back up our tools with educational resources for parents, such as the Online Safety Gameplan, McAfee’s Cybermoms Tracy Mooney and Anindita Mishra, as well as many other studies and videos.

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This is a common question that I get a lot in interviews and it deserves a very clear answer: software can not keep your kids from getting bullied.

Sadly, neither can the most attentive or protective parent. There is no foolproof way to protect our kids from being picked on, whether online or off.

So how do products such as Safe Eyes help with this? If such products can’t actually protect the kids from bullying, what’s the point?

I think the point can be neatly summed up as a phrase that parents never need utter when it comes to cyberbullying: “If only I had known…”

The extreme consequences of cyberbullying, which has characteristics that can make it far more psychologically damaging than offline bullying, can be devastating to a family. In response to suicides stemming from online peer attacks, many states and school districts are responding with measures to punish bullies. Nothing is new about the attacks themselves. Neither is the saying “kids can be so cruel.” However the potential consequences are fairly new, and parents should look to equip themselves with tools that might help their family avoid them.

Specifically, here is how Safe Eyes can help fight the consequences of cyberbullying:

• Detection: The Cyberbullying Research Center lists a sharp change in browsing habits as one of its top ten indicators that your child might be involved in a cyberbullying incident. By regularly viewing the reports Safe Eyes produces, parents will be notified of any sharp change in browsing. Safe Eyes can also report on profanity or sexually suggestive terms posted on social networks, common in cyberbullying situations (both attacks and retaliation).
• Prevention: Facebook makes the minimum age 13 because children below that age are often too immature to handle the challenges of social networking. Safe Eyes can prevent underage users from being able to access social networks on home computers and on iPads and iPhones.
• Enforcement: If a child is bullying others or breaking other rules of internet use, Safe Eyes is an excellent tool to remove Internet privileges as a means of reinforcing rules of good behavior. It can remove access to a certain site, all sites of a certain category (eg Social Networks), or could limit Internet access to a certain time interval.

Neither Safe Eyes nor any other parental control or monitoring product out there is a silver bullet for this problem. The fact is that social networking dangers like cyberbullying are nothing new. They are the same problems people have had growing up and learning to interact since the dawn of time. As the methods change, so do the tools we use to deal with them, but the one constant in this equation is the effectiveness of caring, communicating, and educating your children. No amount of technology can lessen the impact of these three simple actions, and no parent should feel helpless because they are less familiar with the web than their kids.

Don’t let a browser stand between you and raising your children.

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Parents need to recognize that online bullying or cyberbullying is different from regular bullying in three distinct ways:

1. Public: Cyberullying occurs in a very public sphere which can easily reach millions, dramatically increasing the desperation and embarrassment children feel.
2. Viral: The nature of the user-generated web of YouTube and Facebook makes it very easy for others, whether they know the bullied child or not, to join in the bullying, which increases the victim’s feelings of isolation and persecution.
3. Ubiquitous: Because the bullying occurs through digital means, the bullying can follow the child home and be present anywhere the child has access to electronic communication. If the child has a cellphone, then the bully always has access to the child, and the child gets no relief from the bullying.

Though parents might want to cut off their child from all electronic communications, Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Center (CRC) recently commented that despite the round-the-clock coverage of cyberbullying incidents, he does feel that the problem is an epidemic or that it should be treated as such. The CRC recommends the following steps to parents:

• Refrain from immediately banning access to instant messaging, email, social networking sites, cellphones, or the Internet in general in the event of a cyberbullying incident. Forbidding access will fail to address the underlying interpersonal conflict, or eliminate current or future victimization. It also will likely close off a candid line of communication and promote overt defiance of the ban among children accustomed to frequent online access.
• Educate children about appropriate Internet-based behaviors
  and the dangers of attacking others online, including getting in trouble at school or with the police as well as irreparably damaging children who are the objects of the ridicule.
• Encourage children to report on cyberbullying incidents so that measures can be taken to stop the abuse and limit the psychological damage.
• Monitor your children’s online activities. This can be done informally (through participation and supervision) and formally (through software). Make sure to let your children know if you decide to use monitoring software, and understand that a software solution is only effective when used as part of a comprehensive approach that includes communication and education.

Safe Eyes Parental Control Software, while it can not stop bullies from picking on a child, can provide an effective early warning and detection system that can alert parents to a potential problem involving their child. To learn more about how Safe Eyes can help protect your child against cyberbullies, click here.

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Thanks to Susan for the kind words and importing knowledge to other moms out there.

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