Easy to Understand Computer Tips

Protect Children While You Can

The internet kills and ruins lives. There are police task forces dedicated to preventing such crimes but you should know how it can happen before you turn your children loose to explore it for themselves. You should wonder how this could happen to your children while you are monitoring everything they do. The internet thrusts us parents into some new responsibilities.

A child’s misconceptions make him or her vulnerable. You may have forgotten the youthful misconception that adults have total freedom and can do whatever they please. Of course, you still felt you had the right to always know what your parents were doing. It was very scary not knowing. Children want to be grownup so they can have that freedom and privacy. It is understandable to want to practice too soon. Society doesn’t help by telling them they have a right to privacy, that translates into a right to get into trouble without anyone knowing.

Adults don’t even have a right to privacy. We find that out quickly when we do things for which society disapproves. We are privileged to feel a level of privacy in our own home but it is not guaranteed. Children should understand that privacy is not even a right for adults and not resent being monitored. We may feel our children have earned our trust but there will always be hazards they are not prepared to understand.

If you think you understand the hazards you have not been made aware of criminals always coming up with new ideas for executing their craft. We are all vulnerable but children lack the experience and need the benefit of yours. If you allow them to persuade you to leave them alone you could be the one left alone. I am not being dramatic. All children are targets but the victims can be any child with the ability to make themselves unattended, even while you sleep. You can’t watch them 24/7 but there are things you can do.

Children’s needs make them vulnerable. Everyone needs approval, especially the young. You love them more than anyone ever will, even their future spouse. You may not know it but when it comes down to the wire you may even surprise yourself. They will always crave more approval than you can give them because it is your responsibility to guide them through life, correct them when they make mistakes, and sometimes punish them to reinforce the rules.

Predators know this. They know they can be the kind of friend or parent your child feels they need. All a predator needs is an ever so slight amount of time to convince your child of this. After that, children create the time. Emotions cloud judgment as someone finally responds to their need for acceptance. Predators are predators because they have a silver tongue and can even make friends with parents of their young victims.

They can size up people in a minute and adjust their words to suit the occasion. This is always true because without that ability they would be a lonely person with evil fantasies. They can tell your child the things your child wants to hear . Any child is eager to believe what they want to hear. The predator can devote eight or more hours a day to being their whenever your child is upset, happy or just lonely and fill their heads with impossibilities that no good person would promise.

The parenting skills for real life apply even more on the internet. If you would not and should not allow a teacher to keep a single student alone after school in order to avoid the opportunity for inappropriate behavior it is even more true that you would not allow your child to be alone with the internet in their room. With pocket internet by iPhone and Droid that should be even more important. Time on a crowded school bus could be spent alone with a predator. You can protect your children though, even if you can’t compete with the predators’ time, lies, and lack of responsibility.

A child’s online activities are not private. Anyone can capture their data once it goes over the internet. People all over the world can download free software to do just that. Social sites collect the information in databases that can be searched. If an account is deleted the information is still there. If your child is suspected of breaking laws the police can get a warrant to look at their computer and yours to see if the evidence is there. The legal responsibility for what is on their computer is yours.  You could be the only person not viewing your child’s information if you believe they have a right to privacy.

This is how you can protect your child. Use parental controls software designed to protect children. It is part of Windows Vista or if you have Windows XP you can download the FREE We-Blocker Safe Families Software fro safefamilies.org. You can restrict their browsing with software but you should know they can get around them. If you have FREE keyloggers or monitoring software, like K9 Web Protection (FREE), or monitor from anywhere with PC Pandora ($70-110), you will know everything they do and will be able to talk to them about it. If you aren’t monitoring and don’t know what they are doing, you can’t be sure they are safe.

Internet Safety for Kids and Families covers a wide-range of issues, such as cyberbullying, risky social networking, age-inappropriate content, and identity theft. Internet behavior involves the knowlege of what should and shouldn’t be revealed and knowing what is actually a crime that can effect the child and parent. Peers can convince children that some things are acceptable while the law will prosecute. You must be sure that you children understand that. Monitor them and let them know it but not necessarily how.

You still need to keep up to date on new threats and new responsibilities. Here are some outstanding organizations:
Related Page: References
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Related Pages: Motivating Teen Safety

Google commands loyalty, admiration, fulfillment, and total disdain of a money making machine that seems to be without a conscience. It is ironic that their declared code of conduct is “Don’t be evil” when, in much of the public opinion, they exploit the user more than any other company. With common everyday practices like reporting searches to big brother governments and reading private email with an attitude that if people have secrets they are doing something wrong. Google seems to be striving to be evil. With their attitude, history, and practices it is only right that what goes around comes around.

From the very beginning Google has always had a loyal following because they have always been the best at filling a need. Their achievements have to be admired because they achieved what we needed. That’s why; as they deviated from their idealistic beginning they continued to retain their public. In the beginning they didn’t even want to use advertising to support their search engine. In reality, they needed to make a living but they went from not using ads to direct marketing as the biggest “Big Brother” you could possibly imagine.

They try to justify spying on you using every method they can establish by claiming they don’t keep anything to identify you. Everyone understands they are being identified online and some people try to boycott or find ways to be anonymous but Google not only has the best of what we need but continues to develop ideas we can’t live without and offers them for free (plus the cost of surrendering your privacy). They fulfill our needs so we continue to forgive their many sins.

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.” His comments may be a way for him to forgive himself for finding ways around their slogan “Don’t be evil” but it’s still just a clever smokescreen to obscure the facts as they continue to collect your private information and read your private email.

Although many privacy organizations around the world voiced objections about Google reading (electronically scanning) private email Google managed to convince them and us that we can trust them to keep our private information confidential. We are loyal. We can trust them, except; when China demands they report specific searches, or the U.S. Government with its ever-so-reputable Patriot Act overreaches it’s too zealous authority.

The shoe is suddenly on the other foot. Someone has invaded Google’s privacy. Someone has hacked into Google’s database and taken intellectual property. Someone is collecting their private information without offering Google a free service. How rude. Some people might think it’s funny that Google doesn’t like it. The indiscretion seems to have originated in China with no proof that it was the government but Google is renegotiating its privacy policy with the Chinese government. They are taking a stronger stance on the individual right to privacy and freedom from censorship and may even close their offices in China. Maybe a better corporate attitude will come out of this.

Personal privacy was a passing phase. You’re too young to remember but before the internet there was the gossip mill. Sure, gossip still exists but it doesn’t have the power it had in small towns. Civilization has gone through phases. Society has evolved from nomadic, through small town living, metropolitan, and finally an internet culture. The right to metropolitan privacy is not following us onto the computers and the internet.

According to history, not my personal memory, life was originally nomadic. People went where the food was plentiful. The biggest, worst, and meanest ruled. They took what they wanted so there was no trust. Reputations were gained and lost in battle, sometimes with each other. There was no right to privacy since there were no rights.

Then people settled in small towns where they knew each other from birth. Secrets spread through gossip mills like twitter storms. The only way to completely repair a damaged reputation was to leave everything behind. Then, as a stranger, you might rebuild trust by being a fast talker or spending years living properly. Some small communities, even today, never accept strangers.

Then the metropolis developed. It was no longer necessary to escape a reputation. People didn’t even know their neighbors. You could build a reputation by going around telling everyone what you wanted them to believe. They would tell others and the word would spread, but not very far. That may sound hard to believe or over simplified but that would be a whole new topic. The point is, it was easy to manipulate public opinion. People could keep their secrets and even crimes could go unpunished.

In the world today and probably more so each passing month, there are no secrets. A few years ago, for a moderate fee someone could pay an agency to discover almost everything about you. Today it only takes a quick search on the internet to find once private information about anyone. The other day I was online and discovered a list of the places I have lived over the last fifteen years. You should expect in today’s times that everyone could always know where you are.

With companies like Google making their fortunes discovering our secrets and selling them to the highest bidder or even giving them away for free we can expect that privacy is a thing of the past. We could try to boycott companies like Google, AOL, and Microsoft that do not respect our privacy but they lure us back with free toys and gadgets we can’t live without.

Maybe we should live our lives as if we were the center of the universe and everyone is watching us. Even secrets we think we keep today may be exposed in a couple years by some new technology we weren’t expecting. Maybe we should publish everything there is to know about solicitors and spammers. Make it easier to annoy the people who annoy us. We could put up the good fight and us the information from websites like this to protect our personal info as long as possible but the internet culture is winning.

Hal

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