How to: Easy Steps to Help Keep Your Munchkins Safe Online. How to Avoid Prying Eyes on the Internet. Be a Better Tech Parent. The Birds and the Bees Beth Blecherman has a frank take on parenting in a digital age. “Internet safety is the new sex talk,” said the Silicon Valley-based founder of parenting blog TechMamas.com. In other words, trying to enforce a childhood without technology is like expecting a teenager not to have hormones. But unlike a sex talk, the technology talk isn’t a one-time laying down of the law, but a series of rules negotiated as kids become more mature.
Whether you’re considering giving your child his first cell phone or letting him join Facebook, it comes down to each kid’s level of development. By age six, Blecherman says, children should know what can happen if you visit the wrong Web site. Meanwhile, Kimberley Blaine, a licensed child therapist and founder of TheGoToMom.tv, gave her son, now eight, his own computer (her spare MacBook) when he was three-and-a-half. HOW TO: Prevent and Report Online Stalking. David Perry is Global Director of Education for Trend Micro, where he represents the company's Internet security awareness endeavors as a leading authority on computer virus prevention.
For ongoing updates on the latest threats, check out the Trend Micro microsite. The social web is not just a model of our world, but an indelible and growing part of it. People correspond, they do business, and just like in the real world, they have addresses, and mailboxes. And in today’s pervasive and immersive online environment, it's almost impossible to be completely anonymous. The web gathers vast amounts of personal information that we willfully share online — our location, interests, purchases, friends, current activities, etc. One issue that persists in a web-based world is online stalking (also referred to by some organizations as "cyber stalking"). 1. The real key to the prevention of online stalking is remembering that every post you put on a social network could potentially be public. 2. NetFamilyNews. The Facebook news in the US today was its new expanded Safety Center. The news in Britain was that Facebook "STILL refuses to install [a] 'panic button'" on its pages, as the UK's Daily Mail put it.
However, Facebook also announced today that its UK users will "now be able to report unwanted or suspicious contact directly to CEOP [the UK's Child Exploitation & Online Protection Center] and other leading safety and child protection organizations via its own reporting system," as CNN reported, so CEOP has come very close to getting its wish. But this "panic button" concept is really problematic – and not just because of the word "panic," which suggests brains in crisis mode, with all rational thought switched off. Here's why it's problematic: A single reporting mechanism doesn't cut it. In the offline world, we call 911 (or in the UK, 999) about crimes and medical emergencies. How to Opt-out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization - Gadgetwis.
Internet Safety & Your Kids: What You Need to Know AND The Conte.