Rethinking IM Privacy For Kids 507
mackles writes, "Now that the world has read the despicable instant messages from Rep. Foley, should parents take a second look at monitoring their kids' IMs? After all, it was IM logging that exposed the scandal; would we have found out otherwise? Cost is not an issue, there are free monitoring tools. Should parents tell their kids before they monitor? Parents and their tech-savvy kids are at odds on the topic. From the article: 'As many as 94 percent of parents polled this summer by the research firm Harris Interactive said they've turned to Web content filters, monitoring software, or advice from an adult friend to keep electronic tabs on their children.' The article quotes one 18-year-old as saying, 'A lot of kids are smarter than adults think.'"
Anything on the router level? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:4, Informative)
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Any kid armed with 1) friends, or 2) google. Will escalate themselves to admins, create a new account, and surf away
Me.
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would bet that slip and fall in the shower is a more frequent cause of death for teens than online predators. Did you also install a bathroom cam?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This may be true, but I would bet that online contact is a more frequent cause of harm to teens than slip and fall in the shower. It's not as obvious, because it's not physical, but it's there.
I grew up on computers, from 10 years old and up, talking to people online back when it consisted of paging the SysOp for a one-on-one conversation. (And I'm sorry for all the SysOps I so incessently annoye
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:4, Informative)
Disable installation of apps, or certain websites, or only allow access between certain hours, or x hours per day, or monitor all conversations and downloads...
Cut and Fondle Party (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that children are better able to adapt to new events and information than adults are, provided that they have a stable home environment. That's because everything is new to them. Of course they need guidance and assistance along the way, but the new experiences in and of themselves are not destructive. On the contrary, without exposure to these experiences, kids may have difficulty dealing with things later in life. In regard to alcohol and drugs, for example, most parents realize that their children will be exposed to these things no matter what they do, therefore they preemptively explain the effects, potential consequences, what choice they believe is best, and how to deal with pressure from other kids/peers (which is often significantly higher than any potential pressure that might be exerted online, I might add -- indeed most people have an easier time being confrontational in the pseudoanonymity of the internet than they do in real life).
Likewise with sexual misconduct, both online and in the real world. When I was in first grade, some kid brought a Polaroid to school and convinced some other kids to go in the coat room and take pictures of their privates. While I have no idea what sparked this behavior (although in retrospect it was possibly indicative of serious misconduct at home), I do recall that several children willingly complied in innocence (aka IGNORANCE), until one child finally told the teacher because her parents had told her that it was naughty to take off her clothes in front of strangers. The two key things, I believe, to learn from this experience are that most of the kids were woefully unprepared for the real world by their parents, and that regardless of their behavior, the kids were probably no worse off for the experience. Of course we all got a lecture afterwards, but it shouldn't have been an afterthought. Sexuality is an innate part of our existance, and shamefully pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't benefit our children in any way; rather it merely produces another generation of shameful adults.
The point is that regardless of your views on the morality of ANY issue, if children are ignorant of the basic facts, then that is the sole greatest danger. Protecting them 24/7 is neither possible nor healthy. Of course parents should be involved in their children's activities, and ask questions about what they're doing, who they're talking to, etc., but kids are people too, and they need some amount of privacy (based on age, demonstrated responsibility, past behavior, etc). Yes, people on the internet, as in real life, CAN be dangerous, but the internet has the added safety feature that it's fairly anonymous. Teach kids to maintain their anonymity, to tell you if someone is asking/telling/showing them something inappropriate, and they'll be better off. Of course, if you have no bond or trust with your child (and 24/7 monitoring isn't exactly a great way to generate trust), or if your child has repeatedly demonstrated willful disregard for instruction, then by all means -- monitor them day and night. But really, that should be a last resort, not a primary consideration.
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Many guys you hook up with at a park would not stop when you say stop. Most guys, whether you meet them at park or if you've known them for years, would not notice you getting uncomfortable and certainly would not offer to stop. Hooking up with guys in a park is a good way to get raped, which is why parents would not be happy to have their children doing that. I wish every person's first sexual experience was with someone as cool and respectful of boundaries as yours was, but they're not
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you say the same about:
What kind of V-chip are you suggesting to deal with those? Why should Internet use monitoring take so much of parent's time rather than say, sending the kid to a Karate class?
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise your kids like that and watch what happens when they finally move out from under your thumb.
It'll be a total disaster, and yes, it will be your fault.
Worse yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately you can install a key logger, even if they get encrypted connections going or install software that makes it harder for you to snoop. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of key logger that logged what keys were sent to which app at what time.. that could give you a 1-sided "replay" of activity even in the face of them putting stealthier software on the machine(or using web based chats via https anonymizers or something)
As someone else pointed out though - i'm not sure you want to be in a technology cold war with your kids. You need to come to an understanding about why they want to disobey you. There is probably a lot of ignorance and arrogance on both sides of the parent/child relationship, and the right meeting is somewhere in the middle.
The internet is a hostile place for adults also. The struggle of parenting would seem to be hw to let your child grow into an adult that makes responsible decisions about their privacy, personal safety, etc, while still giving them boundaries that let you sleep relatively comfortably at nite as they learn how to do this.
I'm not a parent, but it seems to me that the "threats" are the same as they've always been, but the vectors are different this time around (and they'll be different again in 10 years)
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That's not an excuse for not monitoring what you can (iIndeed, if anything, its an argument for monitoring what you can, I'd say.) But its important to remember that, and particularly to remember not to overreact to what you are monitoring. Monitoring doesn't have to be intrusive and make your children feel oppressed (or even monitored); there probably isn't a need for a direct intervention or response to inform
Your kids must not be too swift. (Score:3, Insightful)
My 10-year-old would probably defeat that in around 15 minutes. He's seen me crack locked laptops I've rescued from recycling bins, after all. He'll tell your kids how to do it, too, if they ask him.
Yeah. How are you going to padlock every single device your kid comes into contact with? The school and library administrators where I live frown on that sort of thing. Are you going to police your neighbor's system securi
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:4, Informative)
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I've never done it, but I don't see why it would be difficult. IMs are generally sent as plain text. If the kids are clever enough to use encryption, you may have problems, but I imagine that few kids would bother. I'm most familiar with AIM, but I wouldn't expect MSN/Yahoo messages to be much more difficult to intercept. You may even be able to set up a firewall rul
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been on the internet since I was 11, got an ICQ account first thing.
Staying safe on the internet is pretty simple. Don't hand out real name, age, or location. Gender either if it can be avoided.
Teach your kids that, make sure they realize WHY it is important ("Do you want to end up raped and dead in some ditch? No? DON'T GIVE OUT PERSONAL INFORMTATION THEN.") and trust in them not to take a plane trip somewhere to meet some weirdo halfway across the country.
Re:Anything on the router level? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, dad, the 54G can do logging. Actually that's probably better than the silly keylogger Judy and I have been using against you and mom for the past year. (BTW, having 'g0d' as your admin password is really lame - we didn't even need the keylogger to figure that out. :P I'll walk you through the firmware update after I get home from band practice.
Your loving son, Jack
P.S. Do not let Judy do the install - she's bound to get the interface names reversed and broadcast the log files to the universe. (If you don't believe me, ask her why that botnet attacked our computer last fall. I told her the target IP was the first param, not the second one, but did Little Miss 31337 listen to me? Of course not.)
Here's the Plug, Watch me pull it Son (Score:3, Insightful)
Raising your children (Score:3, Informative)
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No 12 year-old ever got propositioned for sex from a 40 year old man through their Tamaguchi.
And what is this "outrage of 'Cell phones'" you speak of, and why did you put "Cell phones" in quotes?
Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I know, think of the children, blah blah blah. I hate election years.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I know, think of the children, blah blah blah. I hate election years.
Well, I'm voting for you. Still hate election years?
But seriously, communicating with your kids is absolutely the right thing to do. And it's something you have to do consistantly from the very beginning. Teach them right and wrong, know what it is they're interested in and what their hobbies are. Don't keep tabs on their every move, just be aware of what they're doing.
Basically BE INVOLVED IN YOUR CHILD'S LIFE. You brought them into the world, whether by choice or not, so act like the adult you chose to be and be responsible for you and your childrens' actions.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Me Too!
Seriously, I had unrestricted Internet access (my own dial-up account) for the computer in my room from the age of about 14. I had a 2400 baud modem before that, but I didn't use it much because it was too slow for most things (and I had to pay the 'phone bill for modem calls, which added up really quickly).
My computer was completely set-up by me, and my parents didn't even have a login. Occasionally my mother would ask to borrow a web browser when she wanted to look something up (my father had his own laptop), but apart from that it was my machine. Because of this freedom, I learned a huge amount; I'm now coming to the end of a PhD in computer science. If the machine had been locked down, I would have done one of two things:
- Bypassed the security, as I did with school machines with silly lock-down rules that got in my way (wit authorisation from a teacher in all cases), or
- Got bored with the machine quickly and not learned anything from it.
To all those claiming that you have to protect your children; which of these do you think is better? My parents had a simple philosophy. They believed that by the age of about ten, a child had absorbed everything it would from a parent-child relationship. Everything after that must come from an attitude of mutual respect. They didn't spy on me, or try to enforce behaviours. They taught me to understand the consequences of my actions, and not do anything I wouldn't like the result of.Oh, and as a result of this, I missed out on the teenage rebellious phase, since I already had all of the freedoms I wanted. I do, however, have a very low tolerance for those who exercise power without earning the moral authority to do so. Perhaps if more people had had an upbringing like mine we would be further away from a 1984-like scenario...
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I agree, but you should monitor them anyway. Between having a sociopath who has no problem lying, to having a good kid make a mistake once that could ruin the rest of their life, I think there are far too many reasons to monitor anyway.
Talking to the kid is important. Possibly the most important. But having talked to the kid isn't a cure-all either.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I grew up with very strict parents. It was so bad, they would listen in on conversations I had with my friends - especially, girls. I resent it so much, that when I hear about this kind of thing, especially if it's Government who wants to do it - think warrantless wiretaps - I go ballistic! My parents basically turned me into an anarchist.
I agree that a parent has a responsibility to keep an eye on their kids, but if they go too far, they'll inhibit their kids so much that they'll be afraid to do or say anything "wrong".
On a positive note, I was the perfect corporate drone. I never said or did anything that pissed off the managment, I did everything they said, I made sure to say all the right things - my reviews were great!
Now, I just can't stomach it anymore.
Over-protective parents in the pre-Intenet days (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, our society's obsession with freaking out over every new invention
I had friends with parents like yours back when I was a kid. They would seriously listen to every phone conversation that took place in the house (had extra lines installed just for this purpose). One family, the dad was an electronics whiz, and even hooked up an automatic recording system
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Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the way to make sure they set their IM clients that way is to talk to them and have a conversation about the dangers of random contacts through IM. Most of them are talking with the friends they already know (from school or wherever), so this sort of restriction is not that big of an impediment.
After that, as long as you have a good relationship with your kids, and as long as you know their friends, the chances of them getting involved in something nasty through IM is minimal. Spying and setting up harsh restrictions without any explanation just breeds more rebellion in kids that are already at a naturally rebellious stage in life.
Occasionally checking their IM settings to make sure they are still set the right way is probably fine. Reading through their conversations, though, is an invasion of privacy, and shows a lack of trust in your kids. If you don't have a relationship with your kids that allows you to have at least some trust in them, nothing you can do with their IM client is going to help the situation very much.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Much like worker vs. management, the parent/child relationship is, by its very nature, adversarial. It is the job of the child to explore their world and get into mischief. It is the nature of the parent to keep the kids from doing this if they have any hope of surviving to maturity. Kids who feel comfortable telling their parents everything will usually become selective about what they say once they feel the heat of doing something that Mom or Dad disapprove of.
No kid in his/her right mind would tell their parents about the swell kegger that Jimmy from up the block is having while his folks are in Europe if they didn't mind their peers kicking their asses.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
> Much like worker vs. management, the parent/child relationship is, by its very nature, adversarial.
One major difference: children are not adult workers entering into a consensual employee/employer relationship. Children are born into their families with no inherent rights except that to food, shelter, education and a decent upbringing to the best of their parents' ability. They do not have "rights" to privacy, speech, freedom of association or any of the basic civil rights adults enjoy. They live under the protection of their parents and therefore if the parents want to read their IM logs, that's their prerogative.
The family is our model for society (Score:4, Insightful)
By that logic, citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time, and so long as they "choose" to live under the protection of that government (i.e. do not choose to uproot their entire lives and move somewhere else), it's the government's prerogative to meddle in the private affairs of it's citizens however it pleases. To anyone who supports the principles of liberty and constitutional democracy that most of the civilized world cherishes today, this is obviously wrong: people may have an obligation to obey their governments to some limited extent, but the governments conversely have an obligation to respect the rights and freedom of their citizens, and refrain from interfering except when absolutely necessary.
Our families are our models for government. The family is the most basic unit of society (i.e. the smallest and most primitive grouping of people). If we teach our kids that it's OK for their parents to monitor them constantly and meddle in their lives to whatever extent that they (the parents) see fit, then we're raising a generation of soon-to-be-adults who will not mind if their government does the same thing to them. If you wouldn't be happy with your government behaving a certain way toward you, you should seriously consider whether or not it's really OK for you to behave that way toward your kids. And vice versa: if it doesn't seem OK for a parent to do to their child, that raises some big red flags about whether it's OK for the government to do to it's citizens.
The role of parents is to use force only when necessary to keep their kids from *seriously* screwing something else up (i.e. punishing them for starting fights, vandalism, etc etc), and *educating* them about things which are dangerous to themselves. If those things really are bad for themselves, the kids will learn that yeah, mom and/or dad were right, that was a bad idea. If parents show a good track record of indicating bad things that the kids can verify with their own first-hand experience in the short-term, the kids will (rightly) be more inclined to trust them about the longer-term hazards that it takes years of experience to learn first-hand. But if the parents are full of shit and over-controlling, prohibiting things that don't really cause any harm, and meddling with and prying into their kids lives all the time, the kids will be less inclined to trust them about anything. Same way that the citizenry will learn to disregard the law entirely when the law is frequently baseless and unjust, but if the law is just and well-founded it will have many supporters.
Needless to say, all of this is solely regarding "children" of a conscious, verbal level of development, i.e. basically young impulsive inexperienced adults. When dealing with infants or toddlers who are actually incapable of really understanding what you tell them - not just perhaps inclined to disregard it - then obviously the same rules don't apply.
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Patronize much?
I'm talking outside the home. I personally believe kids do not (and should not) get to enjoy all the rights of a citizen until they are of voting age, but there are some laws that disagree with me. At home, though, sorry. They do have rights (shelter, food, etc) but not first amendment rights. You ever see a kid try to claim "first amendment rights" to speech to their own parent? If the parent has half an ounce of brains they'd laugh in the kid's face. Freedom to assemble? "You're grounded.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I try at every opportunity to let them know about the good and bad of technology. Yes, you have Wikipedia and Google, but you also have pedophiles too. Just like walking down the street. There are good folks and bad folks, and just like it is hard to tell the difference from faces, it is hard to tell the difference online. I try to explain and enforce good online safety and behavior rules. I try to talk to them, and make sure that I am involved in their lives.
However, their computers are facing out, in a public part of the house. I check their activities, and make sure they are doing the right things. I don't check obsessively, but I do check. Trust is a two-way street. They know that if they get bagged, I will crack down. Of course, I also do check logs, history, cookies, and my router
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Talk to your kids, make sure they know what is right and wrong first. Explain basic safety rules, behavior online, etc. But do make sure to check on them, and make sure they see you as involved. They need to know boundaries, and if they know you are checking and being involved, I think they'll try to live up to it
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Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
there's nothing wrong with doing some behind the scenes checking of logs after they've gone to bed and there's nothing wrong with leaving the computer in the open so that the parents can see what their children are doing. it's being a parent. if you happen to see them looking at or doing something they shouldn't be, you can sit down with them and talk to them right then and there about why they shouldn't be looking at or doing whatever it might be. if you check the logs when they're not around, you can see if they're using the computer outside of allowed time (like after bedtime or when they're supposed to be doing something else) and you can see if they're sneaking around while you know they're on the computer. if you catch them that way, as far as i'm concerned, there's a bigger punishment involved (or better yet, if you notice a pattern, you pop out when you know they'll be doing it). punishment should include no TV, no video games, and no "fun" computer time (because we all know children of almost every age need the computer for something school related). but most importantly, you need to talk to your children about why whatever it is they did or saw was something that isn't allowed. that's how they learn. it's not surveillance, it's parenting. and they can earn privacy just as they can quickly lose it.
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My parents were actively involved in each of their children's lives. We all came out pretty good, and very diverse. A Gnostic Chef, Anarchist Environmentalist, and Christian Geek. You dont have to control your kids, just instill good morals and they will tak
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The exception would be that extreme case where you have good reason to suspect that the child is already getting into big trouble. Like with law enforcement, you should have probable cause.
-m
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Teen Curiosity you think. The trouble was (from my wife and my perspective) that some of the content he was looking at was from the pretty extreme end of human sexual behaviour. We'd talked to the boy pretty frankly about his body, about sex, responsibility, hygiene and health, but there were people inserting things into each other's bodies that I'd never have thought to have mentioned in some of the things he was looking at.
Now I personally don't think that women inserting baseball bats in men's rectums is "normal" sexual behaviour. Call me a prude. But we realised that there are so many things out there that are just sooooo outside anything we could think of talking about (and to be frank, I don't really want to discuss the joys of prostate stimulation with foreign objects to my 13 year old son).
It all came back to school - there was an older boy (18!!!) who was taking great delight in "advising" younger boys to go to certain websites. That kid has been expelled, and has a court order to stay away from schools and p[laygrounds, as a bit of investigation showed that the lad has a history as a 17 year old of gettting heavily involved with 12 year old boys and girls. I accept that kids will have sex, but not with people that are almost adults who have a fetish for objects and 'toys'. But an older kid will alwys be "more informed" and "cooler" than parents.
As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing too extreme when it come to me finding out what my kids are doing on the Internet. I log, monitor, re-direct and block my kids use of the Internet. They can move out at 18 if they don't like it.
Re:Revolutionary Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
What? You told me to.
Okay, stupid joke.
I can't see any value in your kid seeing these pictures, or taking cues about his sex life from a seventeen year old. But I do see some value in having clear lines of communication, and I don't know if the value of protecting your son from weird pictures is worth the loss there. I'd much rather have a kid who finds weird stuff on the 'Net and thinks, "maybe the parents can tell me what's up with that," instead of, "how do I get my hands on more without the parents finding out?" But maybe it's overly optimistic to think that most kids could ever see their parents as reliable sources for information about sex.
I'm curious: did you have a good talk with the kid about why he was interested in these pictures, and why you didn't feel that they were appropriate for someone of his age? Probably you did. Maybe he understood your reasoning. Maybe he agreed with it. Maybe he's following the rules. But it seems to me that, so long as the interest is there, that the situation isn't fully resolved. And if he doesn't even feel safe in telling you that he's still interested, I think it has a snowballing effect on your relationship, multiplying the number of things that he doesn't feel comfortable discussing with you.
All I'm really saying is that even twelve year olds have some concept of sexuality, and a desire to figure it out. If you can make him comfortable telling you what's going on in his mind, without getting judged or humiliated, then you've got a better shot at protecting him from the really dangerous things.
Trust and verify, maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the reasons we have a concept of "minors" (for whom parents are responsible) is that judgement takes time to acquire. Much as people would like, it's just not possible to *reliably* create kids with good judgement via good parenting. Kids are more susceptible to peer pressure, and they tend to go through phases where they're prone to concealing their activities from their parents. Some lessons need to be learned the hard way, but the "hard way" can carry an unacceptably high price in the online arena.
Different kids need different amounts of supervision and oversight in the physical world, and I don't see much difference between that & the online world. Most parents would't let their kid padlock their closet, nor would they agree never to search the child's bedroom under any circumstances. In the spirit of good communication, I would suggest telling the kid that you're monitoring & logging his/her conversations. That admittedly introduces some technical hurdles; ideally it should be done at the router or proxy level, which means disallowing encrypted protocols that can't be logged by an intermediate node.
If you log a child's surfing habits, you always have the option of not reading the logs unless/until you have reason to. But down the road if you have reason to suspect something (or heaven forbid something awful happens), you'll probably be glad you have the logs.
Age and treachery... (Score:4, Insightful)
'Nuff said.
Re:Age and treachery... (Score:4, Funny)
obviously said by an adult!
Damn kids! Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Insightful)
And most kids are not as smart as they think they are. News at 11.
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Time to drag out this old chestnut: (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Mark Twain
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American education is indeed in a bad shape..
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Re:Damn kids! Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Funny)
Neither are... (Score:2)
Try securing a school computer and see how many clever tricks the kids come up with to get around it. Although to be fair, in the day of google and the internet script-kiddies tend to abound, but back about 7-10 years ago my classmates and I found many an interesting workaround. Heck, some pretty cleve
and while we're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Should you tell your kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kid: Mom, Dad, have you been spying on me?
Mom: Why yes, yes we have Johnny.
Kid: Lock and load...
Come on, I thought the era of parenting/managing by stealth was long since dead and buried. Surely open communication, cooperation and engaging with kids (or employees for that matter - it's the same deal really) makes better sense?
Or is there still a group out there that thinks education is bad, mkay? Don't teach our kids about sexual health because (GASP) they might become sexually active! OMG STFU WTF.
Hint: they're going to anyway, surely it's better for them to learn properly than from some xxx website.
Re:Should you tell your kids? (Score:4, Funny)
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Just this morning my local paper (Raleigh News and Observer) ran a letter to the editor from a gentleman who was outraged that UNC makes free condoms available at its health clinic. Thanks to the local sex ed curriculum most kids probably don't know what to do with them anyway.
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Hint: they're going to anyway, surely it's better for them to learn properly than from some xxx website.
I tend to think of myself as open minded, but I draw the line at somethings. Ok. I wouldn't mind opening up my porn collection to the kids to view, but my wife and I will not be demonstrating how to perform sex properly to our kids.
monitor kids? (Score:2)
I always used to cover my tracks pretty well when looking at pr0n, but I gues
I don't mind parents monitoring (Score:2, Insightful)
Because if the child thinks you're monitoring them because you don't trust them, or they find out you were monitoring them because you didn't trust them, that can do more damage to the parent-child relationship than anything else. Trust is important.
Besides, if they don't agree,
think outside the box (Score:2)
If I had kids I'd configure my linux firewall/router to block any traffic to/from their PC on any port but a non-standard one, and have a squid proxy listening on another computer in my network with a whitelist: any URL not in the whitelist would be logged and I could deny/allow access. I probably would also look into some kind of IM proxy that allows usage only at specified times and, most important, that disallowed any sort of file upload/do
Talk to your damn kids (Score:2)
"I know you're coming onto that age where you're interested in girls, maybe guys. Now, you aren't allowed to have sex with them, but because it happens, I want you to know I won't punish you, I want you to tell me. And I want to tell you about safety. Condoms blah blah blah. Men over 17(or 18, depend
Let's See.... From a non Windows User (Score:3, Insightful)
When you get into their teens, you're mainly an advisor. They will do what they want to do, you just need to be able to protect them. And obviously... Children really DON'T have a right to privacy. Sure, I give mine all the privacy I can, but if I'm responsible for you, privacy is a Priveledge.
Just my 2cents.
Monitoring (Score:2)
Maybe parents should also: (Score:2)
There is a difference between taking authoritative steps to protect your children and being invasive upon their lives.
The difference is subtle but impactful. Treat them like theyre not human and they will not develop properly.
Parenting tricks (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason, my 9 year can never figure out how I know when he gets out of bed at night. I'll never tel him the floorboards scream every time he shifts his weight. :)
over-reaction (Score:2)
Second is the authority issue. If someone really believes the message is coming from a very important person, they arent going to immediately dismiss something strange coming from them.
I do monitor the chat logs on my 3 teeange girls.. (Score:3)
The "Free" ChatChecker is NOT free... (Score:3, Informative)
Why are parents NOT monitoring there kid's activit (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in my day our parents knew what kind of neghborhoods we played outside in, why wouldn't parents of today be any different WRT to online neighborhoods?
When mine are old enough to start unsupervised web use (currently oldest is 5) I will definitely be logging everything they do, not to snoop and evesdrop but just so I can spot check and see what they are doing every once in awhile.
Re:Why are parents NOT monitoring there kid's acti (Score:2)
My prophecy (Score:2)
intended to
protect the children -- yes, we must protect the children! -- from sexual predation from, um, fear-crazed
christian republicans in congress.
Nothing New (Score:2)
Do people talk to their children anymore? They should feel comfortable telling YOU if someone starts talking to them in a sick way. If they don't, you've got MUCH bigger problems.
Spying on your children will not help, in fact, it could do more damage. Trust between parent and child is of utmost importance, erode it, and it's a long ways back.
are you from China mackles? (Score:2)
Monitoring? (Score:5, Insightful)
The quote in context (Score:2)
Big difference.
Rules, Boundaries, and Limitations (Score:2)
You take a risk when you spy on your kid in such an intrusive manner. Whatever evils you might catch them doing is nothing compared to the ki
Who's at risk here? (Score:5, Insightful)
When kids shoot up schools, people ask "where were the parents? They should have known." When kids end up teenage parents, people ask "where were the parents? They should have taught them better." When kids get connected to the internet, people say "mind your own business! Privacy! Big Brother! OMG 1984!!!"
Pick one. Either kids have a right to privacy and the responsibilities that come with the lack of supervision, or they don't have that right, and the parents have to accept some responsibility if they don't know what their kids are doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Are the same people saying all of these?
Also, can't we figure our kids are troubled (which I assume they must be, before they go shooting up schools), just by observing _them_, rather than their compu
Re:Who's at risk here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What the hell? When people ask, "where are the parents?" and say "they should have known," they don't mean "they should have tapped his phone to hear him talk about his plan, logged his computer to k
Re:Who's at risk here? (Score:4, Insightful)
At home I'm not worried... (Score:2)
What worries me is the new mobile phones, 3G and the like. While I'll own the contracts and be paying for it, I don't see how I'm going to monitor everything they do on a phone. Hell with a bluetooth keyboard even today's phones are pretty good IM devices, so how I'm going to cope in 5 years time I have no idea.
What I'd like to see is the ability to have
the need to prove one's self (Score:2)
monitor kids? How about the congresspeople? (Score:2)
As a teenager... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I know that I'm not most teens, and most are stupid and don't give a flying fsck about anything, but children (especially later teenagers) don't get nearly enough respect. Just the question that "should we tell them we're spying on them?" makes me want to throw up. Jeez, no wonder kids think their parents are stupid...
Well, DUH! (Score:2)
Reeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy?! I'm Shocked! SHOCKED, I SAY!
True. But, having been a teen, and now having one, I can firmly assert that teens habitually underestimate the intelligence of their parents but not so often is the reverse true.
And my teen has been told in no uncertain terms that MySpace, Xa
Would monitoring have helped? (Score:2)
First, I think the question should be, how did parents ever think they shouldn't be monitoring young childrens' IM? It's in the same league as knowing what house the kid's going to be staying over at and who'll be there. And the rules change as the kid grows up for exactly the same reasons.
But would monitoring have helped in the Foley case? The kid reported it, his parents knew about it, and still every party involved downplayed the incident to the greatest extent possible and took the first opportunity th
Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
True stories of parental IM logging.... (Score:2)
In any case, he had the classical "good daughter" (A+ student, liked by everybody, never got in trouble, great at sports, etc. etc.), and the "bad daughter" (ran around with a convict boyfriend, left home and had to come back several times, didn't f
Internet use is not a privilege anymore (Score:2)
A brief public service announcement (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think your parents are spying on you and taking Draconian measures to mold you into a little puritan? Want to be free to learn about the real world and maybe even use your own body as you desire? Do you want to learn about evolution, but have fundie nut parents trying to censor your entire environment? Don't want to loose your legal home (which includes perhaps your only access to food, shelter, and healthcare?), and risk getting jailed for leaving it? If you are reading this, you probably have some place where you can access the Internet with minimal restrictions. Maybe you are lucky enough to be online at a friend's house or library. Maybe you hacked the filter at your public school or church. If you want to expand your access and keep your freedom, you will need to take some precautions. To get around any logging or filtering software running on a local machine, I suggest getting your own computer. Try ebay [ebay.com]. If you can't afford a full computer, and just want to chat, I recommend the zipit [zipitwireless.com], it runs Linux, so you can modify it and add features like encryption. If these are not viable options, you should use a Linux (or BSD, or OpenSolaris) bootable CD [frozentech.com]. If you suspect that there is network based monitoring, you should use gaim-otr or gaim-encryption for your chatting and gpg for your email. Learn to tunnel [wikipedia.org] your network traffic through http, ssh, and other protocols. If you are using someone else's PC, you should also check for a hardware keylogger [homespy.com]. Use the presumption of your ignorance to your advantage. Play the naïve little kid. If you get caught trying to circumvent censorship and spying, act like you have no idea what you are doing and just got lost. Act like the computer is broken and you are confused and frustrated.
A brief message to the parents: Kids like sex. Kids are curious. Remember back when you were a teenager? Wouldn't you have really liked a (select gender based on sexual preference) about ten years older than you (someone in their 20s), to fuck? As illegal and "wrong" as that is, it's what we've evolved to desire. You become sexually mature as a teen, and you want the most fit sexual partner. People older than you are probably the most fit. As you get older, people younger than you are probably the most fit. All the technology in the wold will not change this. It's human nature. Your irrational fear of pleasure is no excuse to stunt your offspring's intellectual growth. Do you really want to keep them from accessing the biggest store of human knowledge ever amassed, just because you don't like the idea that they might actually want to enjoy sex? Or...is it worse than that? Are you a religious asshole that wants to keep your kid from learning about science? If so, you are the reason why your nation is going to plunge deep into a second dark age of technological decay and theocratic war. Thanks a lot!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:blah blah blah (Score:4, Funny)
Dang.... that's exactly how my parents sounded when I was a kid.
Re:Monitoring != parenting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monitoring != parenting (Score:5, Informative)
If you have to tell your middle aged politician that it's legally and morally wrong to exchange graphic sexual emails and IM's with a 16 year old boy, you've already failed as a voter.