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Encourage Kids to Report Inappropriate Behavior

Encourage your kids to come to you for help when they are being cyberbullied or have encountered online predators.

Do your best to establish trust and make sure they are comfortable coming to you with their problems. If for any reason they are uncomfortable speaking with you, tell them to speak with a trusted adult — an aunt, uncle, teacher, or older sibling — to lend an ear.

Be sure your teen knows how to report abuse or inappropriate behavior to social networking sites. With Facebook, for example, they can send an email to abuse@facebook.com.

McAfee Social Networking Guide is available at: http://mcaf.ee/xzq1p

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InternetSafety.com Blog

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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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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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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ConnectSafely.org, the non-profit organization where I serve as co-director along with Anne Collier, has just released A Parents Guide to Facebook (PDF), a free 36-page downloadable guide to help parents and their kids get the most from the world’s largest social networking service.

The all-new guide shows how to take advantage of the service’s safety features and privacy controls, while emphasizing the positive things that young people are doing on Facebook.

The guide covers:

• Configuring Facebook’s new timeline
• How to review your activity log
• Using “in-line privacy”
• Using Facebook’s “social reporting” tools to resolve problems
• How to protect your online reputation
• Safe use of Facebook mobile
• And much more

Click to read or print  A Parents Guide to Facebook

SafeTeens.com

Online Predators – It’s commonly believed that the Internet is the perfect environment for online predators because it is easy for them to hide their identity, get access to potential victims, and there’s a huge pool of kids to target.

An online predator is a criminal who generally targets teens with the goal of manipulating them into meeting for sex. Online predators typically “groom” their victims by building trust with the child through lying, the use of blackmail and guilt, creating different personas, and then attempting to engage the child in more intimate forms of communication, and eventual in-person meetings.

On social networking sites, online predators can use all these techniques to become friends with your children and try to engage with them. Online predators will also use information from your child’s profile to try and locate them in person. This is why it is critical for you and your kids to talk about appropriate online behavior and what type of information is okay to post online.

If your child becomes a victim of a cyberstalker or an online predator, here are some steps to follow:

1. Take immediate action
• Ignore contact from the bully or online predator or do not log on to the site where it occurred
• Block the offender’s screen name and email address to prevent them from contacting your child
• Change your child’s online information or, if necessary, delete the account
• Contact the site where this occurred to have your child’s information removed, and report the perpetrator
• Report this to your Internet service provider (ISP) and the offender’s ISP.

2. Report the incident to the authorities

3. Save the evidence
• Keep a log of all communications from the perpetrator
• Keep track of the offender’s screen name, email address, and ISP, if available

4. Learn as much as you can about your children’s use
of the Internet
• Find out which services they use and what they like to do online
• Find out about the security features on their favorite websites
• Talk to your children about protecting themselves and being safe online

McAfee Social Networking Guide is avaiable at: http://mcaf.ee/xzq1p

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