Monday, May 01, 2006

Kids Safety on the Web

An article in InformationWeek (dated today) gave the following tips to parents to help protect their kids online:
* No chat rooms, period.
* IM can only be with friends they know in person, not just in cyberspace.
* No sharing of full names, addresses, school names, cities, or phone numbers (even cell phones). There is probably more to add to this list -- comments?
* Talk to the kids about the reasons and dangers and help them understand that there is a balance between their privacy and your need to know what's going on. For help with the discussion, check out WiredSafety.org and NetSmartz.org (I have not personally check out these sites yet).
* Be careful about pictures posted to sites that could ID your child, be considered sexually appealing, or be embarrassing to anyone.
* Check to see if online profiles have a "privacy" setting that forces the owner to give permission before someone can view it.

I thought that this was interesting and I'll need this information in a few years. Any feedback (Care-bear or Linz?) or other thoughts even for adults on the Web (like me!)?

1 comment:

Chris said...

Apparently, Mark Cuban also is interested in this topic. Check out his information on searching MySpace -- http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000680073651/.