{"id":566,"date":"2008-03-25T10:42:17","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T18:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=566"},"modified":"2008-03-25T10:43:11","modified_gmt":"2008-03-25T18:43:11","slug":"parents-guard-that-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2008\/parents-guard-that-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents, Guard That Door!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I confess I’m amazed this in in the New York Times<\/i>:<\/p>\n\n\n
The Undercover Parent<\/a><\/p>\n

Not long ago, friends of mine confessed over dinner that they had put spyware on their 15-year-old son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s computer so they could monitor all he did online. At first I was repelled at this invasion of privacy. Now, after doing a fair amount of research, I get it.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: If you put spyware on your computer, you have the ability to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what spyware is \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at least the parental monitoring kind. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be an expert to put it on your computer. You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports \u00e2\u20ac\u201d weekly, daily, whatever \u00e2\u20ac\u201d showing you everything your child is doing on the machine.<\/p>\n

Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even consider it.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Some will say that you should simply trust your child, that if he is old enough to go on the Internet he is old enough to know the dangers. Trust is one thing, but surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.<\/p>\n

Some will say that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better just to use parental blocks that deny access to risky sites. I have found that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. Children know how to get around them. But more than that \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and this is where it gets tough \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I want to know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being said in e-mail and instant messages and in chat rooms.<\/p>\n

There are two reasons for this. First, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile or the girl who was cyberbullied to the point where she committed suicide. Would a watchful eye have helped? We rely in the real world on teachers and parents to guard against bullies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d do we just dismiss bullying on the Internet and all it entails because we are entering difficult ethical ground?<\/p>\n

Second, everything your child types can already be seen by the world \u00e2\u20ac\u201d teachers, potential employers, friends, neighbors, future dates. Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he learn now that the Internet is not a haven of privacy? <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Parent or child or not, you really ought to read the full article. Thanks to Harrison Scott Key over at WorldMagBlog<\/a> for calling my attention to it.<\/p>\n

I think I’ll print it out for my teens to read. And I’ll also see what’s available for parental monitoring software.<\/p>\n

OK, I just did a quick search and found this site right away: http:\/\/www.monitoringsoftwarereviews.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And here’s some software available via Amazon:<\/p>\n


\n\"PC<\/a>     \"Sentry<\/a><\/p>\n

\"eBlaster<\/a>     \"Spector<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confess I’m amazed this in in the New York Times: The Undercover Parent Not long ago, friends of mine confessed over dinner that they had put spyware on their 15-year-old son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s computer so they could monitor all he did online. At first I was repelled at this invasion of privacy. Now, after doing a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons-for-living","category-tech-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-98","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}