Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Keep a track of what your kids are doing
What concerns me the most sometimes is the way parents use technologies as baby sitters to keep the kids occupied while they do something else. What I mean is parent who also doesn’t care what their kids watch on tv or do on the internet.
When you work on an internet helpdesk you often get calls from customers who have racked up a $1200 dollar bill from surfing no credit card needed porn sites. Of course the customer is mortified to find out this is what has happen and deny such doing. But what usually is the case is the young son aged 13 to 15 who is just discovering girls and a sexual interest in them starts surfing those websites and thinks nothing of the warning of content and the warnings of the cost of these sites and the parents only find out when the phone bill rocks in.
Another thing that annoyed me greatly was when a customer turned up with a computer full of pop up advertisements or spyware that you usually only get from surfing porn sites. I mean this computer was chokers with them as well as having an internet browser cache full of stuff that would not pass Australian censorship laws. Again, it turned out to be the teenage son surfing these sites.
But what also frightens me is parents are not taking an interest in their kids to find out who they are talking to on the internet in chat rooms, on instant private messaging and what websites they are going to. Parents need to talk to their kids about the internet and make them internet savvy and streetwise. Last year 2003 there were a number of cases of older males preying on teenage girls through chat rooms and instant messaging programs and some of these ended in sad circumstances.
Talk to your kids, make them understand the internet is a fun place to be on but you need to make some rules for them to follow.
When you work on an internet helpdesk you often get calls from customers who have racked up a $1200 dollar bill from surfing no credit card needed porn sites. Of course the customer is mortified to find out this is what has happen and deny such doing. But what usually is the case is the young son aged 13 to 15 who is just discovering girls and a sexual interest in them starts surfing those websites and thinks nothing of the warning of content and the warnings of the cost of these sites and the parents only find out when the phone bill rocks in.
Another thing that annoyed me greatly was when a customer turned up with a computer full of pop up advertisements or spyware that you usually only get from surfing porn sites. I mean this computer was chokers with them as well as having an internet browser cache full of stuff that would not pass Australian censorship laws. Again, it turned out to be the teenage son surfing these sites.
But what also frightens me is parents are not taking an interest in their kids to find out who they are talking to on the internet in chat rooms, on instant private messaging and what websites they are going to. Parents need to talk to their kids about the internet and make them internet savvy and streetwise. Last year 2003 there were a number of cases of older males preying on teenage girls through chat rooms and instant messaging programs and some of these ended in sad circumstances.
Talk to your kids, make them understand the internet is a fun place to be on but you need to make some rules for them to follow.
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 12:56 AM 
