Our kids & the Internet

[sheila]

This quote got me thinking about our kids & the Internet:
A guy on his way to work every morning would see a little boy, maybe five or six years old, waiting alone at a bus stop. The man was bothered by this for a few days because he never saw this boy with an adult. So one day he finally stopped and gave the little boy a note to take home to his mother. The note read: I'm not a bad person, but I got close enough to your child to give him this note. The next time he might not be so lucky. The man reported that every day after that, the little boy's mother was sitting next to him at the bus stop.
It makes me think of a news story I saw a while ago where someone (I don't remember if it was a Police Officer or an Internet/Kids Organization) did something similar. They went into chat rooms and talked to kids, posing as another child. When the kid had given them enough information, they went to the child's house and talked to the parents explaining that they had found them through the info the kid had offered in the chat.

They brought the transcript of the chat to show the parents that even though the kid hadn't broken any of the typical rules (don't give out your phone number, address & a few other key pieces of information) they could be identified with a little bit of research. Some of the information that made it easy for them to get were little things like the weather & what kind of coat (etc) they had, the names of sports teams that they played on/rooted for and little things like that.

So now I wonder... will you (or do you) allow your child access to the Internet, and how do you plan to protect them from the bad people that are out there? Do you think there is any way to really do it? Or do you think that the hype is bigger than the rislks involved?

[SarahK]

Yikes, Sheila--I never would have thought about stuff like sports teams and weather reports as giving away information...but you're right, that sort of stuff could tip a criminal off to a location.

We've started talking about this issue. So far all we've determined is that our children will not have a computer in their bedroom and whatever computer the children are allowed to have access to will be in a public space (like the family room) where it is easy for us to walk by and see what they are doing. (We'll have a different computer with financial stuff and other private information in an office--off limits to children.)

[Dennis]

That's pretty interesting Sheila. Aside from keeping the computers in "public" areas, I'm not sure what we're going to do yet.

Dennis

[Barb]

First of all, I can't believe that woman needed a note from a stranger for her to realize that a five or six year old shouldn't be at the bus stop by themselves. :rolleyes:

As for the internet, I hadn't thought about it yet. As Dennis said we'll probably just keep the computer in a public area and keep an eye on what's he's doing.

[kim]

my sister has kids ages 14 (almost 15! where did my baby go?!), 12 and 8 and has been dealing with this for a few years.

with her kids it's AIM.

she watches them like a hawk. my niece (the 14yr old) had issues a few years ago, my sister found out she was talking to strangers on AIM, basically she took the computer away from her and told her about 'bad people on the internet' etc. she hasn't had any problems since.

i think education before they start using the net is key :nod:

[sheila]

AIM is the thing that scares me because its so hard to know what's really going on without watching everything. A year or so ago, my 14-15 yr old nephew had a phone number in his away message. It was a friends house, and he said "don't worry about calling, the parents aren't home" :errr:

I flipped! Called the number, asked to speak to the parents (who really weren't home) then asked to talk to my nephew and tried to explain why it was a really dangerous thing to do. Afterwards, I called his mom to tell her about it & why it was a REALLY bad thing, but she didn't quite get it. I mean, she did, but it just didn't seem like a *real* threat to her... like a stranger pulling up to one of her kids in a car. :dunno: I couldn't think of a way to explain it to her.

We'll be keeping the computers in public areas as well. Hopefully, we'll be able to provide the kids enough education to keep them safe. And, hopefully, we'll be able to keep current enough with technology to have the information we need to know what/where the dangers are.

[Dawnie]

Jim and I talked about this after seeing a report on it (sounds like the one Sheila watched too). Our kids will not have a computer in their room and will have to use it in a "public" place in the house. Parental controls on their log ons will also be in place. As they get older we may modify those rules but not until they understand why we are taking such precautions to protect them and they can be trusted to act responsibly.

Dawn

[AahRee]

The house we're buying has a loft area upstairs, and there is no door to it, so we'll keep the computer there. Other than supervision and teaching Katie not to talk to strangers, online or otherwise, I'm not sure what else we really can do. Isn't there some way you can restrict who is able to AIM them? I know you can restrict your incoming email to a certain list of people. Why couldn't you do that with AIM? If that was possible, I'd just make sure I had approved anyone she was AIM'ing with, and would check periodically to be sure no new names had popped up. :dunno:

[happysmileylady]

Caiti has a computer in her room, but it's not connected to the internet. The computer connected to the net is the one in our loft/den area and currently she is only allowed to go to a website that Dan or I look at first. She is only eight, so it's not a problem right now. I have every intention of checking out history etc as she gets older. I might even buy one of those spyware programs for that sort of thing.