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Wed
May 18, '11
1
Grooming, aka Online Predator Behavior
Being in the industry of protecting families makes me more aware of issues like online predators than the average person. Curious whether I had an over inflated view of the issue, I randomly asked a 14 year old girl (whom I know) whether she has ever been approached by a strange man online. She responded by saying, "More than once." I have no statistical data to back up this claim, but I assume that for every report we hear in the news, there are substantially more cases of online stalking that haven't been detected or reported. For as much as we protect our kids from talking to strangers on the playground, it is equally important, if not more so, to teach our kids to not talk to strangers online.
I read an article posted in the beginning of the month (you can read it here), that tells a story of a man in Florida who picked up a girl in Nebraska to bring her back home. The lengths this predator went through are no less than shocking and a little scary. The story includes a list of tactics online predators use to "catch" the innocent and what parents can do to prevent this from happening. Following are a few points I found most relevant:
Predators' tools- Targeted sites: social networking, blogs, chat rooms, instant messaging, email, discussion boards
- Seduction techniques: attention, affection, kindness, gifts
- Building trust: familiar with pop culture of interest to kids
- Break down inhibitions: gradually introducing sexual content into conversations or share sexually explicit material
- Test the water: invite future face-to-face contact
- Education: Talk to your kids about sexual predators, potential online dangers, how to recognize them, and how to avoid them
- Parental Control Software: Make sure your parental control software includes monitoring and reports to help you see what your kids comed across online
- Follow the rules: Social networking sites require a minimum age for use. These guidelines are meant to keep your kids safe
- Chat rooms are not for every age: be sure you know which ones your kids are using
- Never allow your kids to enter a "private" chat room
- Keep computers in open areas of the home, and sit with your kids from time to time while they're online to see where they go
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Mon
May 16, '11
0
Android Anti-Virus or App Manager?
Shouldn't I protect my Android device from viruses, just like I do my PC?
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Tue
May 10, '11
1
YouTube loves Net Nanny
It's true. YouTube loves Net Nanny and hates all the other Internet filters. Here's why... most Internet filters on the market use a pre-determined list of sites that are either safe or not safe for kids. The good sites go on to a "white list" and the bad ones go on to a "blacklist." Imagine, having to categorize every new website as good or bad. That's how the majority of Internet filters still work.
Now imagine if there was a site that had both good stuff and bad stuff on it. Then you'd have to categorize on a page by page level (vs just blocking/allowing the full website). Such is the case with YouTube. There's tons of great stuff. But there's also a bunch of trash you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy. A lot of the Internet filters out there realize this is an impossible task, and so they just give you the option to block or allow all of YouTube. There's a couple brave Internet filters out there that attempt to categorize all pages, but they fail miserably.
And here goes YouTube, introducing their latest and greatest feature that returns a whole slew of new "exploration" results when you search for a video. It's a great feature. I'd explain it but it'd triple the of this already expanding blog post - so you can just read about it HERE.
YouTube and every other respected website is constantly changing their features and web pages. Keeping up with the changes is tough. Thus, we've built Net Nanny to intelligently look at the content of the webpage and block or allow pages dynamically, based upon the content, and not their url. Pretty smart huh? It works too - just take a look at the Net Nanny reviews.
Net Nanny. Loved by YouTube, loved by you too. -
Tue
May 3, '11
0
Pornography in Libraries
Earlier this week, the City Council of Los Angeles voted against filtering out pornography on its library computers. And, the Brooklyn Public Library publicly defended patrons' right to watch any content of their choosing at the library. What?!
This is a bad decision and sad indicator of where we are heading as a society. We push to protect First Amendment rights of porn-purveyors but forget that children, teens, librarians, and you and I will be potentially exposed to stuff we don't want to see. How much exposure to pornography is acceptable for a child? Zero tolerance is a good policy when you consider protecting the innocent. What about the child's right not to be exposed?
The public library isn't a place I have had to worry about being exposed to hard core images. Now, we are giving a green light to porn addicts to get their fix at the library -- at the expense of the tax payer. The porn industry's gotta be laughing all the way to the bank!
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Mon
Apr 25, '11
1
10 Statistics That Made Me Think Twice
As a Marketing Manager for ContentWatch I never fail to be surprised by interesting statistics about the internet, and this most recent batch is no exception. I came across these stats while reading an article entitled, "Kids give their parents the runround online." Take a look and see if this makes you as uncomfortable as it did me.
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Wed
Apr 13, '11
0
A Boost to Productivity?
I just read an article from www.dynamicbusiness.com entitled, "Website fitlering boosts staff productivity." The writer shares some pretty interesting statistics about cyberslacking in the workplace: 30-40% of internet use in the workplace is not related to business; and 37% of workers surf the web constantly while at work. As someone new to the business, I can't say this information is surprising despite the fact that it is shocking. The internet provides a quick and undetectable escape for employees from their regular workdays. The surprising thing I found on this page, however, was a link to a related article entitled, "Study proves surfing web boosts productivity." The author here sites a study done by the University of Melbourne, which claims to prove employees are more productive if they give themselves cyber breaks here and there, a practice dubbed, "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing." You can watch a YouTube interview with the leading professor here.
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Mon
Apr 11, '11
0
Only 23.9% of parental control programs actually monitor Social Networking activity
I recently read a great article on www.internetprovider.net about ways to protect your kids on Facebook. If you would like to read the article, you can find it here. I won't spend too much time discussing the ten points they go through, but I would like to focus on point number 6: “Invest in parental control software that monitors your child's internet activity.
Most parental control programs will monitor web activity, providing easy to read reports that reveal websites visited, etc., but only 23.9% of parental control programs I have personally reviewed actually monitor Social Networking activity. It is not good enough to know what social networking sites your kids are going to and when. As a parent it is important to know what those Facebook and Myspace conversations are about.
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Thu
Mar 31, '11
1
Learn To Cook With SPAM
As a lad, I had several opportunities to eat SPAM, most of which occurred on scout camps. I know, interesting how taking away your child's cell phone in today's world is child abuse and yet feeding children SPAM back in the day was not.
Because my experience with cooking SPAM is limited to dumping SPAM into a dutch oven with cream of mushroom soup and some green beans, I don't think I'm one to give any good advice on cooking with SPAM. If you did actually come to this blogpost hoping I'd make you a SPAM cooking connoisseur then I don't want you to go away un-fulfilled, so HERE's a link to some great SPAM recipes.
For those of you who'd like to figure out how you can decrease offers for discount Viagra and offers to claim your unknown Uncle Harry's jagnormous inheritance, read on. I'll attempt to teach you how to overcome that pesky spam problem that has overtaken your email box.
First off, we need to think like a spammer. Read this sentence three times: "I want to make a bunch of money for doing the least amount of work possible." If we can get a few million email addresses to send spam to, eventually we'll get some poor sap to click our link and give us their credit card number or bank account/SSN. Here are several cheap/easy ways we can harvest email addresses to send spam to:- Peddle porn. Porn is pervasively moving into homes across the nation. Never has it been so easy as it is now, with the recent release of the Interweb (side note - spammers are not the most educated folk... many of them probably do actually believe the Internet is called the 'Interweb' and that it was just released yesterday) to get pornographic images into the hands of unsuspecting men, women, and (agahst) even children. Because my cost to put up a website and offer porn on it is just a few bucks a year I'm going to put up 300 free porn sites. As individuals click on images I'm going to either a) infect their computer with a tiny software program that sends out spam to all their friends OR b) ask them to sign up with their email address to access the special "members only" section of my website. With 300 sites infecting computers and harvesting emails it's just a matter of months before I've got a few million emails addresses I can send to.
- Give away a free iPad for being the 1 millionth visitor of a website. There are still enough sheep out there that haven't heard of my crazy email stealing tactics that I can still offer free iPads (that I'll never actually send) to the 1 millionth website visitor (oh darn, looks like I didn't program this website correctly so it is somehow thinking every visitor is the 1 millionth) if they just enter their email address. I should be able to get a ton of email addresses from this too.
- Search the web for publicly visible email addresses. I'll just buy a cheap program to search through the web looking for email addresses that are publicly visible. This takes a little more effort but is sure to bring in a bunch of email addresses too.
- Post something of interest on Facebook. That's right... by simply posting something attention grabbing, such as "Wow, I can't believe Britney Spears is buying that new handbag" (yes, there are actually people out there who would find that interesting) and linking it to a fake Facebook page that harvests login credentials I can likely use those same login credentials to access other accounts of theirs - gaining more than just an email address, but also access to all the email addresses in their contact book.
- And the list goes on...
- Don't look at porn. Installing an Internet filter will greatly decrease the chance that someone in your household will visit a site that is infected with a virus or is harvesting email addresses. Even if you don't feel like shelling out a few bucks needed to get the advanced protection of Net Nanny, you should at least have something - take a look at some of the free Internet filtering solutions out there.
- If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Don't fall for it. If you want to take advantage of some offer that may sound too good to be true then use an old email address you are willing to receive spam in - and be extra attentive to NEVER give away any personal info to any site you do not know 100% as being legit.
- Don't put your email address online. Wonder why companies most often have "contact us" forms instead of just listing their email address? Because they don't want to get spammed. Never type your email address into forums, blog comments, social networking, etc. If you do, it will likely be made publicly viewable, and your email account will see a jump in spam.
- Be careful of what you click on. If you get an email from a friend's Facebook account with updates, or from your bank telling you about a new product be sure to not click links in the email to get to the offer. If it's a legitimate company you should be able to go straight to their site (via typing their web address in the url box at the top of your browser) and find the same offer or update.
- Protect yourself. Get Net Nanny.
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Tue
Mar 29, '11
17
Playing By the Rules on iOS
If you're alive and have children, you've probably at least been asked about an iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) or Android device. After all, they're very neat and can do lots of fun things. But if you're visiting the Net Nanny website, you're also concerned that some of the things those devices can do are not so good.
We've announced a new release of our mobile tools that will bring our incredible dynamic filtering technology to these top of the line mobile devices, including Android and iOS. With those announcements, some customers have written in to make sure we're going to get it right. One customer wrote in our forums:
"I have found that several miscellaneous apps have an 'embedded browser' that can be accessed through advertisements, FAQ, etc. These browsers essentially allow you to get around any filtering... Are your developers aware of this and will the Net Nanny Iphone app address this issue?"
This issue has been at the forefront of our development conversations, so don't think we're not aware of it. That said, there is sadly not a lot we can do about it. Apple has always taken the approach that when they sell you a product, it is a work of art that should be beautiful and sufficient as-is for their users to use. iOS devices are no different. Because of that, as well as insistence from cell phone carriers no doubt, iOS is pretty restrictive in terms of what you're allowed to do as an app programmer.
Within iOS, Apple lets apps do certain things. One thing they do not let apps do is watch other apps and intercept internet traffic to other apps. Their reasons for doing this are more than just keeping apps under their control. Imagine you had an app from your bank on your phone and a neat Sudoku app you downloaded yesterday was allowed to peek into the bank app and send your account information to someone in another country? So, we do need to limit what apps can do. Unfortunately, to Apple, all apps are created equal, so Net Nanny will have the same restrictions as any other app. So our iOS product will be the Net Nanny browser for iOS. Just as Apple doesn't let us watch what other apps are doing, we can't even watch what the built-in Mobile Safari in iOS is doing. So the only thing Apple will let us do is make our own web browser that will have filtering built in.
I know that will disappoint many people, including us- we hate that it's not the ideal solution, but that's all we can do for iOS devices. Unless Apple changes their app policies just for Net Nanny. Which I doubt.
Basically, you paid for it, but Apple still makes the rules there and we have to follow those rules just like everyone else. Sadly, security and privacy concerns on the device mean that it's more difficult to keep the device safe from objectionable content.
Apple does provide a simple way to lock down iOS devices under Settings > General > Restrictions. Details are at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4213 (Also be sure to lock down iTunes- http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1904)
Those restrictions together with our Net Nanny browser will do a lot to protect individuals while online on their iOS devices.
For Android devices there are similar problems but the carriers have more say in the Android devices that connect to their network. We have developed a new app for Android (not released yet!) that is capable of filtering the whole device and we're talking with manufacturers and carriers to try to get lower level access and provide real filtering there. Keep your fingers crossed!
Don't worry. We're not satisfied and we will keep pushing to do everything we possibly can to protect your devices. -
Thu
Mar 24, '11
1
New Awards - Live From CTIA 2011
Well, I've spent the week at CTIA Wireless in Orlando showing off our newest beta versions of our Net Nanny Mobile and CP Pro Mobile products with some revolutionary technology for Android (we also have an iPhone version coming out this Summer).
Traffic has been steady as people (especially at CTIA, the world's largest wireless technology conference) are very interested in protecting smartphones and tablets. We've done a LOT of demos.
And one demo in particular paid extra dividends.
Laptop Magazine gave us their Best Business App award over everything shown at CTIA for the soon to be released ContentProtect Professional for Android.
Yay us.
No, really, we are very proud of the award, and we are very excited about the direction we are going with our Mobile product line, especially on Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch). Expect to see cool stuff coming out from ContentWatch in 2011 for both business customers and home users. We are committed to protecting people on the Internet, whether they surf from a PC, Mac, or from a smartphone or tablet.
Stay tuned for even better things.
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