Posts Tagged ‘children’

If you’re at a loss about how to monitor what your child says online, a new service called SafetyWeb can help. The service, which has a monthly or annual cost, scans the web for public information about your child.

You can search the web in a myriad of ways to find most of the information this service offers, but searching can be time-consuming and needs to be constantly repeated. This service scours social networking sites, photo sites and other sites to see what is said by and about your kids. Parents are sent alerts about their child’s activities online – not just a summary of activity, but also looking for patterns and irregularities.

SafetyWeb also provides a free summary of services your child subscribes to simply by entering your child’s email address. The read-out will also tell you if they have public or private profiles. Even this free information can help parents start a discussion about public information and privacy with their kids.

Though this service cannot tell you what information your child is sharing in private – for example, protected Facebook status updates – it can go a long way to keeping you informed on the security and privacy of your child.

The Broadband Data Improvement Act (S.1492) was recently signed into Federal law. The legislation that would improve the collection of data on broadband availability and fund greater access to high-speed Internet access. As part of the new legislation, schools receiving the e-Rate discounts on telecommunications services will soon be required to teach students about online safety.

The e-Rate program provides discounts for schools of 20-90% for telecommunication services including Internet access. The proposed Broadband Data Improvement Act, introduced by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, has a provision that would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish a nationwide campaign to “increase public awareness and provide education regarding strategies to promote the safe use of the Internet by children.”

Originally, a separate bill entitled ‘Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act’, was proposed to congress. The Senate Commerce Committee merged the language of this bill into the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which has now become law. The new law recognizes that education must go hand-in-hand with technology to protect children from online predators.

The Online Safety and Technology Working Group was established, under the legislation, to evaluate online safety education efforts, parental control technologies, and much more. In addition, a section of the Act requires that schools create an Internet safety policy that educates minors “about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response.”

I think it is great that steps are being taken to increase the awareness of online safety issues for children.

Via eschoolnews, eweek, consumer affairs, cnet ; Image: Microsoft Office Clipart / iStockphoto.com