It can happen to you……….52 minutes of proof last night
Know what your kids are doing on the computer and who their friends are.
Well, I thought I would never be sending out a blog about chatting, emailing etc. I figured being in the IT world and having put all the precautions would ensure my household was safe from all predators. I can tell you I was wrong and these people are very sneaky. Let me back up and tell you that my children do not have a MySpace or a facebook account. The only thing they did have was a Gmail account to communicate with family members. My children were very clear on how the emailing was to be used and that I would be able to log in at anytime to see their emails.
Okay, now this brings me to the statement – it can happen to you. Last night I was with my daughter and I asked if she would come sit down with me so we could look at her email account and she said fine. So we logged in and everything was fine until all these windows starting popping up and she panicked. What is this dad? I told her it was some of her contacts chatting. I don’t chat dad, so why is this happening? After further review of checking some of her past communications with the participants that were chatting with each other, she was correct and telling the TRUTH. There are tricks to find out what your children are doing online but I will not share that on this blog.
My daughter and I watched how that chatting continued to progress and we were able to see people jump on and off of the chat session. We were about to jump off her email account until her name started getting mentioned by some of the people that had her email address. WOW what an eye opener this was for my child to see what even friends are saying about her. The sad thing is my daughter never did anything to start the chatting, all she was doing was checking her email.
As this was going on I mentioned that other people and even strangers could join a chat and start talking or just watch the conversation going on. Within 3 minutes of me making the statement, a person with a weird name logged on. My daughter immediately panicked and said, who is this dad? She didn’t know this person! By the way, my daughter only has 7 contacts in her email account so it was easy to see it was someone she didn’t know. Anyways, I told her we would watch and see what people do with this person being online. Well, as I expected, the other kids started questioning this person’s identity. Once people caught on that this was someone they didn’t know each one started logging out of their account. Parents you can see when people log in and off. Oh did I mention that this chatting went on for 52 minutes straight?
Okay so here are some of the details you need to be aware of:
You need to understand what you are allowing your children to get involved in when it comes to the Internet.
Last nights 52 minutes of chatting was done using a FREE GMAIL account from Google. Do you realize how many people have a GMAIL account? Millions and Millions
It might seem simple and not a big deal to let your kid have an email address, but guess what, last night proved to me that it isn’t just an email address. It is a lighter version of a SOCAIAL NETWORK and these kids know the ins and outs of it.
It isn’t just Goggle. You have Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook and so may others available for our children to be exposed to. The biggest one of all is texting. Get involved with what your kids are doing before it is too late.
Oh yeah, when you decide they are going to have supervised computer usage, that is only the start. Everything they can do on the computer with Gmail and chatting they can also do on their phone. The reason they want that cool new phone with a keyboard is so they can text. But it is also so they can chat and text online at lightening speed. Sorry to be so open, but it is TRUE.
In fact, during my research I found that the average child has 3 email accounts and parents are not even aware they have one. The reason they have so many accounts is that they will have one account that the parents know about and they send basic emails back and forth with. The other accounts have chatting capabilities enabled and they are using this account to chat and the parents have no clue. The biggest problem is that they are so easy to setup, and you have no idea.
My suggestion is to install a firewall and security system on your computers or network at home and remove the access to these other providers. It get’s worse when you allow Facebook and MySpace into your family. If you need assistance give me a reply back at helpdesk@resourceflex.net and I can hook you up with someone that can secure your computer so that you are limiting your household from potential preditors.
This is a major problem and you really need to WAKE UP and watch what your children are doing when they are on the computer. We monitor all of our children’s time on the computer. Keep them safe!
