News for the Week of May 22, 2005

The top story this week was about us — parents of online kids — and how much we're monitoring our children's instant-messaging, blogging, emailing, online gameplay, etc. There was also an important PC-security reminder this week, in the form of a new IM-borne worm capitalizing on the Star Wars Episode 3's arrival in theaters...

Kids in Cyberspace

Nearly half of US parents keep tabs on their kids' online activities daily or weekly, according to a survey just released by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and cable Internet provider Cox Communications. The other half (51%) "say they don't have monitoring software on household computers that teenagers use or don't know whether their computers have such software," CNET reports, and 42% don't review what their teenagers are "saying" in chat rooms or instant-messaging (58% say they do). In other findings...

  • 28% of parents "don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online."
  • 30% allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house, e.g. a bedroom or home office.
  • As for the lingo/acronyms kids use in IM, 57% of parents don't know "LOL" (laughing out loud), 68% don't know "BRB" (be right back), 92% don't know "A/S/L" (age/sex/location, which kids shouldn't give out online), and 95% don't know "POS" (parent over shoulder) or "P911" (parent alert).

For monitoring help, here's a thorough survey by the Providence Journal of monitoring and other online-safety tools and services available to parents. For more on tech aids for parents, type versions of the words "filtering," "monitor," etc. into a NetFamilyNews.org search box (at the top of any page), or go to GetNetWise.org's tools page.

Beware the "Star Wars" worm.

This is a really good time to remind IM-ers at your house not to click on links in IMs, even if they look like friends sent them. The new worm targets AIM users and comes in a message that goes something like, "hehe, i found this funny movie," with the word "this" a link, CNET reports. If an IM-er clicks on the link, they download the worm, which then sends itself to everyone on his/her buddy list (that's why the IM looks like it's coming from a friend). The best way to check is, before clicking on anything, to open a separate "conversation" with that buddy and ask if s/he sent the IM. If s/he either says no or is off-line, the IM is bad news - log off and start over. For more on this, see "IM tips from a tech-savvy dad"). Also this week, a Star Wars phishing attack on Yahoo Messenger users. The link in the Yahoo IM goes to a site that is designed to look like a real Yahoo Web site but is actually a phishing scam to steal people's Yahoo user name and password, CNET says. These are just the latest in a growing number of IM-borne scams and attacks, CNET adds.

In Other News...

  • Keep that PC patched! A malicious hacker group is "trying to extort money from Microsoft Windows users" by scrambling text files on our PCs so we can't read them, then telling us we need to pay $200 for a computer program that will unscramble them, the Washington Post reports. Your PC is only vulnerable if it's not up-to-date with its security patches, because these guys are exploiting a nearly year-old security flaw in the Internet Explorer browser. To check, just go to Windows Update with Explorer and have it check your system for critical updates, then tell it to install any necessary patches.
  • Video games' upside. "Smart" is reached by two kinds of learning, suggests Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling "The Tipping Point" and now "Blink," in a book review in the New Yorker: the textbook kind most parents and educators are comfortable with ("explicit learning") and the kind that today's media, including video games, teach: "collateral learning." See Gladwell's arresting piece for more (see also "TV makes us smarter?!" at Net Family News).
  • New Net-ed course for families. Logically and conveniently, it's on the Web. The $3, one-hour online course is based on the book "Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids," by dad and computer-security expert Winn Schwartau. Here's his company's press release about it and here's the course. The $3 is per individual, with "deep discounts" for schools (works for grades 7-12 as well as for families).
  • Eat well, receive iPod ... or an Xbox, movie tickets, and other prizes. That's the message from Glasgow's school-meals service to all students in the city's 29 secondary schools, The Scotsman reports. It says "the award-winning Fuel Zone Points Rewards Scheme aims to promote a good diet among teenage pupils, with those who choose a healthy option rewarded with points which go towards prizes, such as iPod music players, Xbox computer consoles, tickets for the cinema and book tokens." A good thing, considering the fact that "the deep-fried Mars bar, served with a side order of fries, threatens to usurp the haggis as Scotland's best-known dish," National Geographic News. But will they internalize the message?! ;-)