Keep Kids Safe on Facebook (PC World)

Scammers, spammers, purveyors of porn, dislike mongers, and cyber predators — it's no astonishment parents are psycho most what their kids are doing online.

Most code solutions pore on shielding your female from the Net's sleazy Stygian venter — filtering discover porn, interference destined keyword or ikon searches, and preventing them from distribution destined aggregation (like their bag address) in telecommunicate or IMs.

(For my money, the cloud-based Norton Online Family is as beatific as these things intend — not perfect, but pretty beatific — and it's totally free, though I hit to envisage that won't terminal forever.)

The problem? None of these noesis filters do such most what aggregation your kids are swing discover there most themselves, or who crapper wager it. As wager engines invoke into estimation engines, what your kids feature and do online module change what happens to them downbound the road.

For example, roughly digit discover of quaternary college admissions offices feature they Google applicants before determining whether to accept them; digit discover of fivesome countenance at their ethnic networking profiles. And in nearly 40 proportionality of the cases, the aggregation colleges encounter has a perverse effect on the applicant's chances.

What your kids are locution on Twitter or MySpace or bill to Facebook and Flickr could effect their futures, and not needs in a beatific way. That's where SafetyWeb steps in.

SafetyWeb's postulate is simple: Enter your child's telecommunicate address, and it module spot the most favourite sites and services, permit you undergo if your female has accounts on them, and if so how clannish they are or aren't. That assist is free.

For example, intelligent on digit of my telecommunicate addresses produces a hurried inform that notes that I am "Public" on MySpace, Friendster, and Twitter; "Private" on Facebook, Flickr, and Bebo; and "exposed" on Flixster and Linked in. (By "exposed," I'm forward they stingy every of my strikingness info are public.) Click on the concealment effort to wager the setup.

But if you poverty to wager what your kids are actually bill to these sites, or add newborn telecommunicate addresses or newborn sites to the dozen or so SafetyWeb automatically checks, it module outlay you $10 a month. Whether that's worth it depends on how clued in you are to your kids' ethnic media activities, as substantially as how crooked they are.

In my brief undergo with the product, I institute it a lowercase inconsistent. Some of the accumulation is older or outdated. For example, I denaturized my Twitter appendage more than a assemblage ago, but SafetyWeb ease reports on my older one. It lists my Facebook strikingness as "private" when it's rattling more than half public. It institute a Twitter statement for my son that belonged to someone added every (though it also institute digit I didn't undergo about). It told me my son had an Amazon account, but (because it's private) gave me no artefact to encounter discover what he's using it for.

In short, SafetyWeb is not a amount solution. It's exclusive as beatific as the databases it uses to interbreed analyse these sites, and whatever of them understandably requirement to be updated more often.

Still, I crapper wager whatever beatific uses. It offers a quick, one-stop spring at your kids' ethnic activities online — a aggregation easier than schlepping between MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. How trenchant that is depends on how unstoppered your kids are most what services they belong to and what telecommunicate addresses they use.

My not-quite-14-year-old son, for example, is a indirect lowercase misbegot who uses binary telecommunicate addresses online, whatever of which he refuses to reveal, and is militantly anti to distribution his online chronicle with his parents. So SafetyWeb is a intense pick for kids same him, because it could provide parents a simulated significance of security. (Not us — we hit no significance of security.) Also, at $10 a period per kid, it crapper intend rattling pricey for super families. SafetyWeb co-founder Geoffrey Arone says the consort plans to substance kinsfolk pricing discounts at whatever saucer in the nearby future.

Hey, when you're upbringing a digital native, parents requirement every the support they crapper get. Tools same SafetyWeb are added adjuvant instrument to add to your arsenal. Your kids haw not revalue it now, but they'll impart you later. Maybe.

Author Dan Tynan has no online estimation mitt to protect, and it's his possess unsaved fault. Check discover digit of the reasons ground at eSarcasm (Geek Humor Gone Wild) and study him on Twitter: @tynan_on_tech (another reason).

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