Know Their ONLINE World

In our continued effort  to help parents protect their children from on-line dangers, we feel it is important to engage and cooperate with other groups that are also committed to keeping kids safe. And there are plenty of them…

For example, here is a link to a recent news story out of Virginia where local police are committed to making parents aware of the true dangers that exist on-line and at the same time explain to them how important it is to “know their world”…and while government agencies don’t endorse commercial products, I can’t help but think these fine officers wouldn’t love the assistance imView provides parents.

 http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=94746&paper=62&cat=104

But our efforts don’t stop there. Getting a great tool like imView in the hands of parents is job one, but we also feel it is important to give these other committed groups the tools they need to help protect your children. That is why imView has partnered with the national predator database and created a imView predator mapping tool that local municipalities, law enforcement, and schools can use (or even place on their own site) to help provide awareness of the location of all registered sex offenders in their area. You can find this powerful resource here: http://www.imview.net/predator-map.htm

If you go to www.imview.net you’ll see a new service that allows you to protect you children from online predators and cyber bullies. The site is easy-to-use and allows you to:

• monitor instant messaging and chat
• view received and sent emails
• see web addresses and pages visited
• customize settings and filters

www.imview.net offers a straight forward and simple dashboard that makes accessing information easy.  imView’s mission is to provide parent’s with a tool that is easy, inexpensive and robust in its monitoring capabilities.

To tell or not to tell, this is the question While in the process of installing technology to protect my twelve year old daughter from online predators, I am faced with the question of whether to tell her about of the installation or not.  My daughter is a “good kid”, smart, IM savvy, athletic, social, naive, impressionable and more.  When I approached my ex-wife with the notion of telling my daughter, the reaction was quite surprising and forceful, commenting; if your attempting to find out why our daughter is acting strange or secretive, why would you ever let her know you have the capability of viewing her IM’s?  She added, if our daughter suddenly disappears for several hours, suggesting that she has gone to the Mall, you can check and perhaps see that she has gone elsewhere.  OK, I understand; but isn’t it potentially more effective to have a “partnership: with my daughter?  What if I suggest to her that there is a protection tool on her computer; protecting her from predators?  What if my partnership is true and I don’t look at all her online conversations (I really don’t have the interest or time).  If my daughter trusts me, haven’t I created a new level of awareness that leads to a greater level of protection?  

Several months ago, Cox Cummunication stated that, “One in five children who go online are approached by an online predator.”  I recently heard a comment that challenged the Cox statement as being, “out of context”, suggesting the number is overstated and actually much lower.  Last week, I spoke with law enforcement involved in computer sex crimes (online predators) and when presented with the Cox statistic, they commented, “that is very low.”  To date, in my family we have had two out of five children approached by a potential online predator; one with a ten year old while in www.clubpenguin.com; and the other with a fifteen year old while in www.myspace.com.  The dangers are real and the incidence are expanding.  We look forward to delivering relevent  and timely information, so that we can know and protect their world.