E238 CA: Safer Surfing For Kids: Trouble Shooting 2005

Safer Surfing For Kids by P C SURGEON Source: Mundaring Magazine June 2004: 22
The Internet is dangerous enough for unaware adults. It’s even worse for unsupervised youngsters. Profiles suggest that between the ages of twelve and twenty-five hackers and virus writers sit at their PCs in their rooms, isolated, unsupervised, without many friends and rarely go out. They often have poor literacy, are inadequate communicators yet mathematically and technologically they're very able. They have a major chip - “nobody love me so I hate the world.” Writing viruses - (look up “Script Kiddies”in Google, would you?) and hacking are payback activities. Plenty of tutorials for them on the net. They soon learn. So it’s just not the ankle-biters needing your on-line supervision. Many adolescents often need mature guidance the most. When’s the last time you checked the contents of their hard drive? If s/he ends up on a copyright violation charge (mainly because of music file sharing) would it come as a complete surprise to you? 1. The best strategy is to surf with your child. You can then anticipate problems, monitor what they see, do and hear, and explain risks. More importantly, you know what they are up to. 2. Put their PC in the family room rather than in their bedroom. 3. Establish some guidelines, especially for time spent on the computer. Surely common sense says fitness levels and eye health must be linked to time spent hunched in front of a PC. 4. If you have XP then give your child their own Limited User account. Always ensure you are the Administrator. 5. Visit GetNetWise to help you choose appropriate filtering software. 6. Also use Internet Explorer’s Content Advisor—a valuable tool that most parents seem to ignore. Click Tool/Internet Options. Now click the General Tab to set a Supervisor Password. Click the Content Tab, then Enable. You can now restrict sites based on language, nudity, sex and violence. Each slider bar offers five options to hep you define appropriate levels of restriction. They won’t be able to make changes if you keep the Supervisor Password from them. Click the Approved Sites Tab to add sites that are never viewable. This is one reason why you must surf with your child—so you know what must be blocked from them in future. SAFER SURFING FOR YOU Spyware is software installed on your PC without your knowledge. You now have a “live” server on your PC sending information about you and your surfing habits to a remote location, for later retrieval by whoever controls the spyware. There’s surveillance spyware and advertising spyware. Surveillance software includes screen capture devices and trojans—also key loggers that record your keystrokes and send them back to the mothership. Why? Well, think credit card.... Advertising spyware is software installed alongside other software or via Active-x controls on the Internet.	It’s usually without your knowledge, or without full disclosure that it will be used for gathering personal information and/or showing the user adverts. Advertising spyware logs information about the user, possibly including passwords, email addresses, web browsing history, online buying habits, the computer’s hardware and software configurations, the name, age, sex, etc. of the user. Sinister, isn’t it? What do they do with this information? To whom do they sell it? And why? As with spam, advertising spyware uses the CPU, RAM, and resources of the user’s computer, making the user pay for the costs associated with operating it.

Safer Surfing For Kids
by P C SURGEON
Source: Mundaring Magazine
June 2004: 22

The Internet is dangerous enough for unaware adults. It’s even worse for unsupervised youngsters. Profiles suggest that between the ages of twelve and twenty-five hackers and virus writers sit at their PCs in their rooms, isolated, unsupervised, without many friends and rarely go out. They often have poor literacy, are inadequate communicators yet mathematically and technologically they're very able.
They have a major chip - “nobody love me so I hate the world.” Writing viruses - (look up “Script Kiddies”in Google, would you?) and hacking are payback activities. Plenty of tutorials for them on the net. They soon learn.

So it’s just not the ankle-biters needing your on-line supervision. Many adolescents often need mature guidance the most. When’s the last time you checked the contents of their hard drive? If s/he ends up on a copyright violation charge (mainly because of music file sharing) would it come as a complete surprise to you?

1. The best strategy is to surf with your child. You can then anticipate problems, monitor what they see, do and hear, and explain risks. More importantly, you know what they are up to.

2. Put their PC in the family room rather than in their bedroom.

3. Establish some guidelines, especially for time spent on the computer. Surely common sense says fitness levels and eye health must be linked to time spent hunched in front of a PC.

4. If you have XP then give your child their own Limited User account. Always ensure you are the Administrator.

5. Visit GetNetWise to help you choose appropriate filtering software.

6. Also use Internet Explorer’s Content Advisor—a valuable tool that most parents seem to ignore. Click Tool/Internet Options. Now click the General Tab to set a Supervisor Password. Click the Content Tab, then Enable. You can now restrict sites based on language, nudity, sex and violence. Each slider bar offers five options to hep you define appropriate levels of restriction.

They won’t be able to make changes if you keep the Supervisor Password from them. Click the Approved Sites Tab to add sites that are never viewable. This is one reason why you must surf with your child—so you know what must be blocked from them in future.
SAFER SURFING FOR YOU
Spyware is software installed on your PC without your knowledge. You now have a “live” server on your PC sending information about you and your surfing habits to a remote location, for later retrieval by whoever controls the spyware.

There’s surveillance spyware and advertising spyware. Surveillance software includes screen capture devices and trojans—also key loggers that record your keystrokes and send them back to the mothership. Why? Well, think credit card....

Advertising spyware is software installed alongside other software or via Active-x controls on the Internet.

It’s usually without your knowledge, or without full disclosure that it will be used for gathering personal information and/or showing the user adverts. Advertising spyware logs information about the user, possibly including passwords, email addresses, web browsing history, online buying habits, the computer’s hardware and software configurations, the name, age, sex, etc. of the user. Sinister, isn’t it? What do they do with this information? To whom do they sell it? And why?
As with spam, advertising spyware uses the CPU, RAM, and resources of the user’s computer, making the user pay for the costs associated with operating it.

E238 CA: Trouble Shooting Safer Surfing For Kids 2005

E238 CA: Trouble Shooting
Safer Surfing For Kids 2005