What to do with a Sext

April 6, 2012 Leave a comment

Do your kids know what to do if they open their phone to find that someone has sent them a sext message?

Forwarding nude or suggestive pictures – whether it’s meant to be sexy, funny, or mean – has become a pastime of middle and high school kids. How do you keep your kids safe if a sext appears on their phone?

Keeping a sext – even if your child didn’t ask for it or know that it was coming, even if he or she plan to delete it later – is a huge mistake. If the person in the picture is a minor, your child could be slapped with child pornography charges. Sext uKnowkids

Forwarding a sext is an even bigger mistake. Not only does it open up the person in the image to further humiliation, but it exposes your child to the double charge of possessing and distributing child pornography.

Want to keep your kids safe from scary charges like these? Tell them that the best thing to do with a sext is to hit “delete” immediately. Don’t show a friend, just get rid of it.

Of course I like to be in the know so I would want my kids to tell me after the fact. But the most important thing is to delete it – both for their sake and for the sake of the subject of the sext.

When we give our kids technology that makes sexting possible, I think supervision is really important (Note I didn’t say spying on your kids by reading their text messages while they sleep). For most parents, I would suggest investing in a Parental Intelligence System. The best ones in the market will allow you to monitor text messages in addition to social networks. Naturally I would recommend uKnowKids.com to any parent who may be looking for a smart tool to augment their parenting efforts.

Filed under General, Mobile, Sexting Tagged with , ,

Australian Teacher Fired for Sexting 15-Year-Old Student

December 12, 2011 1 Comment

Jeffrey Stanley Hughes of Australia had his teacher registration canceled by the Queensland Civil Administration Tribunal earlier this month for sexting a 15-year-old student.

The investigation looked into the 39-year-old teacher’s relationship with a female student whom he had been assigned by the school to help through some difficult family issues. The student had also babysat for Hughes and his wife three times.

Hughes and the girl exchanged over 1,000 text messages a month, which included inappropriate content and plans for a sexual relationship. Friends of the girl also reported seeing the two kiss three times.

The teacher will have his teacher registration revoked and will be ineligible to reapply for registration for three years. After that time he may reapply to teach in public school again.

These types of issues are hitting the news on what seems to be a regular basis and it underscores the important of parents staying engaged with what our kids are doing online and on their mobile phone. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with tips for preventing sexting and be sure to talk to your kids early and often about making safer, smarter choices. It is better to have the discussion too many times versus not enough.

 

Filed under Legal, Sexting, Text Messaging Tagged with , ,

Cyberbullying, Sexting, and Fighting: What Is the School’s Responsibility?

August 26, 2011 1 Comment

Legislators often demand that schools take more responsibility for students who engage in cyberbullying, sexting, or posting fight videos on the Internet – even when it doesn’t happen in school or during school hours. One major question many parents are asking themselves is: can a school possibly police their students’ online lives? And even if they can, should they?

Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that schools can discipline their students for activities that occur on their own time away from campus, as long as the activities are “disruptive” or “dangerous” to the school or student body. So if a student’s online conduct poses a threat to the school or other students (a subjective judgement), they can be punished.

What about the first question? Do schools even have the capability to monitor their student’s digital citizenship? Teachers and school administrators are often overworked and overburdened as it is, unable to find the time (or the money) to comb the Internet to keep tabs on their students. How is any single entity expected to keep an eye on something as vast as the Internet, in addition to its regular 9-to-5 job of educating our children?

Australian independent schools have recently made headlines by using an online intelligence company to help them monitor their students’ public posts on Facebook, admitting that they can’t keep up with it all on their own. Some view the activity as a waste of taxpayer money, while others are outraged at the perceived invasion of privacy.

Opinions on these questions range all across the board, but what is certain is that schools cannot replace responsible parenting. Digital citizenship classes, school cyberbullying policies, and sexting legislation will never have the same impact that a one-on-one parent-child conversation does. Schools should play a supporting role, not a leading one, in monitoring and combating dangerous online behavior. Besides, even if schools really could effectively do it, wouldn’t you really rather be a part of your teen’s digital world?

post originally appeared on uKnowKids

Filed under Cyberbullying, Legal, Rant, Sexting Tagged with , , , , ,

LG Text Education Program for Parents

February 4, 2011 Leave a comment

This post originally appeared on www.kidsafe.me.

In December at an FCC conference in Washington, D.C., the LG Text Education program got recent attention. So I thought I’d check it out.

Usually I’m dubious about corporate-sponsored campaigns that are supposedly for the “public good.” After all, LG is a mobile phone manufacturer and their motivation is to sell their products and services, not protect our kids’ best interests.

But in this case, I’m pretty impressed. The focus of the year-old LG Text Education program is to educate parents about what is going on with their kids, digitally speaking.
Of it’s mission, LG says that “by becoming more informed through the LG Text Ed program, we all can enjoy the benefits of this new connectedness in a positive and safe way.”

LG draws from a council of credentialed child behavioral experts and uses charismatic actress/comedian Jane Lynch as its spokesman. The text ed program provides a balanced look at the risks posed by texting and how it fits into modern family life.

The program is not about how to react to the texting phenomenon affecting teens, but about understanding texting from the inside out and approaching it as an informed parent – the ultimate goal, in my opinion, being parental rules that are influenced by knowledge rather than fear of the unknown.

Above all, parents are encouraged to text with their kids and be educated about text acronyms, sexting, mobile bullying, excessive texting, text rage, and texting while driving. There’s no better parent than an informed parent to make rules, judgments, and decisions about their tween or teen’s texting habits.

by Jenny Evans

Filed under Mobile, Text Messaging Tagged with , , , , , ,

Chatroulette Takes Sexting to a New Level

March 3, 2010 7 Comments

A Disturbing New Phenomenon and How To Deal With It

If you haven’t heard of Chatroulette.com or seen it first hand, the information I’m about to share with you will leave you in shock – especially if you have children.

Chatroulette in a Nutshell

Chatroulette is a website in which you (or your child) are literally matched up with random strangers on the Internet.  When matched up, you will be sharing a live video stream with one another using your respective webcams.  You can also share a live audio conversation or text chat – much like you see in a traditional online chat room.  At the top of the webpage there is a “Next” button.  When this button is clicked, the website searches for a “random stranger” (the website’s words, not mine) to connect you with.  When the web service finds a random stranger to connect you with, they will be broadcasted live via their webcam.  You will simultaneously be broadcasted to them via your own webcam.  You can see on the website both the other person, as well as yourself.  There are no filters.  There are no parental controls.  There are no limits.  Any child, adult or sexual predator can use this website.  They could be wearing anything or nothing at all and doing literally anything when they come onscreen.  What you will see is shocking.

I have visited the website only once and for less than 3 minutes.  I recorded that visit and have shared that video below.  I have not clipped the video.  I have not edited the video in anyway (except to significantly blur one of the “random strangers” performing a sexual act for whomever the website randomly connected him with).  I wanted my readers to experience the website in an authenticate way without being subjected to the blatant pornography performed by a live, “random stranger”.

Porn in the Classroom

According to Alexa.com, a popular Internet traffic analysis company owned by Amazon.com, Chatroulette is now one of the most popular websites on the web.  So where are all of the site visitors coming from and who is using the website? As of today, 12% of Chatroulette visitors came to the site from Facebook.  The most common location of a person that is using the website…  school! You read that correctly.  The website is not filtered out by traditional filtering software used by most parents or schools.

How to Block Chatroulette

Needless to say, the most important thing you can do is to speak to your children and make sure that they clearly understand your expectations and values.  But having a back up plan is a must.  You will have to get a bit creative to block this website until parental control software catches up with this new phenomenon.  The following is the process to follow for blocking a website if you have a PC running on Windows (I welcome Comments to this post if you are familiar with a similar tactic for a Mac).

Windows uses something called a HOSTS file to maintain a personal list of web addresses. Any time a request is made for a URL (website), the HOSTS file will be checked first.  You can easily and effectively block access to a website – without any special software – by adding it to your Windows HOSTS file. The process that I will describe below will work regardless of the Internet browser that you, your child or your students use.

Step 1: Go to your HOSTS file which is located at:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC for windows Vista and XP
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC for Windows 2k
C:\WINDOWS for Windows 98 and ME

Step 2: Open HOSTS with Notepad.  The default Windows HOSTS looks exactly like this:

# Copyright © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a “#” symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
#
127.0.0.1 localhost

Step 3: Directly under the line that says 127.0.0.1 Localhost, you will want to type:

127.0.0.1 chatroulette.com
127.0.0.1 www.chatroulette.com

Step 4: Close Notepad and answer “Yes” when prompted.

Step 5: Reboot your computer and attempt to access your now blocked website. You should see a “Cannot find server” or a DNS Error saying: “The page cannot be displayed”.

Without getting into too technical of an explanation of what you are doing, this process basically tells your computer to look for the website on your computer instead of on the Internet.  It creates a loop so that your child never hit the Chatroulette website and therefore effectively blocks it.  You can follow the same procedure to block other websites as well.

The Internet and mobile phones can be wonderful things with tremendous utility but they do present risks.  Talk to your child about your expectations using this Internet & Mobile Safety Pledge as your guide and monitor how, when and who they are talking too online.  With disturbing trends like Chatroulette popping up so often, parents and teachers need to be diligent.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

______________________________________________________________

Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – cyberbullying, sexting and predators. He co-founded KidSafe, is the author of Keeping Kids Safe: A Guide for Parents of Social and Mobile Children and is a frequent public speaker on the topic.

Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda

Filed under Predators, Sexting, Web 2.0 Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 6,958 other followers