Online Safety for Children: The line between caring and spying

by Damian Burke

I recently stumbled across a website about keeping your child safe online. I clicked around and did some reading, jumped to a few related sites and soon started to realise that a lot of the sites run by “concerned parents” weren’t necessarily about child safety, but rather outright spying.

The more I read, the angrier I got. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for raising well guided children, and keeping them protected from the big bad wolf, and what that wolf is pushing, but most sites had little information on sitting them down and providing your kids with the knowledge to be aware of the effects of their actions.

However, it did have an extensive section on how to read your children’s emails, monitor chats and view their surfing history. In my opinion, it’s okay to look at your child’s MySpace or Facebook profile. They’ve published the content knowing that the world has access to the information, but I think advising parents to install software so that you can log into their profile and read their private emails is a bit much. Especially seeing as the software is designed to be run undetected… also known as underhanded or depraved.

I took a look at what some of the software has to offer. On the IamBigBrother website (you’d think the Orwell reference highlights the morally twisted nature of the software) they brag by saying things like “We Record More Than ANYONE! …including passwords.” They also have an “internet safety news” section on the home page featuring only headlines about child rapes and abductions. How emotive. It obviously gets parents getting out their credit cards to pay the $29.95 quicker than a rabbit out of a snare. How is listening to two teenage girls chat about boys going to stop the moustached, trench coat wearing paedophile on the corner from abducting your child? I’m pretty sure you could go to jail for invading his privacy by using the same methods.

The software (which was the only one I had the stomach to research) records all passwords, programs run, key strokes, ingoing and outgoing emails, screenshots, chatrooms and stores them all without the child even knowing that their parents are that bored with their own lives.

I actually got so angry on the original site that I emailed the owner from one of my arsenal of email accounts, saying things like “Kids will be kids in the 21st century as they were in the 20th” and “nosey and manipulative”. I have not, as yet, received the eagerly awaited reply. Bring it on.

2007/07/02 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

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Online Safety for Children: The line between caring and spying

by Damian Burke

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