Parental Monitoring Software

General Overview

IMVU is an innovative chat program that also contains “MySpace”-like social networking elements. Although all users can visit the site’s Web pages and see the previews, only PC users can actually download the software to participate in the virtual worlds.

New users create an avatar (a visual representation of themselves) that convey what they’re like or how they’d like to be. In avatar land, everyone looks twentysomething. (Users can buy some “age” from the catalog, but more about that in a minute.) Users can choose to be male or female and can select features, hair color, and simple clothing, among other things.

The Alarm Bells Are Ringing In!

IMVU is part of a revenue stream for the owners. They entire our young ones to purchase addons such as a virtual tiara, belly piercing, angel wings, elf ears, animal noses, pets for your avatar, and more. Beginners have only three scenes in which they can chat: a beautifully drawn coffee shop, a Ferris wheel, and the roof of a building. Other scenes can be purchased from the catalog. There are many other extremely odd things are for sale in the catalog as well, such as handcuffs, syringes, revolvers, and even crucifixion nails (left and right, plus a crown of thorns, available separately).

The “Chat Now” button selects a random stranger, and the two of you suddenly appear in the chosen scene. As you type, a dialog bubble appears over your avatar’s head. Because you can see the screen name of your companions, you can access their home page to find out more about them.

While there are plenty of additional clothes on sale, the “Sexy Schoolgirl bundle” is one example that lets users know there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Although use of IMVU is free, certain special features can only be unlocked with a “guest pass.” To see it all, $19.95 buys you the ability to see and use naked avatars. But every user can see plenty of these encounters in the user home page galleries.

Our Thoughts

IMVU is a fascinating model, however, as enticing as it is for kids, it simply is not meant for them.

Parents need to know that this site is a 3-D IM site that makes it very easy for strangers to engage with each other. Avatars pop up and talk to the “avatar” that you’ve created. The gorgeous graphics with emotions encourage conversation. The anime feel will encourage younger kids to use this, but it really isn’t for any kids. Users find other people to talk to by searching on age, sex, and location (country or state). The client software runs only on a PC, although Mac users can access user home pages from the main IMVU page.

Here’s a common question I see asked all of the time online:

Help! My daughter, 15 years old, spends a lot of time on myspace. I have told her to make sure i always have her password and of course she will tell me and then change it. I want to know what is going on. Will you please help me before some creep gets her? I am a single mom and it would just kill me if anything happened to her.

This really is an excellent question.

The answer? Join MySpace and be a part of the social networking craze!

By joining MySpace, you can add your daughter to your friends list and be able to see their public profile anytime you wish. This also solves a couple of problems. Problem one, you want to see their private profile to make sure their is no unsafe information on it and two, your child wants some sort of privacy right? Well, if you make them agree to allowing you in as a friend, you won’t need their password and therefore, their contacts via MySpace can remain private.

Of course, if they still abuse their MySpace account and still don’t obey your rules, you will need to consider more strict measures to ensure the safety of your child.

Someone raised an interesting point to me the other day.

They asked “What do I tell them when I install SpyAgent when they demand privacy?”

First, here’s a post regarding SpyAgent and here’s the SpyAgent Monitoring Software product page to catch up.

When someone asks me about this, I usually respond “It’s your house. It should be YOUR rules.”

You may run into a heated debate with your older teenagers if you’ve waited this long to crack down on their internet behavior. Personally, if they want to lash out at you for trying to control their internet experience, I’d simply take away the internet and leave them with just a computer they can do word processing on.

Once they get over the fact you are taking control, you will be able to set proper ground rules. A decent parent to teenager discussion one evening can make the difference between your teen thinking its alright to physically hook up with anonymous people online or your teen declining such meeting requests due to the possibility they could be physically hurt or even killed.

Using a product like SpyAgent can really help you see your teen’s problem areas with their internet use. Like I’ve said in other posts, a monitoring software product can make a huge difference in just a week (even 24 hours!).

If you have any tips or advice you’d like to share, please email me at support -at- parentalmonitoringsoftware -dot- com.

I just read an interesting article by CBS News that was posted back in 2006. Here’s some interesting quotes from the article:

“The Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported more than 2,600 incidents last year of adults using the Internet to entice children. With numbers like that, you’d think all parents would be hovering over their kids, wanting to know what they’re doing online. But authorities say many parents are clueless about their kids’ MySpace profiles. ”

“In talking to some teens who regularly use MySpace, it’s easy to see that a lot of kids aren’t very careful about the information they put on their pages.

“So many people don’t even use common sense,” says Katie Pirtle, a high school student. “Some people even put their phone number on there.”

And while they information kids put on MySpace may be intended for their friends, do they think, “Hey there’s 35-year-old or 45-year-old guys out there looking at my site?”

“Definitely not,” says April Ehrlich, another high school student. “When they think MySpace, they think other teenagers. They don’t think there are adults pretending to be teenagers on there.”

Many MySpace users post “the survey,” which asks for responses about issues like drinking, drug use and skinny dipping. Users can also put up pictures. ”

Source: CBS News

I love when I see the news focusing on serious situations like this, instead of showing Britney Spears’ bald head.

Be sure to talk to your kids about the proper use of websites like MySpace, Facebook, and others. They should only use their first name with no other personal information about their location, last name, email address, etc.

There are predators on the internet and they do visit websites flooded with teens and kids. Make sure your kids know right from wrong before they step foot on the internet!

Talk with your Teens About What They Can and Cannot Do Online

Be reasonable and set reasonable expectations. Try to understand their needs, interests, and curiosity. Remember what it was like when you were their age.

Be Open with Your Teens and Encourage Them to Come to You if They Encounter a Problem Online
If they tell you about someone or something they encountered, your first response should not be to blame them or take away their Internet privileges. Work with them to help avoid problems in the future, and remember – you respond will determine whether they confide you the next time they encounter a problem and they learn to deal with problems on their own.

Learn Everything You Can About the Internet
Ask your teens to show you what’s cool. Have them show you great places for teens and fill you in on areas that you might benefit from as well. Make “surfing the net” a family experience. Use it to plan a vacation, pick out a movie, or check out other family activities. Make this one area where you get to be the student and your child gets to be the teacher.

Check Out Blocking, Filtering and Ratings Applications
As you may know, there are now services that rate web sites for content as well as filtering programs and browsers that empower parents to block the types of sites they consider to be inappropriate. These programs work in different ways. Some block sites known to contain objectionable material. Some prevent users from entering certain types of information such as their name and address. Other programs keep your children away from chatrooms or restrict their ability to send or read E-mail. Generally these programs can be configured by the parent to only block the types of sites that the parent considers to be objectionable.

Whether or not it is appropriate to use one of these programs is a personal decision. If you do use such a program, you’ll probably need to explain to your teen why you feel it is necessary. You should also be careful to choose a program with criteria that reflects your family’s values. Be sure to configure it so that it doesn’t block sites that you want your teen to be able to visit.

It is important to realize that filtering programs cannot protect your child from all dangers in cyberspace. To begin with, no program can possibly block out every inappropriate site. What’s more, it’s possible, in some cases, for the programs to block sites that are appropriate. If you use a filtering program, you should re-evaluate it periodically to make sure it’s working for your family.

The Internet provides access to a wealth of information and entertainment but can also harbor predators and scam artists. Here are tips to help keep children safe online.

1. Keep the computer in a public area, such as the living room
2. Set and enforce rules for Internet access
3. Don’t let your child share personal information without permission
4. Explain what information is considered personal
5. Learn about the capabilities and limitations of parental control tools
6. Learn about other computers your child may use, such as ones at school or a friend’s house
7. Have your child show you what he does online
8. Visit your child’s favorite sites, and randomly check her e-mail
9. Report suspected stalking or child sexual exploitation to local police

Continuing on with our acronym education, we just finished our first document that you can download, print, and share with others.

This is a small 13 page list of the more common acronyms used on the internet today. To download, click here: Instant Messaging Acronyms. You may need to right click -> Save As if you have the Adobe Reader plugin.
Enjoy!

Want to share this with others? Please link to this post directly. Thank you!

We just compiled a list of acronyms you should know about. If you see these acronyms in your child’s Instant Message Logs, it might be time to have a discussion with him/her!

Here’s some of the more common sex related acronyms used by teenagers.

8 - May refer to oral sex
ASL - Age/Sex/Location
A/S/L - Age/Sex/Location
BBSD - Be Back Soon Darling
BOHICA - Bend Over Here It Comes Again
CTC - Choking The Chicken
DURS - Damn You Are Sexy
DUS - Damn You Sexy
FYEO For Your Eyes Only
GNOC - Get Naked On Cam
GYPO - Get Your Pants Off
ITS - Intense Text Sex
IWSN - I Want Sex Now
LAGNAF - Lets All Get Naked and Fool Around
LHOS - Lets Have Online Sex
NIFOC - Nude In Front Of The Computer
NIFOC - Naked In Front Of The Computer
OLL - On-Line Love
RUMORF - Are You Male Or Female
SBCN - Sitting Behind the Computer, Naked
SSC - Super Sexy Cute
TDTM - Talk Dirty To Me

Another very common term for marijuana (pot smoking) use is 420. If you see your child mention this term frequently in IMs, you may have a much more serious problem on your hands.

One of the techniques we prefer to assist parents needing to monitor their children online is by using a monitoring software product. In this post, we will provide one example of a product and discuss some of the great features and tools it includes.

Although this site will focus on the proper use of monitoring software (often referred to as spy software), we will also discuss other alternatives to monitoring your kids online. So if you are looking for free alternatives, return for future posts that will assist you in doing just that.

The product I would like to discuss today is SpyAgent Monitoring Software. This excellent program will help you with tracking down anything your kids are doing online.

SpyAgent will record all keystrokes, websites visited, programs launched, windows viewed, screen captures, and instant messaging conversations including ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and more.

Often times, you’ll discover any bad actions by your kids within the first week of installing SpyAgent on your computer. Within that week, you’ll know the most frequented websites, their closest AIM or MSN buddies, see their discussions, and anything else you might want to know about regarding their computer use.

If you have ever wondered why your child continuously closes the door when they are using their computer, closes windows, minimizes windows, or anything other suspicious behaviors when you first walk into the room, you may want to consider installing SpyAgent to figure out exactly what they are up to.

What about ethics? What about privacy? What about trust? We’ll get into that a bit later. There are definitely better (or worse) ways to monitor your kids using software that will be beneficial to both the parent and the child.

If monitoring software interests you and you’d like to learn more, click here to read the full software details and purchase information.

What in the world is he or she typing?

Why is it that when I walk into the room, my child types PAW, POS, PIR, etc to the AOL Instant Messenger chat window?

Your child is probably hiding information from you! Here are some important acronyms that you really should know about as they can be cause for concern:

P911 - Parent emergency
PAW - Parents are watching
PIR - Parent in room
POS - Parent over shoulder
PRW - Parents are watching

There are many acronyms like this that should alert you that something bad might be going on. Especially if they close windows as you walk behind the computer they are on.

In future posts, we’ll talk about many other acronyms, their meanings, and what you should do to make sure your children’s online activities are safe.