* OME-kids is a noble idea, but not a fool-proof solution for protecting kids online
I just received a press release from OnlyMyEmail about their new service, OME-kids.com.
OME-kids is billed as offering “children protection from Internet predators who try to reach kids through their e-mail.”
The company continues “Unlike other solution providers, OnlyMyEmail will not accept payments from direct marketers to bypass its filters. Of equal importance, the OME-Kids solution protects children from harmful e-marketers that conduct direct-marketing campaigns to children as well.” All incoming and outgoing message are heavily filtered for viruses, spam, phishing attempts, etc., so there’s a certain level of “hygiene” that is pretty much guaranteed.
OnlyMyEmail’s OME-kids unique selling point that the Web-based e-mail service includes what the company calls “Exclusive Parental Controls” that include “Lock-Down” mode (most appropriate for very young children) which “only allows e-mail delivery from senders who have first received parental approval”; “Parental Review” which saves copies of all e-mail delivered to OME-Kids.com addresses; “Kids Carbon Copy” which copies of all outbound messages sent from child’s OME-Kids.com account to the parent’s account; and the ability to release block messages for delivery upon parental approval.
The press release cites Stephen Canale, President of OnlyMyEmail, as saying, “We did not create OME-kids.com as a significant revenue-generator. In fact, we are offering the solution at a cost-of-operation value in order to help other parents who are struggling with the same kinds of concerns.”
Pricing for OME-kids.com is “$24.00 annually for up to two children’s accounts and $12.00 annually for each additional account” (which works out to $12 per child account unless I’m missing something).
Stephen has been a long time reader of my Network World Backspin column and has often responded to my columns with insightful commentary but I have to take issue with his company over this service because I think that OME-kids will give the parents who are most likely to adopt the service a false sense of security. The reasons for this are twofold: The first is the skill of children, the second the lack of skill of their parents.
If the children are so little that they don’t know what MySpace is I’m guessing that they have no need to be online. On the other hand if the kids are clued in about the ‘Net at all, then I’m pretty sure that they will find ways to get around any parental control exercised through OME-kids unless the parents know how to lock down their children’s overall ‘Net access.
I’m betting that the majority of parents who sign up for OME-kids.com to solve what they think are the problems of protecting their kids online will be essentially clueless about the bigger picture that requires locking down Web access, corralling instant messaging, and ensuring that detailed network activity logs are not only kept but also reviewed.
Bottom line: OME-kids isn’t, as such, a bad service and is, in fact, a noble idea. My concern is that most of the parents who sign up for it will be, in general, a fairly clueless lot so they won’t understand that without a lot more effort outside of e-mail control they will be achieving very little. But they will have the satisfaction of having done something.
