Keeping online children in line is a common goal but strategies differ.
Writing group policies, assigning user privileges and setting restrictive security zones for Internet access keep system management analyst Jason Kennedy plenty busy. . . . And then he goes to work. As the father of two “frighteningly computer-savvy” children and a member of the IT team at Best Buy Canada in Vancouver, B.C. , he has plenty of opportunity at home to use Internet-access monitoring knowledge and skills.
Writing group policies, assigning user privileges and setting restrictive security zones for Internet access keep system management analyst Jason Kennedy plenty busy. . . . And then he goes to work.
As the father of two “frighteningly computer-savvy” children and a member of the IT team at Best Buy Canada in Vancouver, B.C. , he has plenty of opportunity at home to use Internet-access monitoring knowledge and skills.
“To keep them safe, I’ve taken a series of measures with regard to their Internet use,” he says. “As they get older and need to do more online, we’ll have to manage this in a more efficient manner.”
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In some ways, network and other IT professionals who are parents have an edge over non-techie moms and dads when it comes Internet access and children. Techie parents get exposure to the latest filtering and security techniques and issues , and give more thought in the workplace to issues such as Web access and instant-messaging privileges. Not that all the tech knowledge in the world makes up for lack of common sense and good people skills.
No monitoring tools
IS Director Ross McKenzie says he favors controlled exposure to the Internet for his 10- and 12-year-old sons: He doesn’t like automated monitoring tools, but manually checks history files and sometimes peeks at incoming or outgoing messages.
“Monitoring tools send the wrong message to the kids,” says McKenzie, who works at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “I would rather teach them to use the Internet, e-mail and chat responsibly, and teach them what is right and wrong.”
He runs his childrens’ e-mail accounts through an Exchange server at his house, and the children know he administers it and can access it any time. One time McKenzie found that a friend of one of his son’s had typed in the URL of a porn site, leading him to confront the children and alert the friend’s parents.
Brian Jones, network engineering and operations manager at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, depends on technology and training to keep his 12- and 15-year-old boys from roaming to unsavory areas online.
“I don’t let my children install any software on the computer without supervision. I also don’t let them join anything or fill out any forms,” Jones says. “It is a good idea to create user accounts for your children to limit their administrative privileges on the computer – to protect the computer and to keep track of who is doing what.”
Jones uses software to block popups, watch for spyware and protect his home network against viruses. He doesn’t use monitoring software, mostly because he’d rather his sons follow his policies than those of the software.
Others advocate more of a hands-off style.
Richard Leland, director of business systems at a legislative branch agency in Washington D.C., safeguards his home PC with a virus-protection service and a firewall, but doesn’t use Web site monitoring or blocking tools to keep his 17-year-old daughter in line.
“My daughter has had access to a computer her entire life and has been raised to understand what she should and should not do in this environment. I trust her judgments,” Leland says.
But such an approach might not work for every family. “Some children may need the more structured controls offered by filtering products,” he says.
Daniel Basse, director of IS at Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, Calif., recommends parents use Internet monitoring tools and a keystroke logger.
Having a monitoring tool that can be updated automatically is important, Basse says. “There is no way a parent would know what they need to block, nor where to find it, so these types of software and services provide the research to assist parents.”
In the hands of unsavory people, keystroke loggers can be used to capture passwords or credit card numbers. In parents’ hands, they can be used to see if inappropriate conversations are occurring, Basse says. Parents also can use keystroke loggers to see if a child has tried to circumvent parental controls, he adds.
Sheryl Glore, chief of implementation and standards for the Air Force at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, says her 15-year-old daughter loses Internet privileges for swearing while instant messaging.
Glore watches history logs and temporary Internet files. Instead of installing monitoring software, she checks her daughter’s buddy list, configured her e-mail account to accept messages only from known addresses and restricts her administrative rights on the PC.
“I don’t use monitoring tools because there are so many choices; how do I know what is best for my circumstance?” she says.
Priscilla Milam’s story is similar. She limits her daughter’s time online, keeps the PC in public view, and checks log files and browser cache files. But she also is aware that her 17-year-old daughter might be old enough to work around technology controls. Milam, the dean of technology at Kingwood College in Texas,talks to her daughter about meeting people on the Internet and exchanging information with them.
“I treat the threat of the Internet as I do teenage drinking and drugs,” she says. “I make a point to share news stories relating to Internet incidents involving children whenever possible to make the threat real.”
The risks are real, according to the FBI, which says the Internet has dramatically increased sex offenders’ access to children. It manages a multi-agency effort – called the Innocent Images National Initiative (IINI) – to combat the proliferation of online child pornography and sexual exploitation. There’s no shortage of work for the team: The number of IINI cases leaped from 113 in 1996 to 2,370 in 2002.
Another approach
Numbers like that have encouraged some techie parents to take a conservative approach to Internet access at home. Wayne Roberts, a network engineer at Emery School District in Huntington, Utah, doesn’t allow it.
“I have children, and have very strong feelings about Internet browsing,” says Roberts, the father of children aged 10, 8, 6 and 4. “I don’t have an Internet connection at my home and quite possibly never will.”
“When my children need information and don’t have time to find it at school, I bring them to my office, where they have a fast connection, and I monitor them,” he says. “Also, there’s a firewall and strong filter where they won’t accidentally find something I don’t want them to see.”
Meanwhile, the trend among non-techie parents is to use the parental controls software that comes bundled with ISP services, says Tim Lordan, staff director of the nonprofit Internet Education Foundation in Washington, D.C. The foundation maintains a database of parental control tools and related content through its GetNetWise project.
If monitoring and blocking tools are not your style, GetNetWise includes non-technical resources as well, such as parent-child contracts that establish rules for computer use. Having a contract is a way to broach the subject of appropriate Internet usage, he says.”If nothing else, it starts the conversation.”
