Facebook and the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) have joined to provide a “panic button” Facebook app.

Facebook plans to announce the availability of this app on the home page of teen Facebook accounts. Once the app is installed, the user will have a tab under their main profile called “ClickCEOP”.  When you click on the ClickCEOP tab, you can choose to either go to the CEOP website or to the Facebook Safety page for information on how to protect yourself online and where to report online abuse.

Facebook and the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) have joined to provide a “panic button” Facebook app.

Facebook plans to announce the availability of this app on the home page of teen Facebook accounts. Once the app is installed, the user will have a tab under their main profile called “ClickCEOP”.  When you click on the ClickCEOP tab, you can choose to either go to the CEOP website or to the Facebook Safety page for information on how to protect yourself online and where to report online abuse.

It wasn’t too long ago that the news was filled with reports about how employees of the SEC were watching porn at work while our stock market sank. By a vote of 239 to 182, the House approved H.R. 4899 that states in SEC. 4601:

“(a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to maintain or establish a computer network unless such network blocks the viewing, downloading, and exchanging of pornography.”

This means that all government computers must have safeguards in place to not allow the employee the ability to surf pornographic websites on government property while at work.This bill is now awaiting approval in the Senate.

Making sure that employees are focusing on the task at hand versus spending their work days on inappropriate sites is being responsible to the consumer, shareholders, and, in this case, taxpayers. And, it creates an opportunity for the business owner to provide help to those with a pornography addiction.

The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a report where 1,323 middle childhood participants were studied over a 13-month period to see the difference between children who limited their TV and Video Game time to 2 hour or less per day versus those who did not limit their time.

The results concluded that those who did not limit their time had increased attention problems. As a parent, it’s easy to want to let our children veg in front of the TV or play video games. Heck, it’s easy to get them to do, occupies their time and we can get a lot of “me time” and other things done. However, we all know that the easy thing isn’t always the right thing!

Instead of doing the easy thing, get involved in your children’s lives. Set in place time limits for media. Use parent control software to help enforce time limits online. Replace that time with activities where you can grow as a family. One day when your children and grown and out of the house, you’ll look back and be thankful that you did the right thing and built those memories and strong relationships with your children versus remembering them vegging in front of a TV or video game hours on end.

ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) gave the initial approval for the creation of .XXX Web domains for pornography. Although this sounds like a very good protective measure, do not be misled. 

Although .XXX sites are reserved for porn sites, many porn sites will still choose to keep their current .com sites and purchase .XXX sites as well. This, in turn, will increase the number of porn sites on the Internet. It is not mandatory that they close their current Web sites to move to the .XXX Web sites; this is strictly voluntary. A well known site will not change from its .com address to a .XXX address. Instead, it will keep its .com address, purchase a .XXX address and redirect the new .XXX address to the established .com address.

Over 110,0000 .XXX domains have already been pre-reserved, with a potential date of early 2011 for these sites to go live. A BBC news report cited that some of the board members ere personally “uncomfortable” with approving the domain, but had to do so because the process for approval of the new domain followed ICANN’s rules.

Understand the facts and know that just because a .XXX domain was approved does not mean that the Internet will be safer for you and your family.

Today I had the privilege of joining the 5th Annual National Teen Summit on Internet Safety via Ustream. In cooperation with Cox Communications, John Walsh and James Andrews held discussions with a panel of 11 teens regarding Internet Safety.

A recent survey conducted by Cox Communications shows that:

• 50% of teens allow unrestricted access to their online profiles
• 62% do not check with parents before posting photos
• 85% of teens now have mobile phones and profiles on a social network
• 30% of teens are not concerned that there will be accountability of what they post on their profiles

At the end of the summit, I looked over my notes and found the following themes to be prevalent between what the panel of teens, John, and James were saying:

• Parents must “parent up”! Privacy is earned. Know what your children are doing online. It’s our duty to parent and lead by example to our children.
• Parents must overcome the fear of learning about technology so that they can teach their children the proper use of those tools. This involves staying proactive and ahead of the curve.
• Parents must set up boundaries and guidelines up front for their children to follow as well as the consequences of breaking those rules.
• We must encourage children to speak up to the right authorities when they or someone they know are being bullied online.
• We need to encourage schools to  provide support and secondary education on Internet Safety.
• We must keep the lines of communication open with our children.

What action step do you need to take today to help ensure the safety of your children online?

Social Networking has become a great tool for keeping up with family and friends, and feeling connected by knowing what people are doing in their everyday lives. Had it not been for social networking, I might not have known in a timely manner that one of my friend’s daughters is in the hospital struggling with kidney failure. Or, I wouldn’t have known about my other friend reaching a fitness goal of running three miles this morning. Social networking had definitely given us almost a real-time synopsis of people’s lives.

Without meaning to, we may be sharing a real-time synopsis if our lives with the entire world! To help you make sure you are sharing information in the safest way, I’ve listed some Facebook privacy setting recommendations below.

First, let me address how to get to these settings. After you log into Facebook, click on the drop down arrow next to “Account” in the right hand corner. Choose “Privacy Settings” from the drop down menu. From here, you will be taken to the main privacy settings page seen below.

Personal Information and Posts
The Personal Information and Posts settings let you decide who can see your photos, videos, personal information, and post to your wall. My recommendation would be to set all settings under this category to “Friends Only”.

Contact Information
Contact Information settings allow you to choose who can contact you through Facebook and who can see your contact information and e-mail address. With the exception of allowing Friends of Friends to “Add me as a friend”, all other settings should be restricted to “Friends Only”. Applying these settings will help protect you from unsolicited e-mails and phone calls from people you do not know, or people that are being malicious towards you. It also helps protect your privacy from potential identity theft as well.

Friends, Tags and Connections
The Friends, Tags and Connections settings control what shows on your profile and who can see that information. This information contains your family members, what city you live in, where you work/go to school, what interests and activities you have as well as things you like. Again, this area could be a gold mine for people trying to mine information for identity fraud. I recommend settings all these areas to “Friends Only”. I would also recommend that you take some time to think about if you want to tag your family members. If you are prone to accepting “friends” that you really don’t know that well, definitely stay on the safe side of protecting yourself.

Search
Do you want your Facebook profile to show up in public search listings through Facebook search or a search engine such as www.google.com or www.yahoo.com? To allow a good balance of friends to be able to find your listing, choose “Friends of Friends” for the Facebook Search Results and consider disallowing search engines to show your profile in public search results.

Applications and Websites
Did you know that your friends and the applications written for Facebook can share information about you?
• What your friends can share about you: Uncheck Family and Relationship Status, Relationship Details, About Me, My Birthday, My Religious and Political Views, My Photos, My Videos, Photos and Videos I’m tagged in
• Activity on Applications and Games: Friends Only
• Instant Personalization Pilot Program: This program takes your friends list from Facebook and automatically tries to sync you together with your friends on other services such as Microsoft Docs, Pandora and Yelp. I choose to not allow this and connect manually to my friends and colleagues on these other sites.

Two other areas of importance are on your actual Profile page. To the left of your profile page, under you photo, there is a box titled “Information”, to the right of the word “Information”, you can click on the pencil icon to bring up a sub menu. This submenu lets you choose if you want to show your relationship status, current city, religious views and website address on your main profile page.

In addition, you can choose to not show your birthday or your sex in your profile. From your profile page, click “Edit My Profile” under your photo. This section also allows you to update your likes, education, work, relationships, profile picture, and contact information.

As you begin using or continue using social networking sites like Facebook, take the time to learn where privacy settings are and set them wisely. And, always remember, what happens on the Internet DOES stay on the Internet. Don’t post anything you would regret!

(June 1, 2010) BRISTOL, TN– Bsecure.com (formerly Bsafe Online), a trusted provider of Internet protection software for the family, announces the release of version 6.0, which utilizes its new “services in the cloud” delivery model called CloudCare®.

Bsecure Online’s new Web Control Panel is packed with a host of advanced features that simplify the difficult task of parenting and protecting children in the digital age.

Bsecure’s cutting edge CloudCare® technology gives parents the simplest installation and easiest to use software on the market today and offers comprehensive, out-of-the-box protection.

Bsecure 6.0 is filled with a list of customer-driven enhancements that address today’s issues of multiple PCs and multiple profiles, tracking social networking use, cyber bullying, controlling Internet access time, instant alert notifications, easy to read activity reporting and even an optional “adult protection” version for people struggling with temptation or pornography addiction.  In addition, along with expanded program control, Bsecure 6 enables the Safe Search features of Google, Yahoo and Bing automatically by default to guard against malware and phishing attacks.

Best of all, Bsecure 6.0 with CloudCare® technology is designed with key requirements in mind:

•    Speed - Most processing is performed on Bsecure’s servers, so the service will not slow down your Internet speed.
•    Accuracy and automatic updates - Bsecure 6.0 software and lists are continually and automatically updated on the server side, meaning no big downloads.
•    Anytime access - Anywhere, anytime access to your Web-based graphical control panel including at-a-glance activity reports, parental instant alerts and group control of multiple PC’s.

Bsecure Chairman and CEO Joe Gregory expressed, “I am pleased to announce the release of our Bsecure 6.0 version. Our advanced CloudCare services platform gives parents more tools to protect their children online, provides an exclusive maximum strength accountability option for those struggling with pornography, and uniquely positions Bsecure to rapidly roll out new protection features against emerging threats to Internet safety.”

In addition to enhancing its feature set, Bsecure 6.0 has also increased the number of predefined filter categories from 35 to an industry leading 58. This allows parents more flexibility in choosing what type of content is age appropriate for each child.

Bsecure 6.0 is being offered in “Internet Filter” and “Internet Filter plus Anti-Virus” versions. In addition, the “Internet Filter plus Anti-Virus” now covers three computers for one low price.

For more information visit Bsecure.com online at www.bsecure.com .

About Bsecure.com
Bsecure Online, based in Bristol, Tennessee, is a pioneer in the Internet filtering industry since 2001. Formerly Bsafe Online, Bsecure is consistently ranked as a leading provider of Internet family protection software in all 50 states and globally.
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________________________________________

Contact Information:
Tracie Coppedge
Bsecure Online, Inc.
618 Broad Street
Bristol, TN 37620
Phone (423) 968-4082 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (423) 968-4082      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
tcoppedge@bsecure.com

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is considering approval of a .XXX domain for pornography. Public comments can be for or against the resolution by May 10th. The complete resolution can be read here.

Here are some specific arguments against the .XXX proposal by PornHarms:

• Neither ICANN nor the company urging the establishment of this new domain are arguing that the .XXX domain would clean up the .COM domain and require all pornographers to move to .XXX. The .COM domain is a cash cow for pornographers and they are not leaving it. ICANN has no enforcement powers to make them leave and thus clean up .COM. Pornographers would simply expand to .XXX and maintain their current .COM sites, perhaps doubling the number of porn sites and doubling their menace to society.
• The .XXX domain will NOT make it easier to filter porn, even if all pornographers would voluntarily move there (and that will NOT happen). The problem with filtering is not that it is difficult but rather that too few parents care enough to employ filters for the home or laptop computers used by their children. Even if most parents did use filters on home computers, kids have access to the Internet outside the home. And it isn’t just the kids that need filtering. Addiction to pornography by adults is rampant so everyone needs filtering but, sadly, few bother. The new website Pornography Harms, http://pornharms.com, provides overwhelming evidence of harm from pornography and thus the need for protection from it.
• Since most families do not use effective filtering services, the .XXX domain would merely make hardcore pornography even easier to find for children seeking such material. Thus the argument that .XXX would benefit children by “cleaning up the Internet” is without any basis in fact.
• U.S. citizens should not believe claims by some that the U.S. Congress could merely pass a law requiring all porn companies to leave the .Com for the .XXX. Any law attempting to force pornographers to relocate to .XXX would likely be declared unconstitutional because under the First Amendment, all pornography is “presumptively protected” by the U.S. Constitution until it has been determined to be “obscene” or “child pornography.” Just as the Department of Justice cannot force porn stores to move or go out of business because it believes that such stores are operating illegally, the Department cannot force pornographers on the .COM domain to move or go out of business without first charging them with a crime and having a court make a determination of illegality.
• Hardcore pornography (or “obscene material” as it is called in U.S. law) on the Internet is ALREADY a violation of U.S law. It is just not being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice because those in charge are letting the public down. So for those who argue that by establishing a new .XXX domain AND then passing by a new law requiring porn companies to move (IF such a law was upheld after years of litigation) we can solve our Internet porn problem, we must ask why these two events will suddenly compel the Department to begin prosecuting porn companies. If the Department of Justice is not prosecuting Internet porn companies now for violating U.S. obscenity laws, it is not going to prosecute such companies for merely locating in the wrong address.
• If somehow all porn sites providing obscene material would actually leave the .COM Domain for the .XXX Domain, they would STILL be violating U.S. obscenity law which prohibits such material on the Internet regardless of location. We don’t want the Department of Justice to say to illegal porn companies, in effect, that it is okay to violate U.S. law as long as you do it on .XXX. Men, women, and children are becoming addicted to pornography and I believe the rates of addiction are skyrocketing - this is a virtually untreated pandemic. Many who begin by viewing adult pornography deviate down to harder and harder material as they continue a steady consumption of material and many of these will deviate down to the point that they only become excited by child pornography. This is a significant factor in the growth of child pornography on the Internet. Countless marriages are breaking up because of pornography use. Violence against women, which is depicted in most porn films, is changing male attitudes toward girls and women in a very negative way. A more appropriate goal should be to STOP the distribution of this destructive material by prosecuting those responsible for it, NOT protect pornography on the .XXX domain.

ICANN is considering three options in their decision on the .XXX domain.

Please take the time this week to educate yourself on this issue and contact the ICANN regarding your concerns. This proposed action would only make the pornographers move to the new .xxx domain voluntary which means they would not have to move to the new domain and there would be that many more internet addresses available for pornography.

News has traveled quickly after hearing that some SEC employees were viewing porn sites during the 2008 financial crises instead of focusing on their job duties.

Employees have admitted to viewing porn at work for over a year and viewing porn on SEC-issues laptops while outside of the office. One of the staff accountants was extremely persistent and tried 16,000 times in one month to access porn sites and filled his work hard drive with inappropriate images. And, a senior attorney admitted to sometimes spending eight hours per day searching for porn.  (See the article by MarketWatch)

Here’s a dose of reality. The people in the news lately could have very easily been you or me. It’s easy to say “I’d never do that”, but, the truth of the matter is that you never know what might happen. With all the inappropriate sites out there today, it is so easy to accidentally stumble upon one by mistake.  Maybe you type in the URL wrong, or innocently click a link in your search engine and it bring up a bad site. Then, that image stays in your mind and you keep thinking about it until your curiosity gets to you so you tinker a little bit. Then, before you know it, you’ve fallen into that slippery slope.

We are all tempted in different areas of life. And, because we are human, we are not perfect. Therefore, we need to place hedges around us to help us fight off those temptations. I’d like to challenge you to get an accountability party that you can talk to on a regular basis to help you through whatever struggles you are facing. Secondly, I’d like to challenge you to be proactive in placing a hedge of protection around your virtual world by installing a trusted Internet filter. Just as you wouldn’t live in a home with no locks on the doors to protect yourself from physical harm, don’t let you and your family live unprotected from inappropriate sites on the Internet that could harm you or your family’s mind.

I came across a news article today in which an 18 year old broke into a church to view pornography on the church computer. What’s even worse is that people can view pornography on your computer network even without physically breaking into your home and/or business and you never know it.

To help protect your home and/or business network against strangers from surfing pornography on your Internet connection from a laptop in their car or physically on one of your computers:

1. Make sure your wireless router’s security settings are enabled. Many people purchase a wireless router for their home and/or business and plug it up without changing any of the default settings. By doing this, you are allowing anyone outside your home, within range, to use YOUR Internet connection any way they want, including surfing porn sites.   If they were to access anything illegal, it would come back to you and your network and you would have to prove otherwise. Take the time to go through your wireless router’s manual to set up WPA2 security on it. I personally advise to also set it to not broadcast your wireless network’s name.

2. Install an Internet Filter to block porn sites. In addition to securing your wireless router, add an additional internal layer of protection with an Internet filter, like Bsecure. An Internet filter like Bsecure can provide up to 58 categories that you can allow or block. It also provides graphical reporting of the types of sites that are being visited as well as sending you instant alerts of suspicious activity. This way, if someone were to physically breach your house or business to surf porn, they couldn’t. It will also protect yourself from guests or friends of your children who may be “curious” and try to go to sites they should not visit.

I was talking to a mom the other day about her 10 year old son, whom she was very concerned. The other evening when she woke up in the middle of the night, she found her son in the living room on the family computer at 2:00 am. At 9:00 pm, she had tucked him in for the evening. She didn’t know how long he had been up or what he was looking at on the computer. She went to browse the history, and he had already deleted it (yes, a 10 year old).

She isn’t very computer savvy, and is already trying to catch up with her son’s computer knowledge. However, she knew that something had to be done and that her 10 year old on a computer with no supervision was out of the question.

I’m sure this parent is not the only one that has had to deal with this issue. Whether you are computer savvy or not, there are simple, effective tools out there that can help us in keeping our kids safe when they are on the Internet and keep them off the computer when they should be sleeping.

A great solution is parental controls software will that will allow you to set the time of day when each family member is allowed on the computer. Sleep better at night knowing your children are safely tucked in their beds and not sneaking on the computer “after hours”.

The Internet corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board recently voted to postpone making a decision on their proposal to create a “.xxx” domain for adult Web sites. In the meantime, the CEO and general counsel of ICANN are to draft a “report of possible process options” over the next two weeks which will then be posted online for 45 days. The proposal will then be rediscussed at the June session.

Although having a “.xxx” domain for adult sites sounds great on the surface in protecting people online from inappropriate sites, there is still the issue of porn sites choosing not to change over and people outside the porn industry that post pornographic photos, videos and other content.

Stay informed. Know that even if the “.xxx” domain is passed in June, this is not guaranteed protection from inappropriate material. We still have the responsibility of protecting our families online.

In just a couple month’s time, Chatroulette has added what it calls Chatroulette Maps.

It uses Google Maps to show the IP of where the online users are, with a picture of the user.

There is no type of age verification to get into the site, other than the message pop up that says you should be 18 or older before using the map.

Once you click into the map, you can then select areas of the US, such as places near your home and see the “pins” of all the online users. Clicking on the red “pins” then pops up a photo of that user, tells their city and state, and tells if their webcam is currently active.

Just clicking on a few of the “pins”, there were normal pictures of people, and there were a lot of men showing themselves, girlfriends showing off their boyfriend’s private parts, and posters like the one below.

Be aware of Chatroulette and the Chatroulette Maps sites and be proactive in filtering out these sites to protect your families from seeing inappropriate materials and from using the site and making your location known.

There’s a new video chat in town called Chatroulette. It’s a website that randomly selects a stranger somewhere in the world to share a live webcam connection. Once you are connected. you can talk verbally over the video cam or chat. Once you are bored with that person, you click “next” and the program finds another random stranger. No software download is required and there is no registration required either.

Although the site disclaimer says you need to be at least 16 to play, the site does not even try to verify your age. The “fun” in this site is that you never know who will be on the other end of the web cam. That doesn’t sound like much fun to me. The last thing I’d want is for my son, who would be underage, to get on this site, try it out and then find someone doing something very inappropriate on the other end.

Beware of this site and others that are like it. Take the initiative to protect your family by setting ground rules about use of this site. If it is a site that you don’t want visited in your home, set your Internet filter to block the site.