In light of today's internet crimes, and 12 year olds running off with 31(!) year old ex-Marines; if somebody offered, in your area, a service which allowed you to monitor every aspect of your childs email/internet/chat room/instant messaging activity, do you think this would attract your attention?

The software solution runs silently and logs/reports your childs activity alerting you of a potential threat to your child, before it has chance to develop.

What would you consider a reasonable price for the provision of the software, installation and demonstration/instructions for use?

It's just a bit of research for a business idea, aimed at parents who would maybe aren't as gifted on PCs as their children, but still want to maintain a level of guardiance.

Most kids would find that a gross invasion of privacy.
Also whatever happened to trust?

If the child does nothing to warrant confronting about their activities then they will never know as it is invisible software. The only time a confrontation is needed is if the child is engaging in chat etc. which is considered dangerous/unwelcomed - then I believe the child's safety is paramount.

Just a few articles:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Da...ave010814.html
http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?s=825248
http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp...0&nav=0Rde98yh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jan5.html
http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/di...tentPK=6221633

sounds a friggin good idea to me

even better software that would track the perv and cause the pc he was using to deliver a 240volt shock to his bell end:D

My daughter, my responsibility until she leaves home/18

Also, my servers, so everything can be dealt with regards security there.

Not interested in what she gets up to, thats trust, interested in making sure she doesn't come to harm.

Yes, I will be the arbiter of what is or isn't good for her - thats called parenting.

rik, i think the yanks would go for this stuff, or teachers/schools etc.

i personally believe that there is a trust element, and the dangers are better avoided to begin with, rather than after they have started.

eg. if i had a daughter and she started emailing gary glitter, just because i block his address, doesn't mean she cant go to a mates house, or cybercafe, and mail the fat perv from there.

however, thats just my take on it, whos to say others wont use it!

PS: i've only got a son anyway, and if i catch him lloking at hooters and stuff, i'll probably make a copy for myself!!!

good luck

BB:)

For parents who feel they have no control/understanding about what their child does online, I just hope this would help them.

All children can't be trusted, kids will be kids. And sadly paedophiles will be paedophiles. As a parent you might be able to spot a potential paedophile masquerading as a peer, which your child may not pick up on - untill it's too late?

erm.......

with SS (and all you others who posted while I was slowly writing this!!!) on this one, in fact if it were in any other field you would be accused of cashing in on sensationalism, and digging up half a dozen stories to whoop up a frenzy.


the answer is not only trust but (and heres where its lacking these days) communication, try talking to the kids before employing a secret agency to plot their every move...

however, you are not talking about any other field, you are talking about children and because they are our most important asset I believe you have a good oppurtunity to make money here.
no offence meant, comes down to society not willing to take responsibility for their actions (see the thread about suing McDonalds), of course 2p spent here and no more

Peanuts

Edited due to inability to type quickly before four others jumped in and said almost the same things!!!
maybe they can write a program to prevent this happening again.

[Edited by Peanuts - 7/22/2003 4:36:34 PM]

Major flaw. If the parents aren't as gifted at PCs as their children, then news of the existence of this software will travel rapidly round the playground and start a competition to see who could hack it first. Maybe it's unhackable, but you get the point - parents could be relying on something which kids quietly circumvent. Thus parents get a nasty false sense of security.

Good luck with your idea, but parents should try to interact with their children more rather than relying on yet more geek software to do it for them :rolleyes:. Otherwise they're just contributing further to the problem.

It wouldn't be difficult to whack out a script that checked all the sites they've visited (since the last time the history was vaped ;)) plus checking all the images that have been downloaded as well as the ones that have been cached.

I'm sure monitoring of all the chat rooms could be done somehow.

HOWEVER, this is akin to following your kids down the street to make sure they don't talk to strangers. But you have to let them out into the wild someday so make sure they are prepared. Warn them about chat room predators (i.e. in the same was as you tell them not to take sweets or get into cars with strangers etc.).

I have a sister in this age group who I would have bet my life had the correct education with regards to internet security, with a solid homelife, good academic, not stupid etc. But it didn't stop her and her friends giving one of their mobile number's out to a "friend" online only to be harrased untill the point of the police being involved. If children are this naive I don't think there's harm with being sure, as a parent, that your child's safe.

You can talk till your blue to children these days, especially at the adolescence stage, but it will go in one ear out the other. Generally, they will think they know best.

My thoughts exactly.

I'm not saying it's the answer, it's a tool to help parents protect their children online without sitting on their shoulder. I should of known Scoobynet was more of a debate hall :)

I bet the parents of the children in the articles above thought the way you do, thought everything was fine, that they had educated their children.

I'll still give it a shot regardless.

If it protects 1 child from the monsters online - i'll be happy.

Oi! You lot who said you were interested, you never answered rik's question - how much is a reasonable price?

Brendan (detached, keeping it professional ;))

:D - lol.

One of the best features of one of our consumer products is the ability to scan outgoing traffic for certain user defined phrases. Well it's my favorite bit anyway.

Edited to say we charge around £30.00 per year for our Privacy and Parental Control software. Couple of pound a month.

[Edited by JackClark - 7/22/2003 5:39:40 PM]

This package has keywords which when detected will alert the parent.

I believe parents need to spend time with their children, especially when surfing the net, but a parent can't always be present. This bridges the gap.

Trust me, if a child knew he/she was being monitored he/she will behave more resbonsibly when surfing the Net.

and that can only be a good thing? right.

A beta version of our latest is available on beta.mcafee.com