Protecting children online: Get their computers out of the bedroom

The story of the Tweed Heads magistrate breaking down and weeping is touching and tragic and it illustrates why all parents need to supervise their kid's web usage.

This particular pervert took advantage of kids as young as nine, meeting them through chat rooms and exploiting through webcams. In this particular case, a teenage girl was manipulated into sexually abusing her younger brother in front of her webcam.

Jeff Linden, the magistrate who heard this Australian case, calls for more internet filtering. I'm not sure this will avoid such horrific cases. Perverts like the perpetrator of this crime will find a way to exploit kids wherever they congregate, be it on MySpace or the local playground.

In my view, parents need to supervise Internet usage. The Internet is like a big city and there are parts of any city where most adults would feel safe visting, let alone children. No parent would allow their children to wander around big cities unsupervised.

Yet this is what many do with the Internet. Not only do a lot of parents allow the kids to use the computers in their own room, but they also allow them to use equipment like webcams.

It's bad enough letting kids have TVs in their rooms and allowing the unmitigated, brain numbing trash into their bedrooms. But the Internet invites far more trouble.

Forget filtering. Supervise your kids.

On a slightly different topic, it's clear there's a chilling effect on Australian reporting by not mentioning the name of the perpetrators of these acts. The reason's clear: Australian judges have shown they will abandon trials and even cite reporters for contempt if they name anyone who might face such charges .

This chilling effect worked with me, I deliberately re-wrote this post to remove names and links to non-Australian articles. I'd hate to see one of these online predators getting away because their lawyers can claim a blog like this is responsible for them not being able to get a fair trial.

DJ's McLibel moment

The David Jones department store chain were furious when the Australia Institute cited their advertisements as examples of "corporate paedophilia". So they've decided to sue. I can't help but think this is a big mistake for DJs.

The first thing to come to mind is the parallel with the McLibel case. While DJs isn't as big as Maccas and the Australia Institute as small as a pair of penniless activists, it's still very much a David and Goliath fight. We have a tendency to side with small guy.

Another parallel to the McLibel case is the case will give the original report far more circulation than it would have otherwise had. If DJs had left it alone, it would be forgotten by now. As it is, there's currently 32 current hits in Google News and there will more as the story circulates.

To really tick those of us who have some sympathy for free speech, David Jones has decided to use the Trade Practices Act. Misusing the TPA has been tried before; The Australian Wool Industry is having trouble to using it against PETA at the moment. It strikes me, and I'm sure a lot others, as an abuse of a law designed to protect consumers.

In my view the worst mistake is the risk that the definition of "corporate paedophila" might be tested in court. While DJs might well be innocent of this, there's a lot of marketers who aren't. As a parent I'm often disturbed by marketing aimed at pubescent kids.

The topic raised is important and deserves debate. Many marketers are at the least pushing the bounds of good taste and the sexualisation of children is an issue that worries many of us. It would be terribly wrong if that debate was chilled by a case like this.

AT every turn, it appears this decision to sue is a "what were you thinking" moment. While DJs might prevail in court, they've dealt themselves a lose-lose hand. All they can hope for is the Australia institute quietly withdraws the article and settles.

Say no to door to door Internet salespeople!

We've starting hearing stories from customers who've been duped into Internet contracts by door to door salespeople. The common theme is the salesdroid has made ridiculous and impossible claims about the service.

In some cases the client's been on a much better older plan and has found the new plan doesn't give them the same data limits as the old plan. When they try to go back, they are told "tough luck".

We recommend all consumers avoid signing up to commitments like Internet plans through door to door sales.

I personally did some work for a company that was doing this with mobile phones some years ago. These folk would hire a bunch of backpackers, bus them out to one of Sydney's more remote Western suburbs and unleash them on the locals.

This worked well for the backpackers; they would sign up children, invalids and even the family dog. They would get the commission and by the time the complaints started arriving they would be sitting on a beach in Thailand.

For the company it looked good too at first, they'd get fat cheques from the big telco every couple of weeks. But when the complaints started coming in, they found those cheques stopped arriving. Eventually they went bust.

The biggest loser in that saga was the telco. They had to deal with hundred of complaints, it tarnished their brand name and they lost money when the selling company went broke.

All of this is predictable when you use commission driven subcontractors and don't supervise them closely. I don't understand why big companies do this as it ends up costing them money and damages their brand.

The fact one of Australia's biggest telcos is doing this again just shows these people don't learn.

Fat kids in England

According to the Kimbofo blog, fat kids are the current UK tabloid fad.

Now feeding your kids twenty chocolate bars a day might be child abuse, but I'd suggest letting a Sun reporter near your children is far more damaging to their well being.

While these parents are negligent. I'm not sure naming and shaming them and holding their kids up for ridicule is actually productive. But let's not let the interests of the kids get in the way of a good tabloid story.

Cyber sex

Charles Wright gives columnist Ruth Ostrow a serve about online sex in his Bleeding Edge blog. Ruth gets her knickers in a twist after she and her significant other posted their details on a raunchy website. Charles is quite right to point out that this happened before the arrival of the Internet.

Where I would criticism Ruth is that she's got the wrong end of a serious issue. We all hear warnings about children being stalked on line, but we find the kids are quite savvy with online creeps. The people who trash their lives due to someone they met on the net are more likely to be adults in unhappy relationships.

Personally, I've seen almost a dozen families broken by the results of an online affair. One client in Sydney had his wife leave him to join a bloke in Wisconsin: She left the kids but took the computer. Her new relationship turned out to be worse, which is a typical result.

It's not just affairs either. I've never heard of a kid sending millions of dollars to a Nigerian scam or blowing the mortgage on online gaming, but I know of adults who've done both. This is probably as a big a problem of online stalking or philandering.

The real story here is that you need to watch all your family member's computer use. Your husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend is as likely to get into trouble on the net as your kids are. If you are concerned about anybody's use, you need to talk to them and take measures to reduce or monitor their use.

Why spyware writers are scumbags

In our household we're not too keen on the kids spending too much time on computers, but when they do we let the kids use the computer in the kitchen (yes, we do have one in the kitchen as well as a wireless access point). Every computer we have gets a nightly virus and spyware scan. Tonight's virus scan picked up a Java verify exploit in one of the kid's profiles.

The Java verify exploit is classic spyware. It takes advantage of a bug in the Microsoft java machine to take control of the browser. Once in, the little bugger can do anything.

So how does a ten year old get spyware into a machine? By visiting game cheat sites, that's how. Another example of how scumware writers target children as well as unsuspecting adults.

The sooner these people are shut down and thrown in gaol, the better.

Incidentally, each kid has their own profile as a limited user and is encouraged to use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer. So the spyware would have trouble doing any harm. This illustrates why all parents should take security seriously.

Hello from Planet Canberra

Who'd want to be an Australian voter? First the Liberal Party enhances it's small government credentials with 300 pages of regulations to help make employment laws simpler. Not to be outdone, the Labor opposition decide to ban Internet porn.

The Internet porn ban is an old, and easy target, who doesn't want to protect the children from the pornographers of the net? The Liberals toyed with this idea some years back and, finding it too difficult, decided to setup the Net Alert and strong armed the ISPs into the "Ladybird" program. Both are good, if under publicised, services with useful resources.

Kim Beazley's dopey proposal has all the hallmarks of an "idea" where the only thought involved was to get the attention of the morning radio talk shows. For this proposal to work it requires the Australian Broadcasting Authority and to licence the international Internet gateways. This would only cost a few hundred million, another hundred or so public servant and few more phone books of regulations.

Of course, when it comes to issuing phone books of regulations Kim and his gang of aging factional warriors have nothing on the current mob holding the keys to the ministerial dunnies. The Liberals have announced another telephone book of regulations to help "guide" us through the maze of their new workplace laws, all of which can be changed on the whim of the minister. I guess we small business owners should be thankful the low taxing, red tape cutting, small business friendly Liberals are in power.