SLOAN RAGNER

Do you know what your kids are doing ?

Monitor and control your children's Internet activities without interfering too much

WANDA SLOAN

It's that special time of year again, when we fondly caress the hair of our beautiful, handsome offspring, wonder where the time went, grab them by the neck and force them to sputter that they would never ever post their photo or meet anyone they chatted to online, even their brother.

Actually, when I found out my youngest child labourer had established an account on MySpace, I thought I reacted quite maturely about it. I moved her computer into the living room beside the TV and hung an 800-watt Kliegel over it.

I have found out that this is the very definition of "calm reaction" by parents in Thailand. The hysterical ones, instead of hanging a spotlight from the ceiling, hang the child instead.

But seriously, it is definitely time for the biannual wave of "THE CHILDREN ARE ONLINE AND IN DANGER" headlines. After all, you can't sell drought stories in January, and the shark season doesn't start for another couple of months.

I arose on a Wednesday morning in mid-January, and I was unable to separate the Post Database wrapper from our newspaper. The down-market daily hit me with a double-whammy before I could get to the technology bits.

There was a feature on grooming - and this kind of grooming is not of interest to dog lovers. This new word from England refers to adult perverts who seek out young people in chat rooms and the like. The pervs ... well, if both parties were adults, it would be called seduction.

There was also a detailed news story on a bit of vapour from MySpace. This is the centre of attention for the Chicken Little crowd who fear the online social phenomenon like Vietnam football fans fear Thailand. Never mind that studies - including one in the bedroom of my youngest child labourer - show overwhelmingly that kids online not only know a lot more about the actual dangers than old people, they have been taking excellent defensive measures.

In response to parental fears and professional warnings, some of which are real, a bit of an industry has grown up around the idea that children can be protected online. And if they can't, well, take extraordinary measures to find out if they are endangering themselves.

Readers may already know that I have grave reservations about spying on family members. I highly recommend that before you install a secret program to monitor your son or daughter (or spouse; definitely your spouse) that you think it through. If they are guilty and you catch them in the act, what will be their reaction? And if they are innocent, and they catch you in the act, what will happen?

I have listed some spy programs before, but I have two programs this week that are much more along the lines of protection than monitoring.

Parental Filter is secret, but its aim is to block pornographic web sites. I can tell you from a very short test that it seems to work an awful lot better than the extravagant filtering by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology.

It comes complete with (prepare to be impressed) 189,834 banned sites, and the list is mildly encoded so even if the kids find it, they will likely not know what is the good stuff and what is the boring stuff blocked by the software.

It writes a log in reverse order (latest activity first) so you can get an idea of what your precious was doing.

You can order the program to start with Windows, and it is not visible on the screen. However, semi-savvy kids may discover it, and may also be able to circumvent it. Of course, you will know if they do that, because the log times will not be in sync with their online times.

The program's web site has a lot of good background and some thoughtful information for parents who might be worried about their children online. At the top of the page, right hand corner, click on "Parental Filter" and ignore the $29.95 notice. As it says elsewhere, confusingly, the program is free, although donations are welcome.

I am going to return to this subject of controlling or monitoring your children's online sessions, because these days it is one of the most important things that a parent can do. But I'd like to suggest that one way to deal with this is to have it all out in the open. Get your youngster to show you how he or she displays himself or herself online. And if you have even a bit of computer knowledge, provide some help.

MySpace Layout Tool Ver 2 is something my daughter originally showed me. It is, as they say, very cool.

MYLT essentially lets you build and populate your MySpace and other social network pages, but right there on your own computer. When you are finished, and have all the right shades of pink (it's a girl's page) and songs and video and so on, MYLT slaps it on the network.

If you work with your rug rat on this program, you can provide, along the way, bits of old-people advice like, "If you put your real email address, I will cut off your lunch money," and "Pictures taken during the winter in America are much better to post than pictures taken at Pattaya beach."

MYLT lives at http://www.myspacelayouttool.com.

For Parental Filter, start at http://www.ecommsec.com.

Email: wandas@post.com

Bangkok Post
Wednesday January 31, 2007