The site, Isanyoneup.com, which launched in late 2010, appears to be a hybrid of social media and amateur pornography. This blog site, has also been said to be a site for “Revenge Porn.” The site features a myriad of raunchy posts that in some cases contain extremely explicit photos, submitted by the site’s users.

While self-submit pornography sites aren’t all that uncommon, the real difference with Isanyoneup.com – and the true reason for the firestorm it has caused – is that the majority of the pictures on the site are not submitted by the people in those pictures. Instead, the site serves its purpose as a forum where jilted exes and revenge-seekers may share the most intimate photos of those towards whom they wish to retaliate i.e. another forum for cyberbullying to fester.

The blog also includes screenshots of the Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds of the people featured on the site. Despite the site being horrifically repulsive on several levels, Isanyone.com has managed to build a substantial and loyal fan base, so parents BEWARE block this site immediately! WebWatcher has a powerful web-filtering feature that would help to avoid sites like these from being viewed by your child.

As creator of the site, Hunter Moore himself has argued, “the best way to defend yourself from ending up on Isanyoneup.com is not to take such explicit photos in the first place.”

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. According to a recent study from MTV and the Associated Press, more than half (56%) of our nation’s kids have experienced a form of digital abuse. Clearly this data is appalling news, and should signal a problem still exists to parents and educators worldwide. Is Your Child Involved in Cyberbullying?

Experts say, the best way for parents to help end cyberbullying is to maintain open lines of communications with their child. If this is a challenge, as it can be with many hormonal teens, monitoring your child’s internet activity and online interactions not only will help to protect them, but will also help to make sure they are not the bully themselves or the victims of an online bully.

Cyberbullying allows for anonymity on the Internet, but it succeeds through the ability to bully secretly at home behind closed doors. Cyberbullying is not going to go away until parents and educators start talking more openly about these issues.

This makes it all the more important for parents to be aware of what is going on with their child’s social life both online and offline. Communication with your child is always important! Parental monitoring software like WebWatcher, and WebWatcher Mobile can help ensure that cyberbullying on your child’s PC is a non-issue.

Technology today has truly forced teens to grow up faster than generations before. Now cell phones allow teens to access all kinds of information and send it via text message to a myriad of people. Sexting and Sextortian are on the rise and may have become issues linked to peer pressure. (CBS) – reported that According to the University of Melbourne, researchers interviewed 33 young people between the ages of 15 and 20 years old and found:

- A highly sexualized media culture bombarded young people with sexualized images and created pressure to engage in sexting.

- There’s pressure that boys place on each other to have girls’ photos on their phones and computers. The young people surveyed said if boys refrained from engaging in the activity they were labeled ‘gay’ or could be ostracized from the peer group?

- Both genders talked about the pressure girls experienced from boyfriends or strangers to reciprocate on exchanging sexual images?

- Some young women talked about the expectation (or more subtle pressure) to be involved in sexting, simply as a result of having viewed images of girls they know?

Although only 15 boys and 18 girls were interviewed for this study, the findings are still disturbing nonetheless.

The study reaffirms that ’sexting’ is not only a growing trend, but one likely to stay for a while, and influence young adults’ exposure to inappropriate images. These startling statistics should encourage parents to maintain open lines of communications with their children. It is also imperative for parents to stress and “to address the negative consequences of sexting for young people,” said Shelley Walker from the Primary Care Research Unit in the Department of General Practice at the University of Melbourne who worked on the study.

We came across a nicely done blog by Brickhouse Security and some suggestions on how  to prevent your child from being bullied or bullying other children, “She Knows Parenting”‘s Michelle Maffei outlines four simple tips to follow:

1. Monitor your child’s digital activities: Seeing as cyber bullying takes place in the digital realm, it is important to be aware of how your child interacts with others on the web and via cell phone or text messaging. However, with such technology, it is easy for a child to keep their online activities private from their parents.

“Parents know they have a huge blind spot when it comes to what teens are doing on their phones and PCs,” says BrickHouse CEO, Todd Morris.

Some tips to make it harder for kids to hide their online activities from parents are to keep the computer in a public space such as the living room, so that if the child is engaged in cyber bullying or is being bullied, it will be much easier for parents to notice. With portable digital devices like laptops, tablets, or smartphones, this monitoring might not be possible. In this case there are such devices that can be installed on a cellphone or computer that will allow parents to keep tabs on their child’s digital activities wherever they might be.

2. Check up on their social networking profiles: With the majority of today’s children being active on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, getting an inside look at your child’s digital life might be as simple as visiting their personal pages a couple of times a week. Using this approach, parents can quickly tell how their child interacts with others, and whether they are being bullied or are bullying other children.

3. Monitor their e-mail accounts: Another approach recommended by Maffei is to periodically check up on your child’s e-mail account to make sure everything is going well and that they are not getting involved with any dangerous or inappropriate online activities. The options that you have with your child is to be upfront and require your child to share their passwords with you, or to look into programs that secretly record your child’s computer activities.

4. Take other parent’s bullying concerns seriously: Lastly, whenever another child’s parent contacts you about bullying, whether your child is the victim or the aggressor,  take the time to do some investigating. Even if you think your child isn’t the type to be involved in such activities, it is a good idea to look into the matter and talk to your child to see if there are any problems that they might have.

If you do find that your child is involved with cyber bullying, it is important to sit them down and have a good talk. Find out why the situation is happening, how to address it, and what your child can do to either resolve the problem or find an alternative way to express themselves.

According to a national survey of American attitudes on substance abuse, “time spent social networking increases the risk of teens smoking, drinking and using drugs.” On a typical day, 70% of teens ages 12 to 17 – 17 million teenagers spend from a minute to hours on Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (Casa) at Columbia University.

“For this same age bracket, social network savvy teens are five times more likely to use tobacco; three times more likely to use alcohol; and twice as likely to use marijuana than teens who do not spend any of their day on social networking sites.” Check out a past blog of ours Drug Use Continues to Rise, How Can You Protect Your Kids? and see what some of the signs are.

Parental controls and computer monitoring software like WebWatcher and WebWatcher Mobile make it possible for parents to track their child’s activity both on their PCs and on their Smartphones to prevent some of these kinds of conversations from going beyond the PC.

Below are some tips from GovInfoSecurity blog  that points out some very important safety steps to adhere to across all age groups. Social media sites a great place to connect with friends, but it is also important to remember that adhering to an internet safety policy must play a significant role in the way we connect here.

A Guide to Facebook Security can be very useful for parents who want to make sure that their child is friending safely. Check out this very helpful Parental Controls Guide to help better secure your child’s Facebook profile. Monitoring software like WebWatcher on your child’s PC or WebWatcher Mobile on their BlackBerry or Android devices will help to ensure that they’re fully abiding by the Internet safety measures you’ve put in place.

Here are 16 tips the authors present to stay safe on Facebook:

1. Only friend people you know.
2. Create a good password and use it only for Facebook.
3. Don’t share your password.
4. Change your password on a regular basis.
5. Share your personal information only with people and companies that need it.
6. Log into Facebook only once each session. If it looks like Facebook is asking you to log in a second time, skip the links and directly type www.facebook.com into your browser address bar.
7. Use a one-time password when using someone else’s computer.
8. Log out of Facebook after using someone else’s computer.
9. Use secure browsing whenever possible.
10. Only download apps from sites you trust.
11. Keep your anti-virus software updated.
12. Keep your browser and other applications up to date.
13. Don’t paste script (computer code) in your browser address bar.
14. Use browser add-ons like Web of Trust and Firefox’s NoScript to keep your account from being hijacked.
15. Beware of “goofy” posts from anyone, even friends. If it looks like something your friend wouldn’t post, don’t click on it.
16. Scammers might hack your friends’ accounts and send links from their accounts. Beware of enticing links coming from your friend

New Jersey’s anti-bullying law is paving the way for a proper response to taking cyberbullying seriously. This state as well as many other states has raised the bar on how to appropriately handle this harmful and aggressive behavior.

According to a recent article on the issue from www.northjersey.com “Since the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights was signed in January, several school boards throughout the state adopted new anti-bullying policies to coincide with the law, which officially went into effect on Sept. 1. Students found to be bullying could be suspended or expelled, and administrators who don’t properly investigate complaints can be held accountable under the legislation.”

What WebWatcher CEO Brad Miller interviewed on Fox 5 News as he addresses the importance of how parents should also play a role in preventing and preparing their child for handling the issues of cyberbullying as the new school year begins.

As your kids head back to school it is important to remember that according to a recently released Consumer Reports survey, in the past year alone, “a million children were victims of cyberbullying on Facebook. About 20 percent of students age 11 to 18 surveyed in 2010 by the Cyberbullying Research Center said they’d been cyberbullied at some point in their lives.”
Typically, cyberbullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. As it has become more common in society, particularly among young people, legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it (Wikipedia.org).
Here are some of the Warning signs to look for
Because many teenagers won’t tell their parents they’re being cyberbullied, parents need to watch for potential warning signs. According to Marie Newman, co-author of “When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions” (Vivisphere Publishing, 2011), signs of cyberbullying to look for include:

— Your child is suddenly spends much more — or much less — time texting, gaming or using social-networking websites. Any rapid change could be an alarm bell

— After texting or being online, he or she seems withdrawn, upset or outraged

— Your child asks to have a social-media or online account shut down

— He or she suddenly avoids formerly enjoyable social situations

— He or she blocks a number or an email address from his or her account

— Many new phone numbers, texts or email addresses show up on your child’s phone, laptop or tablet

— He or she acts frustrated and impatient, or simply acts out more

— Your child notices that he or she is being gossiped about online, or that others are using “code words” in place of his or her name

— Strangers have opened Facebook or other social-media accounts in your child’s name

Back to school already! This means all new friendships, new events, and new places, which makes it all the more important for parents to be aware of what is going on with their child’s social life both online and offline.
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports up to half of all children are bullied at some point during their school years. Here are 10 tips from Brad Miller, CEO of Awareness Technologies, for parents to help protect their children from cyberbullies and other online dangers:
1. Start by talking with your children about their online activities and the dangers of cyberbullying – set their expectations by discussing your views on monitoring their Internet and smartphone use.
2. Set up Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your children’s names on the web.
3. Friend your children on Facebook and monitor their privacy settings so you are able to view their profile and activity.
4. In addition to Facebook, cyberbullies use other social networking sites like Twitter to post hateful messages. Familiarize yourself with these sites and set up an account to enable you to routinely search what others are saying about your kids.
5. Inform teachers if you suspect your child is being cyberbullied. Teachers are among the first to notice important changes in children’s behavior, and it’s possible the bully may be a classmate.
6. Consider implementing parental monitoring software on your home computers and children’s smartphones.
7. Many school districts also now use computer monitoring software on all classroom computers. Check with your school principal, PTA or school board to ensure these tools are in use at your child’s school.
8. Prohibit your children from having multiple e-mail addresses, screen names and social networking accounts.
9. Prohibit your children from using geolocation tools and apps on Facebook and smartphones.
10. Always be observant as your children use electronic communications tools. Changes in habits, such as frequency and timing of use, mood swings and other indicators, could be a sign that your child is being bullied or a target of other online mischief.
Each tip above is very useful and important in and of itself; however, a better practice for parents would be to guarantee safe internet habits with parental monitoring software like WebWatcher. This computer monitoring software ensures that cyberbullying on your child’s PC is a non-issue.

Our Cyberbullying page provides helpful an important statistics on what cyberbullying means and how it is impacting the youth of today. Learn more about this important topic and learn useful ways to combat cyberbullying.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HRSA (Health Resource and Services Administration) recently made a presentation available called “Cyberbullying: Tools and Tips for Prevention and Intervention.” Parents, teachers and administrators are encouraged to view this presentation to gain real-world stories, tips and prevention techniques. Help is also available at stopbullying.gov.
Some Facebook tips:
Facebook has a tool called “report,” a function that is visible on every post and picture. To use this, click the “x” next to the posting and choose the option “report post or spam.” If you find a picture to be too obnoxious or obscene, there is an option to “report this photo.” This is located underneath the photo in the bottom left hand corner. Facebook also suggests “unfriending” or “blocking” bullies. Click here to see Facebook’s help section on bullying.
Cyberbullying is an important issue for parents to be aware of especially since children today have unlimited access to information via the web. It’s critical for parents to know what is going on with their child’s social life both offline as well as online. Communication is critical always! Parental monitoring software like WebWatcher and WebWatcher Mobile can help ensure that cyberbullying on your child’s PC is a non-issue.