According to a recent USATODAY article, by Byron Acohido, “Sexual predators, pornographers and prostitution rings are capitalizing on the rising popularity of mobile devices and social media to victimize children, say police and child safety experts. CyberTipline, the nation’s hotline for reporting sexual exploitation of children, received 223,374 reports in 2010, nearly double the 2009 number.” This can clearly be attributed to the increase in children’s use of technological devices like smartphones, iPads, and in many cases to a child’s very own laptop, which is typically and dangerously used in the privacy of their own rooms as opposed to in a communal and visible area in the home.

Children are also increasingly and rampantly joining numerous social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, formspring, foursquare etc. “The soaring use of social networks, online games, smartphones and webcams has translated into “more opportunities for potential offenders to engage with children,” says Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”

Today, kids are revealing too much personal information about themselves, and posting pictures of themselves on these websites and even more unnerving is the fact that when they use their smartphone to post pictures online their location is revealed as public information to anyone searching. Check out our last blog entry “What Posting Pictures Online Reveals about Your Child’s Location” for more details on this scary fact.

 To help prevent this kind of information from being leaked to online predators, parents are able to monitor websites, and all activity on their child’s computer. This is a big help for all parents who are looking to make sure that their children are posting appropriately, and that they have their privacy settings accurately applied for their protection on gaming sites, social networking sites, etc. There are solutions, such as keyloggers and computer monitoring software, that help provide a sense of relief for concerned parents. This software can also alert parents (by keywords of their choice) when their children are acting irresponsibly on their laptops and smartphones.

This news report gives us an alarming insight into the dangers of how Smartphone pictures pose privacy risks, for all of us, and how they could potentially put your child in grave danger. If you have children, we urge you to please carefully watch this news report. It’s truly frightening to know that with one click of a button all of this information can be retrieved by anyone, anywhere. With one picture posted, your child’s location, bedroom, school, and the neighborhood park they frequent will all be made public. This puts them at great risk of being contacted by online predators, so please pay close attention to what they’re posting online. Are your children a few mouse clicks away from being discovered?

Are you concerned with your kids mobile phone activity? Supervise them with WebWatcher Mobile on BlackBerry— and Android devices. **Coming soon to iPhones and Windows Phone 7.

The Merriam Webster dictionary describes cyberbullying as “the electronic posting of mean-spirited messages about a person (as a student) often done anonymously.” Cyberbullying can lead to depression, anxiety, poor academic performance and in some cases suicide. According to an article from the February issue of Staten Island Parent Magazine, Nzingha West, owner of Urbane Academics states that bullying has “taken on an entirely new facade because we have so much technology and ways to contact people.”
Luckily, for parents and teachers out there, computer monitoring tools such as WebWatcher can monitor and track untoward behavior, as well as control when a child can use the Internet or other computer programs. Parents are also able to track text usage both sent and received with WebWatcher Mobile. These kinds of tools can help parents remain ahead of the game.
Many schools have also begun to implement similar techniques by using InterGuard, the business version of WebWatcher. This software’s web filtering application helps to protect students from surfing the Internet inappropriately or downloading pirated files while on school grounds.

Quick Facts:
• Cyberbullying includes sending mean messages or threats via any communication portal, spreading rumors, sexts, or sexually suggestive pictures, posting hurtful or threatening messages about others, and pretending to be someone else online to hurt another person.
• The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported that one-third of U.S. students experience bullying, either as a target or a perpetrator.
• A high level of parents (47%) and teachers (77%) report children victimized by bullies.
• Bullying and violence cause 160,000 fearful children to miss one or more school days each month.
• Only a small percentage of children believe that telling adults will help. Children generally feel that adult intervention is ineffective and will only bring more harassment.

What to look for?
• Start doing some research. Google words like “cyberbullying” and “sexting.”
• Look for signs of withdrawal form normal activities, poor academic results, unusual irritable behavior
• Ask your child if they know someone who has been bullied. This will open the lines of communication and they may open up about others’ pain before admitting their own experiences.
• Establish an appropriate code of conduct both online and offline are key—if they wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, then they shouldn’t text it, IM it, or post it on the Internet.
• Establish consequences for bullying behavior. If your child contributes to degrading and humiliating people, find a way to appropriately revoke privileges.
• Check for formspring in their browsing history. Formspring is a very “popular” forum that allows individuals to freely speak their mind beneath a shroud of anonymity.
• According to Staten Island Parent Magazine, “Bullying can lead to depression and isolation and, in most extreme cases, violence.”

10 Ways to Protect Your Child From Cyberbullies
Brad Miller, CEO of web-monitoring software company Awareness Technologies, offers these tips to knock it out before it starts.
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 Brad Miller, CEO of web-monitoring software company Awareness Technologies, offers these tips to knock it out before it starts.

a) 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.

b) Set up Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your children’s names on the web.

c) Friend your children on Facebook and monitor their privacy settings so you are able to view their profile and activity.

d) 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.

e) 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.

f) Consider implementing parental monitoring software on your home computers and children’s smartphones.

g) 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.

h) Prohibit your children from having multiple e-mail addresses, screennames and social networking accounts.

i) Prohibit your children from using geolocation tools and apps on Facebook and smartphones.

j) 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.

Helping your child complete their homework with WebWatcher’s remote keylogger software

Computer monitoring software will block sites that draw young students away from their school assignments

Completing homework can be a challenge for even the best young student, whether or not they have attention issues, a penchant for school or organizational problems. The Internet and the constant stimulation it brings 24/7 has pretty much made every youngster a victim of attention deficit disorder, in some form or another.

Parents can take advantage of WebWatcher’s remote keylogger software and find out which websites their children visit when they are purportedly doing school work. By installing our computer monitoring software on your home computer or your child’s laptop, you can take charge of you’re their homework situation without having to literally stand over them with they work on it.

Children and teenagers will often fall prey to distractions online when they are supposed to be doing their homework—they end up watching videos, downloading music, chatting with friends, or browsing other people’s social networking profiles. While they intended to research Pearl Harbor, the Krebs cycle, supply and demand or capital punishment, they will often find themselves watching “The Office” on Hulu.

WebWatcher’s remote keylogger software records every keystroke your son or daughter makes and sends it to your online account where you can access the information from anywhere. Even if your child is not connected to the Internet, the parental control software will update its reports once they get online again.

Concerned mothers and fathers can take the information that WebWatcher’s reports give them and approach their child about the bad homework habits they are practicing. Having a discussion about how to improve the quality of the work they complete will inevitably lead to better study skills in the long run. Parents may also use the knowledge they have gained with our remote keylogger software to block websites that consistently tempt their son or daughter away from their schoolwork. By getting rid of the lure of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or video streaming sites, parents will do their children and their developing study habits a great service. Their teacher will probably also thank them for this as well, even if the young student does not!

A parent will go to any length to protect their child but what a lot of parents don’t know is what they need to protect their children from and how to do it. The Internet is one of the biggest hotbeds of problems with children. Whether it is IM chats, emails or the websites they visit, there is a lot of need to be aware of what your child is doing on the computer. Our professional parental monitoring software is the premiere application that will let you do protect again these problems more thoroughly than any generic computer spy software.

The solution comes mainly from our ex-NSA programmer’s invisibility module design which lets you monitor all computer and Internet activity remotely and 100% invisibly to the computer user. Our remote computer monitoring software is so advanced that once installed you won’t be able to find any trace of it in or on the Registry, Desktop, Add/Remove Programs, System Tray, Process List or anywhere else on the computer. With complete anonymity our program can be the real solution to the dangers of the Internet. Also, with our proprietary developed “Alert Word” system, you can have our monitoring software filter for specific keywords or phrases that you might know are triggers for your son or daughter. Perhaps a name of a bully, significant other, day of the week, place to meet, or even activity are hints to what your child is doing or planning to do, and information that could change your relationship if you were aware of it.

The real dangers and how our software is unlike generic spy software really come from handling the 3 biggest danger areas of the Internet: instant message chats, emails and websites.

Instant Message chats – instant message chats are one of the most notoriously places for dangerous Internet activity. Not only is it nearly impossible to tell who your child is speaking to on the other computer, it is extremely easy to not record or delete all IM chat records from a host computer. With our software you can guarantee that all chats are recorded, even if information is deleted, and are presented to you in an easy to read transcript format, filtering for Alert Words.

Email – emails are and always will be an easy and quick way to use the Internet, but also get into trouble. Parents can be left wondering who their child is emailing and about what? Whether it is real life friends or people they met on the Internet, there can be a lot to look out for. Let our program and Alert Word system take care of it for you with screen shots and transcripts so that you always are sure about what your children are thinking and planning on doing.

Websites – whether just idly browsing and ending up somewhere they shouldn’t or even being tricked or scammed into giving out personal information; websites are a whole host of problems that need to be monitored. Our program will let you block sites specifically, so you know your child won’t go to “problem areas” on the Internet, or will let you block websites on the fly from anywhere you are monitoring. The computer user reaching a blocked site only gets a generic error message that won’t let them proceed and won’t hint that you had any involvement!

No matter what your problem is on the computer or the Internet with your children, our parental monitoring software has everything you need to find the solution. Start monitoring today, buy directly from our website!