As a mother of an active 7-year-old, sites like Club Penguin are both a godsend and a little alarming. On one hand, it’s nice that my daughter has found a fun little place filled with cute penguins, games, and missions. While I work on my computer, she logs on and “waddles around” with other penguins. She’s been a Club Penguin secret agent, tour guide, and pirate. She’s been on missions, gone to “parties on the iceberg,” and searched for various trinkets. There’s no denying that it’s 100% fun.

However, I wasn’t about to let her waddle around and chat with other penguins without checking out the site first. I logged on as her penguin one night after she went to bed and waddled around. A few other penguins said “Hi” and other stock phrases. It turns out that Club Penguin has two levels of “chat” - one where the penguins can only pick from a menu of stock phrases and another where they can speak freely (though with filters).

If a penguin is talking to your kid and the messages are beyond the basic stock phrases, you will need to change your child’s penguin account so that only “ultimate safe chat” is enabled. Naturally, if the chats are ominous, threatening, or otherwise uncomfortable, report the offender to the Club Penguin Moderator (and other authorities depending on the situation).

Ultimate safe chat restricts chats to the predefined list of phrases, emoticons, and greetings. Your child will not see messages that are outside of these limits. The standard safe chat option allows penguins to chat with fewer restrictions. These chats are filtered for pre-approved phrases and have blocks in place to prevent transmitting phone numbers and other personal information. However, that’s not to say that offensive chats can’t take place or that kids can’t find another way to transmit their information.

To change your child’s chat options, log in and click on the question mark icon on your child’s penguin’s card menu. Next, log in as the Parent (you may need to create a Parent Account). Click on your child’s penguin followed by Parent’s Tools. Choose the level of chat that you prefer and click Submit.

The default account setting for all penguins is the Standard Safe Chat. If you want to limit your child’s chatting option, you must go in and change this setting to Ultimate Safe Chat. Do this for all penguins that your child has created.

While Club Penguin is fun for kids and quite safe once Ultimate Safe Chat has been enabled, it is introducing your child to social networking and Internet chatting which may be undesirable. After all, it won’t be long before your child graduates from the antics of cute little penguins and digs in to Web sites such as MySpace. If you will be allowing your child to play on Club Penguin, now’s the time to start the laying the groundwork about Internet safety.

 While many parents are concerned about their children being harassed online by sexual predators, they are unaware of another online concern: cyber bullies. Unlike sexual predators where adults stalk and prey upon youngsters, cyber bullying takes place between two or more children - just like on the schoolyard, only in an electronic format.

Just as schoolyard bullying can take many forms, so does cyber bullying. Forms of cyber bullying range from mean messages posted on blogs, harassing e-mails or instant messages, inappropriate e-mails, circulating rumors or photos to others about the victim, signing the victim up for junk mail, posting ads offering the victim’s phone number or other contact information, offering the victim to predators, and other tactics. While some forms of cyber bullying result in hurt feelings, other forms can be deadly.

A prime example of the dangers of cyber bullying involves a 13-year-old girl, Megan Meier, who killed herself in October 2006 after a supposed Internet relationship went bad. It turns out the boy named “Josh” was an imposter. Instead, a group of Megan’s former friends - and a parent - created Josh and spread nasty rumors about Megan over the Internet’s MySpace web site. While it’s unusual for a parent to be involved in cyber bullying, this type of bullying isn’t uncommon.

Kids bully each other for a variety of reasons. Groups of girls often gang up on other kids as a form of entertainment. These are the same types of girls known for gossiping, spreading rumors, and general nastiness. They are looking for attention and reactions from others. If they don’t get the reactions that fuel their nastiness, they move on.

In fact, according to a recent study (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006; Kowalski et al., 2005; Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006), girls are about twice as likely as boys to be perpetrators and victims of cyber bullying. Of the study respondents who admitted to being frequent cyber bullies, 56% reported cyber bullying a friend.

Another type of cyber bully works alone, enjoying the anonymity of the Internet. In many cases, these online bullies are bullied by others in the real world. Cyber bullying is their way of getting back at others without fear of retaliation.

Kids also turn to cyber bullying as a form of revenge. They may be dissatisfied with a perceived injustice and decide to take matters into their own hands. They see themselves as saviors, not bullies.

In addition, children can become inadvertent cyber bullies by over reacting to e-mails or messages they see in forums, chat rooms, or message boards.

If you are concerned about cyber bullying, it’s critical to pay attention to your child’s online activities and maintain open, honest communications with your child. Parental controls and monitoring software are tools that you can use to restrict Internet usage and monitor activities. Don’t be afraid to turn to your child’s school or law enforcement with cyber bully threats.

You can learn more by visiting the following web sites:

• Stop Cyber Bullying Now
• iSafe.org
• GirlsHealth.gov

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How to Enjoy your Online Presence

Have you ever experienced internet frustration? I bet you have and you are not alone. Every day there are virtually thousand of online surfers who are getting frustrated, angry, cheated on… The list goes on and on. But there are a few simple steps you can take to prevent this from happening to you again.

Firstly, when you are online (on the internet) you will need to make sure, that you are protected behind a firewall. A firewall is software that protects your computer from harmful damage from outsiders. When you are surfing the net, others can potentially download stuff from your computer to theirs and steal important information you might have stored on your local hard drive.

Generally when you buy a new computer these days, you will have a firewall installed as part of your software package and also many antivirus programs come with a firewall. If you are not sure about your computer just click on ¬> start > control panel > windows firewall. You will see there, whether you are currently protected or not. This is an essential step for you to take and if you are unsure, please contact the person who sold you your computer for help.

The second most mistake people make when browsing the internet, is to just open any email they get in their email program like outlook. If you open any email especially with attachments from third parties you don’t know, you could catch a computer virus! So be vigilant and use common sense. If you don’t know the person or company who sent you the email, trash it and delete it.

Thirdly, there are those websites, that promise instant riches and flashy banners who state something like “congratulations, you are our visitor number such and such, and have won…” Don’t click on those banners and those that say “your computer might be under potential risk of spy ware”. These kinds of web sites are exactly what could end up planting spy ware onto your computer. So do not open or click on them under any circumstances. If they don’t disappear by itself (which they normally don’t, simply click the “red x” at the top right hand side corner of the browser window in order to close it.

When you browse the internet under normal conditions, there is no threat to your computer, if you follow those simple instructions outlined above. The most important thing to remember that there is no such thing as instant riches and prices and the lot. These schemes are just trying to suck you in for god knows what purpose. And once they have your details, you will be hounded with more “crap”.
Browsing the internet can be a lot of fun, if you obey some rules and use common sense. It certainly is the easiest and fastest way to get lots of information on just about anything you can think of. There are also many helpful forums you can join for free on any given topic. Simple go to a search engine like google.com and type in “internet beginners forums” and it will spit out thousands of related web sites. You can then join any that apply to you, and learn from others who share the same interests.

If you use the internet to your advantages you will have lots of enjoyment from it. Don’t be scared, take baby steps and enjoy your new found freedom of browsing the fascinating world that’s called the internet.