Software is no golden bullet - Internet safety in Thanet
Written by Matt B · first published 12/02/2008
Parents and teachers are today being advised that they "need to install software" to keep their children safe but are not necessarily being told of the inherent limitations of such software. The issue of Internet safety can never be dealt with exclusively with software. At best software is a tool but as with all tools it is how you use it that maters.
Keeping yourself and your children safe online is the Key Message of today. Police and Teachers all over Kent (and the whole UK for that mater) are highlighting the dangers that exist on the Internet. The most important principle of keeping your children safe remains unchanged - talk to your kids before someone else does.
Thanet has a few unique additional issues for consideration due to it's smaller size but relatively large scale of social media use. In this article I will cover the basics of Internet safety as well as some of the challenges that Thanet faces. I will also be exposing some of the myths of Internet safety.
Solutions to Internet safety can be categorised by two pairs of descriptive words. Solutions can be Passive or Proactive and Preventive or Reactive. Passive solutions include software filters and hoping that somehow other people will do your job for you whilst talking with you children and teaching them to be safe is both Proactive and preventive. The later is also the most effective.
Let us look at some of the solutions to the safety of yourself and your children online.
Filter and blocking software (sometimes called parental control software) is often the first option to be considered and sometimes it is the only solution considered. It is also the weakest. It is entirely passive and mostly reactive - locking the door after the horse has bolted. Furthermore it primarily addresses only the issues of the World Wide Web and not email, messaging (like IM and IRC), MMO Games, Peer-to-peer networks and other applications of the net.
Filtering and blocking software in NOT a "golden solution". It will fail and it will do so regularly. Such software is a tool and like any tools there are good ways and bad ways to use it.
Filtering and blocking software sends mixed messages and achieves mixed results. It says both that you wish to protect your children and that you do not trust them. Depending on the child one message may be louder than the other.
For example under oppressive regimes (such as in China) filter software is used to limit what the population can view (in China the software is Websense). Quite aside from the moral questions of supporting the actions of oppressive governments is the single unavoidable fact that these solutions are utterly ineffective. The number of new sites on the Internet grows at over 40 sites a second and the number of pages at many hundred times that speed.
It is utterly impossible to keep up with the rate of growth.
Filtering and blocking software can work in one of two ways. Inclusion and Exclusion. With Inclusion Filtration a site must be included before the user may use it and with Exclusion a site must be specifically blocked to stop a user from visiting it.
This is fine for very small children as a first taste of the Internet as it works to allow them access to pre-approved sites. The browser Fire Fox has a great add on for just such use and with my children (all under 6) this is perfectly suitable. However as children grow older so to does their technical skill.
Limiting the Internet and it's use to sites that have been pre-approved removes the inherent usefulness of discovering new resources and before long you will need to move to a slightly "more flexible" method of controlling what websites can be viewed. But unless you are a number of orders of magnitude smarter and more highly skilled at IT than your children you can expect them to deal with frustration by overcoming it.
Sure, to start with a child might ask you to unblock a site but do you know you Wikipedia from your Facebook and do you know what they are and how they are used? If not you must trust your child to tell you while not trusting them to go there in the first place. Eventually, however, this becomes more hassle than it is worth and children turn tot he same technology used by political freedom activists.
Software such as The Tor Onion Network, VPN, Proxies, Mirrors and other such by-pass software will soon break your software's ability to filter and leave your child as exposed as they were before. Furthermore teens and young people are already many many times better at password guessing and software cracking then you or I (and I work in the IT field). Sooner or later they will overcome the filter software. Many simply "boot into safe mode" and uninstall it.
Parental control software and all forms of blocking and filtering applications are not the only side to the software story. There are other software types that you should additionally consider and these are covered later on in this article.
Filtering and blocking software is not without it's uses although this a far more limited than software vendors give credit to. Primarily it can be used to add a safety net to stop yourself and children accidentally stumbling onto the most unsavory aspects of the Internet. It is best used reactively but with the added proactive support of a good list of known "bad sites". However the more you try to block the harder it is to block it.
Filter software con not understand what is being looked at and it can not monitor your child's communication over Instant Messaging channels and other none web based media such as email. It can simply react to the URL and refuse a connection to the site. If the data held by the software is wrong then so too is the action it takes.
The rule of "never talk to strangers" is one that Thanet Police once preached endlessly to school children and parents. It's certainly something that forms a large part of my childhood and early school memories. A stranger being "any one that you do not know".
Nothing has changed with the rise of the Internet. A stranger is someone that you do not know. Online this is almost every single person you talk to even most of the ones that you count as "friends".
However, talking to strangers is what the Internet is all about. It allows conversation with out the physical dangers but at the same time it exposes uses to dangers of bad information, privacy intrusion, fraud, scams and worse. The Internet is a good thing but it has bad users and there is no way to tell the intention of other users.
Be establishing communication with your children and talking about their use of the Internet you will be able to guide their use in a way that the deeply flawed methods of blocking and filtering will never be able to. You need to teach your children to keep private data private and you need to be available to them should they feel unhappy about anything they see.
A computer is not like a phone or a television set it is an interactive window into a global community. A community where every sort of person is to be found in huge numbers. Where ever you have a computer with Internet connectivity you are inviting the world to openly visit.
You would not allow members of the public into your children's bed room yet with a computer in there you are doing just that.
The ideal place for a computer, like the television set, is in a regularly occupied family used room. The ideal way for younger children to watch television, as I am sure you are well aware, is with a parent with whom they can discuss what they have been looking at. The TV is no babysitter and the Internet even less so.
ASL is an acronym that Parents and Children alike should be fully aware of if only because of the dangers it can bring. ASL stands for Age/Sex/Location. Keeping this information secret should be your number on overriding priority and something that software is not well suited to helping with.
These details are private and should remain so as they are all that stands between chatting safely and potentially physically encountering a predatory person. By withholding this information and details that could lead to it you and your children can be sure of a greater level of safety. The only way to do this is to talk about it openly.
If you do not talk to your children someone else might. That "some one else" might have an agenda incompatible with your own...
parentscentre.gov.uk has advice on establishing a family code of conduct for safe use of the Internet.
A common problem that you and your children need to talk about is Identity. The longer you spend online the more of a trust your screen name will gain. A trust that can be abused by less pleasant people.
Never give out your password to anyone not even your closest friends.
Consider this scenario: Bob's gives his password to some guy he met on the web. That guy posses as Bob and gets Jim to meet him. Jim tells his dad he is off to meet Bob and is never seen again.
You will never be 100% sure that the identity (user accounts etc) of an online contact have not been compromised and should always treat online conversation with a degree of healthy paranoia. Talking with your children about the importance off keeping passwords secret is a good step towards helping your child learn this skill.
No mater how hard you try sooner or later kids are going to want to meet up with each other. In Thanet this is a big issue as the area is very small indeed. Children like to hang out with friends and the Internet is only part of that. There are two ways you can deal with this.
1. Bury your head in the sand and hope it does not happen.
2. Talk to your children and take steps to keep them safe.
If your children want to meet up you should be part of the arrangement process. You should both select a public place (such as a popular cafe) were there are plenty of people about. You should go with them to be sure that your does not leave the safety of a well populated place.
Try to insist that the other child brings a parent or responsible adult too. Once predators know that there will be company they will often back away quite quickly where as youngsters will simply moan about how "uncool" it is to have mum or dad dome along. If you have been talking with your children they will understand that this is for their own safety and accept the presence of adults as a necessary cost.
Only agree to allowing meeting up without you after you are both comfortable with the idea. Never forget that you are meeting a total stranger however well you think you know them "online". Be sure to talk to your children about their "new friend" and the activities they have been engaging in.
Talk about how it went but also talk about what could have happened. This will help you both to understand the benefits as well as the dangers of Internet use and real life contact.
Thanet is not such a big place. People often rely on the fact that the chances of being recognised online are a billion to one. In a small community this is not the case.
If you post pictures of yourself and others they will be recognised. If you say something about someone else they will find out. As such it is vital that you present yourself in a respectable way and in a way that will not come back at you later.
It is important for you children to understand this too. A picture of your child in uniform identifies the school they attend and gives a good idea of where they will be a certain times of the day, how old they are and their gender. Once that picture is online it is almost impossible to take it back.
Considering the implications of what you say and what you show is, therefore, even more important as a local person will have little trouble turning those clues into a set of information that will compromise the secrecy of your ASL.
Thanet is small and the Internet makes it smaller.
It's not just web filters that will keep you safe online. There are a suit of software applications that protect you and your computer and without such tools you expose yourself to added risk.
Viruses are programs of different types that use the Internet in general and any other method (floppies for example) to move from computer to computer. Often this is to use your computer to commit crimes. To protect your computer you will require something called an Anti virus program.
Anti virus programs come in two types there are free antivirus programs available for the home user and there are antivirus packages that you must pay for. New computers often come with antivirus software installed but it is usually time limited or trail software.
The difference between one package and another has little to do with the price. In one study AVG Free Edition beat almost all of leading pay for packages (except F-Secure and some software based on it) in most tests. All antivirus packages are roughly equal and are only as good as the last update without which they are worthless.
Most packages have different features which mainly focus on "added value" (related security issues) and methods of detection. For example WinClamAV (Free and Open Source) will not scan anything until you ask it to which can leave you vulnerable to threats. For the average user I would recommend AVG Free (Only free for home use) or F-Secure (Download a Free Trailg(16925054)a(1473920))
).
A firewall is something that prevents external intrusions into a PC or network. A personal firewall keeps you safe by making it harder for viruses to get onto your computer and by stopping crackers (criminal hackers) from accessing your computer. Modern versions of windows have a basic firewall built in but for peace of mind most people recommend a third party firewall. F-Secure offer a firewall as part of their Internet security suit but if you want a free firewall Zone Alarm offer a free for personal use edition.
Spyware is a class of software that while not viral can often be harmful or deceptive. In order to keep your private life private it is best to keep "spyware" as minimal as possible. Most leading antivirus packages have some spyware element the F-Secure one is considered to be quite good but has not achieved the same level of notability as Spybot SnD or Adaware both of which are free and also deeply disliked by the darker side of Internet business (not to mention cyber criminals).
In writing this article I wanted to ensure that I had up to date information and in the process of checking this I accumulated a lot of links. There is no way I could do more than skim the surface with this article and so I highly recommend all of the sites listed here as sources of further reading and information.
thinkuknow.co.uk - Internet safety includes sections for different ages, parents and teachers it is run by CEOP the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre
The Spybot SnD homepage
Get Safe Online
Government Advice for Parents
BBC Chat Guide
BECTA Report: Safeguarding children in a digital world
Keeping yourself and your children safe online is the Key Message of today. Police and Teachers all over Kent (and the whole UK for that mater) are highlighting the dangers that exist on the Internet. The most important principle of keeping your children safe remains unchanged - talk to your kids before someone else does.
Thanet has a few unique additional issues for consideration due to it's smaller size but relatively large scale of social media use. In this article I will cover the basics of Internet safety as well as some of the challenges that Thanet faces. I will also be exposing some of the myths of Internet safety.
Solutions to Internet safety can be categorised by two pairs of descriptive words. Solutions can be Passive or Proactive and Preventive or Reactive. Passive solutions include software filters and hoping that somehow other people will do your job for you whilst talking with you children and teaching them to be safe is both Proactive and preventive. The later is also the most effective.
Let us look at some of the solutions to the safety of yourself and your children online.
Internet Filtering Software
Filter and blocking software (sometimes called parental control software) is often the first option to be considered and sometimes it is the only solution considered. It is also the weakest. It is entirely passive and mostly reactive - locking the door after the horse has bolted. Furthermore it primarily addresses only the issues of the World Wide Web and not email, messaging (like IM and IRC), MMO Games, Peer-to-peer networks and other applications of the net.
Filtering and blocking software in NOT a "golden solution". It will fail and it will do so regularly. Such software is a tool and like any tools there are good ways and bad ways to use it.
Filtering and blocking software sends mixed messages and achieves mixed results. It says both that you wish to protect your children and that you do not trust them. Depending on the child one message may be louder than the other.
For example under oppressive regimes (such as in China) filter software is used to limit what the population can view (in China the software is Websense). Quite aside from the moral questions of supporting the actions of oppressive governments is the single unavoidable fact that these solutions are utterly ineffective. The number of new sites on the Internet grows at over 40 sites a second and the number of pages at many hundred times that speed.
It is utterly impossible to keep up with the rate of growth.
Filtering and blocking software can work in one of two ways. Inclusion and Exclusion. With Inclusion Filtration a site must be included before the user may use it and with Exclusion a site must be specifically blocked to stop a user from visiting it.
Inclusion Surfing
This is fine for very small children as a first taste of the Internet as it works to allow them access to pre-approved sites. The browser Fire Fox has a great add on for just such use and with my children (all under 6) this is perfectly suitable. However as children grow older so to does their technical skill.
Exclusion Surfing
Limiting the Internet and it's use to sites that have been pre-approved removes the inherent usefulness of discovering new resources and before long you will need to move to a slightly "more flexible" method of controlling what websites can be viewed. But unless you are a number of orders of magnitude smarter and more highly skilled at IT than your children you can expect them to deal with frustration by overcoming it.
Sure, to start with a child might ask you to unblock a site but do you know you Wikipedia from your Facebook and do you know what they are and how they are used? If not you must trust your child to tell you while not trusting them to go there in the first place. Eventually, however, this becomes more hassle than it is worth and children turn tot he same technology used by political freedom activists.
Software such as The Tor Onion Network, VPN, Proxies, Mirrors and other such by-pass software will soon break your software's ability to filter and leave your child as exposed as they were before. Furthermore teens and young people are already many many times better at password guessing and software cracking then you or I (and I work in the IT field). Sooner or later they will overcome the filter software. Many simply "boot into safe mode" and uninstall it.
"Head teachers are increasingly banning access to the web pages, which allow pupils to post pictures, share music and make new friends, amid fears that they are being targeted by bullies and paedophiles. But children, addicted to popular sites, are determined to thwart their efforts and crack the security.
Pupils crack schools' Internet safety filters, Anushka Asthana (education correspondent), The Observer, Sunday June 3 2007
Parental control software and all forms of blocking and filtering applications are not the only side to the software story. There are other software types that you should additionally consider and these are covered later on in this article.
What Filter Software Can Do
Filtering and blocking software is not without it's uses although this a far more limited than software vendors give credit to. Primarily it can be used to add a safety net to stop yourself and children accidentally stumbling onto the most unsavory aspects of the Internet. It is best used reactively but with the added proactive support of a good list of known "bad sites". However the more you try to block the harder it is to block it.
- Limiting access to explicit adult content
- Limited access to illegal content
- Alerting you to and limiting access to fraud and scam sites (phishing)
What Filter Software CANNOT do
Filter software con not understand what is being looked at and it can not monitor your child's communication over Instant Messaging channels and other none web based media such as email. It can simply react to the URL and refuse a connection to the site. If the data held by the software is wrong then so too is the action it takes.
- It can not talk to your kids for you.
- It cannot keep your child safe on IM
- It cannot stop your child from by-passing it
- It can not know what the nature is of ever page on the web
- It will not be right all the time
- It will not teach your children what is safe and what is not.
- It will never replace talking to your kids
- It can not keep your child safe from predatory advances on "safe" sites.
- It can not stop the computer user doing something stupid.
Stranger Danger!
The rule of "never talk to strangers" is one that Thanet Police once preached endlessly to school children and parents. It's certainly something that forms a large part of my childhood and early school memories. A stranger being "any one that you do not know".
Nothing has changed with the rise of the Internet. A stranger is someone that you do not know. Online this is almost every single person you talk to even most of the ones that you count as "friends".
However, talking to strangers is what the Internet is all about. It allows conversation with out the physical dangers but at the same time it exposes uses to dangers of bad information, privacy intrusion, fraud, scams and worse. The Internet is a good thing but it has bad users and there is no way to tell the intention of other users.
Be establishing communication with your children and talking about their use of the Internet you will be able to guide their use in a way that the deeply flawed methods of blocking and filtering will never be able to. You need to teach your children to keep private data private and you need to be available to them should they feel unhappy about anything they see.
Computer Location
A computer is not like a phone or a television set it is an interactive window into a global community. A community where every sort of person is to be found in huge numbers. Where ever you have a computer with Internet connectivity you are inviting the world to openly visit.
You would not allow members of the public into your children's bed room yet with a computer in there you are doing just that.
The ideal place for a computer, like the television set, is in a regularly occupied family used room. The ideal way for younger children to watch television, as I am sure you are well aware, is with a parent with whom they can discuss what they have been looking at. The TV is no babysitter and the Internet even less so.
Never Tell Your ASL!
ASL is an acronym that Parents and Children alike should be fully aware of if only because of the dangers it can bring. ASL stands for Age/Sex/Location. Keeping this information secret should be your number on overriding priority and something that software is not well suited to helping with.
These details are private and should remain so as they are all that stands between chatting safely and potentially physically encountering a predatory person. By withholding this information and details that could lead to it you and your children can be sure of a greater level of safety. The only way to do this is to talk about it openly.
If you do not talk to your children someone else might. That "some one else" might have an agenda incompatible with your own...
parentscentre.gov.uk has advice on establishing a family code of conduct for safe use of the Internet.
Personal Identity: Passwords and other secrets
A common problem that you and your children need to talk about is Identity. The longer you spend online the more of a trust your screen name will gain. A trust that can be abused by less pleasant people.
Never give out your password to anyone not even your closest friends.
Consider this scenario: Bob's gives his password to some guy he met on the web. That guy posses as Bob and gets Jim to meet him. Jim tells his dad he is off to meet Bob and is never seen again.
You will never be 100% sure that the identity (user accounts etc) of an online contact have not been compromised and should always treat online conversation with a degree of healthy paranoia. Talking with your children about the importance off keeping passwords secret is a good step towards helping your child learn this skill.
Meeting Up
No mater how hard you try sooner or later kids are going to want to meet up with each other. In Thanet this is a big issue as the area is very small indeed. Children like to hang out with friends and the Internet is only part of that. There are two ways you can deal with this.
1. Bury your head in the sand and hope it does not happen.
2. Talk to your children and take steps to keep them safe.
If your children want to meet up you should be part of the arrangement process. You should both select a public place (such as a popular cafe) were there are plenty of people about. You should go with them to be sure that your does not leave the safety of a well populated place.
Try to insist that the other child brings a parent or responsible adult too. Once predators know that there will be company they will often back away quite quickly where as youngsters will simply moan about how "uncool" it is to have mum or dad dome along. If you have been talking with your children they will understand that this is for their own safety and accept the presence of adults as a necessary cost.
Follow up
Only agree to allowing meeting up without you after you are both comfortable with the idea. Never forget that you are meeting a total stranger however well you think you know them "online". Be sure to talk to your children about their "new friend" and the activities they have been engaging in.
Talk about how it went but also talk about what could have happened. This will help you both to understand the benefits as well as the dangers of Internet use and real life contact.
Thanet on the web
Thanet is not such a big place. People often rely on the fact that the chances of being recognised online are a billion to one. In a small community this is not the case.
If you post pictures of yourself and others they will be recognised. If you say something about someone else they will find out. As such it is vital that you present yourself in a respectable way and in a way that will not come back at you later.
It is important for you children to understand this too. A picture of your child in uniform identifies the school they attend and gives a good idea of where they will be a certain times of the day, how old they are and their gender. Once that picture is online it is almost impossible to take it back.
Considering the implications of what you say and what you show is, therefore, even more important as a local person will have little trouble turning those clues into a set of information that will compromise the secrecy of your ASL.
Thanet is small and the Internet makes it smaller.
Other Software
It's not just web filters that will keep you safe online. There are a suit of software applications that protect you and your computer and without such tools you expose yourself to added risk.
Anti Virus
Viruses are programs of different types that use the Internet in general and any other method (floppies for example) to move from computer to computer. Often this is to use your computer to commit crimes. To protect your computer you will require something called an Anti virus program.
Anti virus programs come in two types there are free antivirus programs available for the home user and there are antivirus packages that you must pay for. New computers often come with antivirus software installed but it is usually time limited or trail software.
The difference between one package and another has little to do with the price. In one study AVG Free Edition beat almost all of leading pay for packages (except F-Secure and some software based on it) in most tests. All antivirus packages are roughly equal and are only as good as the last update without which they are worthless.
Most packages have different features which mainly focus on "added value" (related security issues) and methods of detection. For example WinClamAV (Free and Open Source) will not scan anything until you ask it to which can leave you vulnerable to threats. For the average user I would recommend AVG Free (Only free for home use) or F-Secure (Download a Free Trail
Personal Firewall
A firewall is something that prevents external intrusions into a PC or network. A personal firewall keeps you safe by making it harder for viruses to get onto your computer and by stopping crackers (criminal hackers) from accessing your computer. Modern versions of windows have a basic firewall built in but for peace of mind most people recommend a third party firewall. F-Secure offer a firewall as part of their Internet security suit but if you want a free firewall Zone Alarm offer a free for personal use edition.
Anti Spyware
Spyware is a class of software that while not viral can often be harmful or deceptive. In order to keep your private life private it is best to keep "spyware" as minimal as possible. Most leading antivirus packages have some spyware element the F-Secure one is considered to be quite good but has not achieved the same level of notability as Spybot SnD or Adaware both of which are free and also deeply disliked by the darker side of Internet business (not to mention cyber criminals).
Links
In writing this article I wanted to ensure that I had up to date information and in the process of checking this I accumulated a lot of links. There is no way I could do more than skim the surface with this article and so I highly recommend all of the sites listed here as sources of further reading and information.
thinkuknow.co.uk - Internet safety includes sections for different ages, parents and teachers it is run by CEOP the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre
The Spybot SnD homepage
Get Safe Online
Government Advice for Parents
BBC Chat Guide
BECTA Report: Safeguarding children in a digital world
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