Are Your Kids Online?

November 4, 2009

Interview with Marje Monroe, Racing to Keep Up: Talking with your kids about technology use and strategies to protect the home computer

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Mike Carruthers:

If you have kids in your house using the Internet you should be aware…

Marje Monroe: 

That in the past two years there has just been a proliferation of viruses, scams, targeted to children and children’s gaming sites. And this puts kids and their computers at risk.

Marje Monroe, author of the book Racing to Keep Up 

Identity theft – the largest growing demographic for identity theft is young teens and so a lot of people are realizing that because kids are impulsive they are easy targets. In fact parents are finding out when they go for their first drivers license, when the teen gets their drivers license that in fact there are liens against them, there are credit cards there.

Online bullying is another real problem.

For example there will be two kids in one room on a computer and they will email a friend and the friend doesn’t know the two of them are there and they set this kid up by saying, “Hey, do you like Jimmy?” – and Jimmy’s standing there.

And kids frequently hack into other kids email accounts.

And send out emails as if they were them. For example saying very racist or mean comments about teachers and it’s not the actual child sending it. And the number one reason for that is that kids share their passwords willingly because they’re really too young. They really don’t stop themselves well so ten year olds all share their passwords, twelve year olds all share their passwords. And they don’t really think about the fact that other kids may then break into their account.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.