Keeping Digital Copies of Cyberbullying
by Mary Kay Hoal
Technology is great. It makes our lives easier, more manageable, and more fun. However, bullies have found a way to take that same technology and turn it into a medium of harassment. If your child has a cell phone, a laptop, a Facebook page, or even a blog, he/she is susceptible to cyberbullying–a form of bullying that lately, has overshadowed “traditional bullying”.
Cyberbullying has all the same side-effects that traditional bullying has, and more. As I’m sure you know, consistent bullying of any kind can create serious emotional damage to a child. Their life can be turned into a nightmare. Among other things, their reputation at school can be destroyed because of humiliating videos on YouTube or snide comments on Facebook/MySpace being exposed for their other friends to see on the internet.
The purpose of this blog post is to leave you and your child with some tips and tools to aid you in case cyberbullying happens in your family. There are multiple ways to handle the situation, some are better than others. Read on and see which methods I feel are the most productive:
For E-mails
Always keep hard copies and digital copies of cyberbullying emails, don’t reply to the email as it will only add gasoline to the fire. In extreme cases where you or your child feels your lives are being threatened, call the police.
How To: Don’t delete the email, keep it in an email sub-folder so it stays organized. (See image below)
G-mail settings
Yahoo! settings
Children emails: Make sure to give them or tell them to create gender neutral email addresses so that random bullies don’t know if the email recipent is male or female.
Always create strong passwords: do not use your/your child’s first or last name anywhere in their email password. Refrain from using easy passwords such as pet names or best friends’ names. Make sure there’s a good mix of numbers and letters as well. For a great-password-making tool, check out: http://www.passwordmeter.com/
For Text Messages:
Don’t delete the text message, and just like emails, don’t respond to the text.
Keep it in your phone and if the bullying gets too serious file a formal complaint with your cell phone provider, or again, in serious instances, call the police.
Any internet related cyberbullying: (social networks, emails, chat rooms, YouTube, etc)
Below I will show you how to take screenshots. This is one of the best ways to keep digital copies of any type of harassment. On the other hand, most big sites like YouTube, Facebook, and AOL have some sort of service that allows you to file a complaint. When you do this, they will most likely ask you if you have evidence of the harassment–this is where the screenshot comes in handy.
Windows based:
On any Windows based PC, you can take a screenshot by pressing the “Prt Sc” key on your keyboard.
This will create an image file of exactly what you see on your computer screen. After pressing the “Prt sc” button, go to an image program such as Paint (comes with any Windows based computer) and once you have the program open, just click on “paste” or press Ctrl + V.
Now save the file somewhere on your computer where you can easily find it.
Mac OSX based:
If you have an Apple Mac, press the Command key + shift + 3 to send an image file straight to your Desktop.
Make sure you save the image to a folder that you’ll remember (maybe make a new folder titled “cyberbullying”) that way you can easily find the proof that you need when things get too serious and you decide to report it.
Free screenshot software:
In a previous blog, I gave some advice to one of my friends when her daughter was being cyberbullied on Facebook. I told her about a great application called Jing. With Jing you can easily document screenshots or video recordings from website activity–this is a great way to generate some evidence of cyberbullying. Check it out at http://www.jingproject.com/download/
This video will show you how to capture video:
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Mary Kay
Hoal is the founder of YourSphere, the first social networking service for youth that parents can embrace. A proud wife and mother of five children (both biological and adopted, ranging in age from 5-18 years old), Mary Kay faces the same challenges every parent does: keeping her kids safe; raising them to be good, happy and well-balanced people; and providing them with the tools and support to create their own future. Mary Kay and husband Ted live in Davis, CA.
Playing in Traffic - Facebook
If you have children who are on Facebook and want to get started with your own account, but do not know where to begin, I would strongly encourage you to go to your child and let them know that you are interested in learning more and setting up your own page and becoming their online friend. You’ll have a blast with each other and create memories.
If you would like to try it on your own, I’ve listed some of the basic account setup steps to get you started.
Sign up for an account. Go to www.facebook.com , complete the signup information on the right side and click “Sign Up”.
Follow the next prompt to enter the security words.
Step 1 - Find Friends. Facebook allows you to enter your e-mail address and e-mail password so that it can search through your address book and find your friends that are already online. If you prefer not to type in this information, you can choose “Skip This Step”. I personally prefer to skip entering my personal information here and finding my friends manually.
Step 2 - Profile Information. You can begin building your profile by entering where you went to high shcool, college, and where you work. Facebook uses these fields to also help find friends that match what you input. If you do not want to enter this information at this point, you have the option to skip.
Step 3 - Profile Picture. Choose a picture of yourself that is already on your computer or, if you have a webcam, choose the option “Take a Photo”. Again, you can skip this step and upload your profile picture later.
Step 4- Confirm Your Account. Facebook sends an email to your email address. To confirm your Facebook account, you must check your email and follow the instructions provided.
You have successfully set up a Facebook account!
Finding Friends. To find friends, choose “Friends - Find Friends” in the upper menu. You will be able to search for people by their name or e-mail address. When you find the person you want to be friends with, choose “Add as friend”. Facebook then sends them a message that you have requested to be their friend. Once they confirm you as a friend, you can see each other’s information.
Privacy Settings. Privacy settings can be set on each aspect of your Facebook account. Choose “Settings - Privacy Settings” in the upper right menu. Choose each setting and tweak it to best fit you.
Posing. Facebook posting is done on your “wall”. Your wall gives you an area where you can update your status. Your status might vary from a quote that you want to post to letting your friends know you just watched a movie and loved it to saying you’ve had a great day. It’s in your wall where you will see what your friends and children are saying. You can also go to one of your friend’s or children’s walls and see what other people are posting on their wall. Remember, you can only see on your wall what your friends are posting.
I first entered the world of Facebook to try to learn everything I could about it before my son became interested and asked me if he could sign up for an account. It took me a little while to really see what the purpose was, but after hanging in there, I’ve connected with lost high school friends and been able to re-establish many friendships.
I hope this post has helped you feel a little more comfortable with setting up a Facebook account. And, I hope many of you were able to set up your account with the help of your children who may already have an account.
Stay safe online and make sure your family is protected with the Bsecure Online Internet Filter!
Playing in Traffic - Basic Browsing
When my son first started understanding how the Internet could be used to help him find things he wanted to research, such as Spiderman, new toys, and Spongebob, I quickly saw that he needed to be taught some very basic safety rules. These rules can be helpful no matter your age.
Use a search engine to help locate the website. My son’s instinct was to just type into the browser address bar www. + whatever he wanted to look up + .com. As you can imagine, depending on what you typed in as the web address, you didn’t know what might pop up! One safety rule is to use a search engine like www.google.com to type in what you are looking for, then carefully read the descrptions to make sure you then choose the appropriate website to browse. Once you are on the website, you can then click various links in the site to go to different pages and see all the information the company has written about on its site.
Clicking on pop-up ads can be dangerous. As you start to feel more comfortable browsing the Internet and go to more and more sites, some might have pop-up advertisements that try to entice you to “click here” for a chance to win something, or to make sure your computer is running as efficiently as possible. My rule of thumb, is that if I’m looking for something, I will Google it and make sure I am on a legitimate website before I will ever click on a pop-up ad that might then place spyware or malware on my computer. Teach yourself and your kids that no matter how enticing the ad looks, ignore the pop-up, and go back to the basics of using Google or another search engine to make sure you choose a legitimate site.
Not all downloadable files are safe. My son loves gaming on his computer. He also loves finding cheat codes to unlock all the cars and tracks in a racing game. The other day, he found a blog post where someone was talking about how you could unlock all the features of a specific racing game by downloading and installing a certain file onto the computer. It even had additional posts from other people saying how awesome the cheats off that file were. My son knows to always ask me or his dad to check out a file before he downloads something and we will stop what we are doing and take the time to help him out. I saved the file that he was wanting to my hard drive, then told my Anti-Virus software to scan it. Sure enough, that file was a virus! Had my son downloaded and installed the file, our computer could have been infected with a nasty trojan virus that we would have spent hours trying to clean.
Add peace of mind to your computer with an Internet filter. Installing an Internet filter is a great way to help protect your family from stumbling upon inappropriate content. Internet filters like Bsecure Online provides this peace of mind by blocking inappropriate sites based on the categories you choose, allows you to see what sites have been visited, set the hours that each family member can be online, and many other features. It also provides anti-virus protection with the full security suite. As an added bonuses, customer support is more than glad to help walk you through installing the software and setting it up to best meet your needs if you are new at computers and want assurance.
Begin your path of learning today! Like I said the other day, you don’t have to know everything, but get a grasp on the basics and how to protect your family online. If your children seem “savvy”, let them know you want to learn and you’d like them to help show you the ropes, go to a local community hands-on class, or ask a good friend to teach you. Us parents have no quams when it comes to learning about keeping our physical homes safe for our family, so lets use that same zeal and confidence to learn how to keep our family safe online!
Internet Resolutions
Resolutions are made the beginning of every year and are typically broken by the end of February. It seems our intentions are much greater than our willpower sometimes. Let’s be honest, it takes a lot more effort for us to be diligent in doing the right things than to let things slide.
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to conquer your addiction to porn or online gambling, partner with an Internet filter company that will come alongside you to help this resolution be one that you do not break.
Bsecure Online has a great feature that will disable the password override option. What this means is that if you go to a site that is categorized as porn or online gambling, you cannot get to the blocked site at all. Your password override feature has been disabled. If you feel it is really a safe site that should be allowed, call the Bsecure team who will manually review the site for you, and, put it on the allow list if it is a site that will not cause you to fall back into your addiction.
Ring in the New Year right by conquering your Internet addictions with Bsecure Online!
Overview of Facebook’s new Privacy Controls
Yesterday when I logged into my Facebook account, I was greeted with a privacy announcement from Facebook.
Once I continued to the next step, I was greeting with a list of options where I could stay with the old Facebook settings or apply new privacy settings.
I went through each setting and chose what I felt was the most private setting for everything.
Everytime I decide to post something on my Facebook account, I can use my default settings, or, depending on “what’s on my mind”, I can allow it to post to Friends of Friends or Everyone. To further protect my identity, I chose to only let my friends see my contact information.
This is a good step for Facebook to take. However, as parents, it is still our responsibility to teach our children the importance of safeguarding themselves. They are at a stage to where popularity is important to them, and they see no problem with adding “friends” that they do not know. In fact, Sophos conducted a study to see how many people would accept their Facebook friend invite and what information they could find out about them. The findings are posted below:
“Sophos Facebook ID Probe findings:
- 87 of the 200 Facebook users contacted responded to Freddi, with 82 leaking personal information (41% of those approached)
- 72% of respondents divulged one or more email address
- 84% of respondents listed their full date of birth
- 87% of respondents provided details about their education or workplace
- 78% of respondents listed their current address or location
- 23% of respondents listed their current phone number
- 26% of respondents provided their instant messaging screenname
In the majority of cases, Freddi was able to gain access to respondents’ photos of family and friends, information about likes/dislikes, hobbies, employer details and other personal facts. In addition, many users also disclosed the names of their spouses or partners, several included their complete résumés, while one user even divulged his mother’s maiden name - information often requested by websites in order to retrieve account details.”
Don’t just rely on Facebook and other networking sites to add additional privacy settings. Be proactive in teaching your kids not to accept friend requests from people they do not know. Be one of their social networking friends so you can see who they have accepted. Talk them about the importance of keeping their personal information private, and install a trusted, parental controls software like Bsecure as an added layer of protection to know where they are going and to keep them from inappropriate sites.
Be in the know!
3,500 registered sex offenders in New York were recently kicked off of MySpace and Facebook. This purging was able to happen due to the Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (“E-STOP”) that was authored by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
At a Manhattan news conference, Cuomo said:
“Beware of the danger of the Internet. It is a great tool…but the most dangerous place can be a young person in their own bedroom on their laptop…You don’t really know where they are and you don’t really know who they are talking to.”
With the proper tools in place, the Internet can be a safer place, and you can know where your kids are going online and who they are talking to.
Internet monitoring software, like Bsecure, can offer real solutions for your family including:
- Customizable filtering levels for each computer user
- Categories to allow or restrict access to gambling, porn, R-rated, etc. websites
- Instant Messaging and Chat room monitoring
- Detailed reporting showing when the Internet was accessed, sites that were visited, and sites that were blocked
- Time of Day feature to control Internet activities for specific times of the day
We as parents have the privilege of helping to create a safe, loving environment for our children. Take an active role in your child’s life and become aware and involved in providing safety in their online and offline lives.
Google’s SafeSearch — A good tool to add to your online toolbox.
Google has added a new security feature to its search functionality which helps protect kids from seeing inappropriate content in search results. Parents can activate the SafeSearch feature and lock it with a password. Once activated, large colored balls can be seen in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
Google’s new SafeSearch is a good tool in helping to keep kids safe online. However, as a CNET article points out, the settings must be configured for each browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome). In addition, if the InPrivate browser settings are used for Internet Explorer, it will bypass the SafeSearch feature.
Google SafeSearch should not be the only means of online protection. The best option is to combine Google’s SafeSearch with a trusted Internet filter, and by keeping the lines of communication open with your kids about the dangers of the Internet.