North Bellmore U.F.S.D.
INTERNET SAFETY
 Gary Pardo, Director of Technology

January 22, 2010

Facebook and MySpace: They’re Not For Children

Dear Parent(s)/Guardian(s):

Locally, and nationwide, there have been many troubling incidents reported in the media regarding students’ use of the Internet.  In particular, it has come to our attention that social networking sites such as My Space and Facebook have become extremely popular and that it is not uncommon to find underage children, like our students, registered; even though the requirements state that children must be 13 years of age for Facebook and 14 years of age for MySpace to register an account.

Unfortunately, North Bellmore, as well as most districts on Long Island, has had our share of cyber bullying incidents related to these and other online sites. Primarily, these occurrences happen at home, after school hours, when children have access to Web sites that are normally blocked in school. With this in mind, and in response to the many concerned parents who have contacted me regarding Internet safety, I would like to make a special appeal to you. I strongly request that all parents and guardians prohibit their children from using  Facebook, MySpace and other online meeting forums while they remain a student in North Bellmore; because, as the adage states, it’s better to be safe than sorry. 


It’s Up To You To Restrict Access


Therefore, if your child has an account please temporarily disable it until she/he graduates from elementary school. These sites are not appropriate for young children, hence the age requirement, nor does the child understand the many negative ramifications of having an account. They certainly do not understand the meaning of the myriad of privacy settings nor do they know how to configure them; and these settings are constantly changing. And lastly, children don’t completely understand that once you hit that send or submit button, the information and images sent no longer belong to just them. Friends, family, colleges, future employers, and strangers all have access to and the right to view and lift any material online.

Please consider this appeal as one in which we can act together as a community. We need to take a united stand as parents, guardians and educators. The peer pressure alone that our children contend with regarding these sites is enormous and completely unfair and unnecessary.


Keeping Up With Changing Technology: You May Not Be But Your Kids Are!


We understand that it is certainly difficult to keep up with the ways that our children are using new and ever-changing technologies.  Our children are immersed in a society that has become dependent on powerful computers, including cell phones, ipods, gaming stations and other portable wireless high-tech devices. Children as young as elementary students have become very savvy in the use of technology and therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Internet has now become a favored forum for socializing, and is now the preferred method of communication among children and teens.  Students communicate with each other on the Web through email, instant messaging services, such as AIM, and through blogs, which are online journals that people can read and respond to. The social networking sites in particular are very much like online diaries, where students may post personal information about themselves including their name, age and photograph, their likes, dislikes, interests and friends. Interestingly, students would not share this information with a stranger on the street but somehow feel comfortable when sharing it on the Web for everyone to see.  These networking sites also provide features such as instant messaging and email so that visitors, and strangers included, can communicate and have a direct discussion with your child.

The district restricts access to these Web sites in school and we recommend that parents limit and monitor their young children’s Internet access at home with their safety foremost in mind. We also encourage parents to learn about Internet safety and to play an active role in discussing the issue with their children.

Through lessons provided by classroom teachers, and the Technology and Prevention programs, we do our best to provide our students with the awareness and knowledge they need in order to recognize and avoid dangerous, destructive, or unlawful behavior and to respond appropriately. However, it is only through a collaborative effort between parents and teachers that we will succeed in creating responsible and safe cyber citizens. 

If you have any questions feel free to contact me at 516-992-3030 or you may contact me through email. Please make every effort to attend Internet safety presentations provided by the district.  These presentations will be advertised through postings on our Web site and flyers that are sent home with students.

 

Sincerely,

Gary Pardo
Director of Technology

Safe Web Exploration and Internet Safety @ Home
North Bellmore Technology Program

The Internet is like a new exciting city awaiting exploration. There is a tremendous potential to access information that creates an exceptional learning opportunity for children, but, as with any trip in the real world, children need chaperones to guide and supervise the activity of exploration. Parents should realize that no child is immune from online problems; so, please do not become indifferent to your child’s online activities.  For young children especially, Internet use should be a family activity not a private activity. As parents, you have authority over online activities; don’t relinquish it.

1.   Tips for Creating an Environment in Which Children May Interact On-Line in a Safe, Educational, and Entertaining Context. 

  • Place computer in a shared “family” room
  • Prevent accessing/viewing of inappropriate sites, if possible.
  • Actively supervise and monitor your child’s Internet usage (e.g., sites that have been visited).
  • Respect your child's privacy but make certain they know personally everyone on their email "buddy" list. Work to generate parent and child trust that supports open and honest Internet use.
  • Have a dialog regarding Internet safety with your child, including guidelines, your expectations of its use and the negative aspects of using the Internet
  • Teach responsible usage by setting clear, reasonable rules and consequences for breaking them.
  • Encourage your child to come to you if they encounter a problem or if anyone online makes them feel uncomfortable.
  • It can be a fun journey to explore the Internet as a family. Computer-savvy kids can certainly teach you a thing or two...take advantage of this!
  • Speak with other parents, teachers, librarians and other professionals
  • Contact the police if you child receives sexually explicit images or pornography from another person or is sexually solicited by an adult.

2.   Kids' Rules for Online Safety:

  • I will never give out any personal or identifying information while online, e.g., name, age, gender, address, telephone number, parents' work address/telephone number, social security number, passwords, credit card information, or the name and location of my school without my parents' permission.
  • I will never share my password with anyone else other than my parents (even my best friends!).
  • I will not respond to mean or inappropriate messages. It is not my fault if I receive a message like that. If I do see anything that makes me feel uncomfortable I will inform my parents right away.
  • I will never send a person my picture or anything else without first checking with my parents.
  • I will never agree to get together with someone I "meet" online without first checking with my parents. If my parents agree to the meeting, I will be sure that it is in a public place and bring my mother or father along.
  • I will check with parents before downloading or installing software or doing anything that could possibly hurt our computer or jeopardize my families privacy.
  • I will be a good citizen and not do anything that hurts other people or is against the law.
  • I will help my parents understand how to have fun and learn things online and teach them things about the Internet, computers and other technology.

3.  Cyber Bullying:

Using many of these high tech devices, bullying has now moved from the schoolyard to cyberspace. Cyber bullying incidents range from insult campaigns, lewd and threatening messages, and the posting of provocative images online. Bullying often follows the victim home after school via cell phones or the computer and therefore, home is, sadly, not the safe haven it used to be. Barraged by emails, IMs, text messages and web postings, bullies chisel away at a person's self-esteem until they are completely humiliated often causing more psychological damage than traditional bullying. Although these incidents happen off school premises, they have a profound affect on the classroom and school environment. An incident of cyber bullying often engenders a climate of fear and intimidation resulting in a classroom where the focus is no longer on learning. Also, the positive classroom climate that teachers create during the year also deteriorates.

Here are some actions to take against online bullies:

  • Do NOT respond back; this only empowers the bully to send more.
  • Block the senders username
  • Instead of blocking usernames, set your messenger to show messages from only people you know. This will result in level of tighter security, preventing anyone not on your buddy list from sending you messages or adding you to their contact list.
  • Save and print out messages as evidence.
  • Report all transgressions to your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
  • Change your screen name
  • Change your away message
  • Leave the chat room or Web site.
  • Speak to a trusted adult. If the bully is a student at your child's school meet with school officials and ask for help in resolving the situation.
  • If you feel that your child is in imminent danger contact the police
  • Contact the FBI
Remember, too, that you are responsible for your behavior online…
Think before you click Send!

4.  Cyber Predators:

The Internet is being used in a number of ways to target and sexually victimize children. A recent study by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), over 12-month period of time, showed that approximately 1 in 5 children age 10-17 who regularly uses the Internet received a sexual solicitation. The best way to reduce the risks on the Internet is to understand the potential dangers, watch for abuses, and immediately report them. If possible save all communication, e.g., IM chats and emails as evidence and report the incidents to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and local law enforcement officials. You can also report these incidents at the NCMED's CyberTipLine at www.cybertipline.com which helps fight against child exploitation on the Internet. We need to make sure that your child never gets to the point in which they read the initials LMIRL during their online communication (i.e., Let's Meet in Real Life).

5.   To Obtain Parental Controls:

Visit any of the following sites or search the Internet using keywords such as “parental control software”, “child filtering software”, etc. Many parental software programs offer free trial downloads, so spend time and shop around before you pay. Two programs that can monitor and control AIM usage are Parent Tools for AIM and SpyArsenal AIM logger.  These tools can be used to silently record Instant Message and chat room conversations, limit online time to a certain number of hours per day, create an online schedule to limit times per day online, and disable various features built into the AIM software. Wiredsafety.org recommends Spectorsoft, which can be found at software4parents.com This software application will record conversations and e-mail you reports at work.

Common Filtering Software for Home Users:
http://www.netnanny.com
http://www.cyberpatrol.com
http://www.cybersitter.com
http://www.software4parents.com

For Further Information Regarding Internet Safety:
http://wiredsafety.org  ***Highly recommended: Parry Aftab’s Organization
http://www.i-safe.org
http://www.cyberangels.org
http://www.netparents.org
http://www.cyberbully.org

6.   E-Mail, Instant Messaging, Profiles and Personal Web Sites

  • Junk mail is as much a problem in cyberspace as it is in the U.S. Postal service. Also known as Spam, junk mail may contain links to inappropriate sites and may be the vehicle in which a virus is delivered.  If the identity of the sender is unknown, the mail should simply be deleted, not even opened! Opening an email can generate an automatic response to the sender that the recipients address is valid. Opening the email may also be enough to infect your computer, although more commonly the infection is spread by actually clicking on an attachment.  E-mail responses should never be made to an unknown address.
  • Children should be advised never to instant message or enter chat rooms with users whom they cannot identify by their username.
  • Never have a child enter personal information into their Internet Service Provider (e.g., AOL) “Profile”, and personal web pages that they have created and posted. Many predators search these profiles for potential victims. This is analogous to walking up to a stranger on the street and giving them all of your personal information.

7.   Two Methods of Checking Visited Web Sites

The Browser's History

Check your Internet Explorer (IE) browser options and configure the ‘History’ settings so that visits are logged for later viewing. In the IE menu above go to: Tools....Internet Options...History under the ‘General’ tab. Then at any time in the future, click on the ‘History’ button in the IE menu to view the log. Other browsers (Netscape, AOL…) also have the capability to maintain and view sites recently visited.

Cookies

A “cookie” is a file that is created each time a website is visited; the “cookie” will be stored in the computer’s hard drive, unless it is deleted. The cookie might contain information like credit card numbers, or your home address, so that you do not need to re-type the information every time you visit the site. However, its main purpose is to offer some identification to the website being visited. Cookies can sometimes show where someone has been on the Internet, so by viewing all the cookies, a parent can see what sites their child has visited.  To find the cookies....do a computer search for the ‘Cookies’ files and folders. On a PC (not a Mac) they are usually found on the ‘C’ Drive under ‘Documents and Settings’.

8.    Protect your PC from Viruses, and Malicious Spyware and Adware

It is imperative that you protect your computer with virus software that is configured to download updates on a daily basis. Here are some antivirus programs to choose from:

Norton - http://www.symantec.com
MacAfee - http://us.mcafee.com
Panda - http://pandasecurity.com

Spyware and adware are small programs that are automatically installed on your computer without the knowledge of the user. These programs generate pop-up ads, and slow down the overall performance of the machine. A brand new computer can be slowed to a crawl due to adware and spyware. There are many free downloads to protect against malicious spyware and adware and some offer more comprehensive versions of their programs with paid subscriptions. Here are three more commonly used:

Adaware - http://www.lavasoft.com
 Spybot - http://www.pcworld.com/downloads
Microsoft AntiSpyware - http://www.microsoft.com
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