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OMG INTERNET PREDATORS!!1!1oneone

I just saw a commercial for a product called “WebWatcher”, that, as far as I can tell, is a keylogger on steroids. It logs all emails sent, all IM conversations, all webpages viewed, et al, for parents to monitor at their leisure. Now, look, I know you can’t watch your kid 24/7. But, you know what? If your kid is too young to know what they’re doing online, or if for some reason there are certain websites you don’t want them seeing, they should not be using the computer at all without your direct supervision.

Put the computer in a high traffic area, put a password on the kid’s user account and don’t tell them what it is, so you have to log them in. I’m serious. If you didn’t trust your kid around power tools, would you a) make sure that the power sander is locked up where they can’t get to it or b) give them free access but videotape them so you can watch the tape later and scold them for cutting off their finger?

The commercial starts with a really scary stat about how at any given moment there are 50,000 sexual predators online chatting with children — maybe even your children! GASP! And you know what? There are a lot of weirdos online. Remember “stranger danger”? Even though this philosophy has some problems in real life, it makes perfect sense online. Tell your kids that there are a lot of weirdos online. Explain to them, many times if necessary, that they should never, ever give out personal information online, to anyone, even if that person claims to be just a kid like them, or seems really really nice. If you don’t trust your child to do this, you have no business allowing them on the internet at all.

That said, yes, there are plenty of creeps on the internet, but as long as you’re not stupid enough to tell people that you’re an 11 year old girl and you live at 34 Maple Street and your Mommy and Daddy aren’t home, there’s really nothing the baddies can do to you, aside from possibly annoying the crap out of you.

Things that 11 year old girls who are home alone at 34 Maple Street should never, ever tell anyone online, even if they trust them:

That they are 11 years old
That they live at 34 Maple Street
That they live anywhere on Maple Street
That they live in Footown, MO
That they live anywhere in MO
The names of any landmarks that are in the area
The name of their school
Their name (first, full, middle, last, any part of it)
Their friends’ names
That they are home alone

Don’t respond to ASL requests, either, even if you’re not an 11 year old girl. That’s just code for “im a pathetic 34 yr old loser and i wanna no wether ur a hot girl (or at least someone pretending to be a hot girl) so i can hav cybersex with u”

“Whoa, you’re kind of paranoid, aren’t you?” I hear some of you cry. You bet your ass I am. If I get an IM from someone I don’t know, they’d damn well better identify themselves and state exactly why they want to talk to me. If they fail to do this, I assume they’re a lowlife. And you know what? I haven’t been wrong yet. Both for the safety aspect and the “not getting annoyed en masse by idiots” aspect, the most advisable thing to do is to put the screennames of all the people you care to talk to in your buddy list, and set your IM client to only accept messages from those people.

So, the moral of this rant is: a) Just don’t be stupid, and you’ll be fine. Annoyed by idiots, maybe, but fine. b) Don’t let your kids on the internet if you don’t trust them not to be stupid.

That’s it. The end. Go home. And don’t be an idiot when you get there. And no, I will not cyber with you. Get a life.