MySpace to Offer Spyware for Parents

mrspin writes "Following continuing pressure from politicians (and parts of the media), MySpace is planning to offer parents the chance to download software which will monitor aspects of their children's activities on the social networking site. From a business point of view, the move appears to be a highly risky one. The young users of social networking sites are notorious for their lack of loyalty — and history suggests that a change like this could tempt many to abandon MySpace for the 'next cool thing'."

Comments

As I said to my wife...

[bhsx]

My wife and I just demanded the myspace password for my step-daughter's account (she's 12). I kick myself for not paying any attention to that damned site, because of it's sheer obnoxiousness and ugly designs. If I had paid attention I'd have a better feel for all the "ins-and-outs" of the stupid site. I was glad to see this information brought up on the local news here; but like I said to my wife:
The kids will just go someplace else.
So who wants to fund the next "myspace killer" with me? :P

Re:As I said to my wife...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're her stepfather? Way to make her and her friends think you're a creep. Hope you already had a good established relationship with her. Cause otherwise here is the conversations she has at school about myspace.

Leech: "Hey do you myspace?"
PreSlut: "Yeah, my handle is Partygirl69."
Leech: "Great! I'll have to add you."
PreSlut: "That would be cool, but watch what you say. My mom's CREEPY boyfriend stole my password."
Leech: "Oh... Well I'll just give you a call if it's something important."
PreSlut: "Thanks!"

Something tells me you are A. Lying about what happened, or B. Lying about your intentions, or C. Dumb(I don't think it's this one.) You modified your story to make yourself look better while throwing in your two cents on slashdot.

I think more likely than not, your real intentions at the time were to take the opportunity to establish authority over her, while simultaneously making a show for your wife. If the pressure originated from your wife, then it was just done to get her off your back and done from a place of apathy. In either case you couldn't give a shit about real oversight.

If your intentions were as stated and you weren't stupid and naive, demanding the password was an obviously ineffective approach to getting what you want which is oversight. Getting the password via key logging would not have tipped her off to the fact that you were monitoring her and you would actually know what she is up to rather than her moving deviance outside of your supervision.

She now knows to cover her tracks by deleting offending private messages and chat logs when she's done with them, running a separate myspace/email/friendster/facebook/ect. at school for all her deviant activities, or just keeping them to her cellphone and txts. 99% of all trouble kids get in to involves the cellphone that their parents ironically gave them to keep them out of trouble. In reality it just gives them a false sense of security because "At Jane's house" translates to the bathroom of a house party, or in a car on the way to a rave.

None of this really matters though because it was a lie on your part in the first place. You do have a 12 year old step daughter though.

Re:As I said to my wife...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

She's 12 now. In a year or two, she'll be 14, and well on her way to adulthood. I agree with the others here: talk to her. She isn't a little girl any more, so it's time to take a less authoritative stance - how else will she learn to function as an adult?

HA HA HA

[zappepcs]

I thought that MS was the only company that could so effortlessly shoot themselves in the feet. Parental monitoring should pretty much put an end to much of the MySpace userbase.

Interestingly, if parents can do this with some software, is the government already doing it for them, but just not telling? I have to wonder about any company that will offer to 'spy' on you or your kids. I'm sort of interested in finding out how they will know that it is a parent of the account holder they are willing to spy on? Does the software have to be installed on the same computer as the child uses? That would only last about a week before its cracked.... expect YouTube videos on how to disable it within the week.

Re:Maybe I'm just wierd

[DJCacophony]

Gung ho.

Re:Parental Paranoia

[cdrdude]

"Would you tap your teenagers phone calls?" My parents sure would have. My sister has caught them looking through saved iChat logs (iChat can be set to save all of your conversations). I routinely use a who command in terminal if I have it open to see who's looking at what I'm doing.

Re:Parental Paranoia

[snarkth]

Trust.

I expect I'll be modded as a troll for this

[mark-t]

Thus, I have no sympathy for kids who resent being spied on by their parents... it's their parent's property, they have every right to know every detail of how it is used. If they don't like their parents spying on them on the parents' computer then they should just not use their parents' computer... and find alternative methods of keeping in touch with their buddies that the parents won't be able to monitor because it's outside their jurisdiction.

And if parents don't like that kids will inevitably find such methods, tough. They should have thought of that before they had kids in the first place if they can't deal with the fact that their kid might be more ingenious than they are. Ideally, you teach them the whole time they are young how to make smart choices so that by the time they are making their own possibly life-altering decisions they will do the right thing... then spying on your kids would just be superfluous.

Re:Maybe I'm just wierd

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Everyone's all for spying, until they're the ones being spied on.

It seems to me that most people who advocate covert spying are also the same people that push the mantra of, "If you have nothing to hide then why should you care?"