Child-Suitable Alternatives To Passwords?

An anonymous reader writes "Two months ago I donated my old PC to my little sister, who is 7 — I had promised she would get her own computer as soon as she can read and write properly. I then proceeded to answer her questions about how it works, as far as she inquired, and tried to let her make some choices when installing Debian (she can already use GNOME). As I explained password protection and encryption to her, I was pleasantly surprised when she insisted on protection measures being as strong as possible, so that no one else can screw with her computer. She knows that my younger brother has to endure strict parental control software that was installed on his machine without his consent. The significant problem is that she cannot permanently memorize abstract passwords, even if they are her own creation. I talked with a teacher who assured me that this is common at her age. My parents would probably be able to guess non-abstract passwords. What mechanism of identifying herself does the Slashdot crowd suggest?"

Comments

Re:at age 7

[poetmatt]

The smarter a kid gets, the more privacy they want. Any parent that doesn't respect that will have to spend more and more time figuring out why their kids distance themselves more and more. I know by the time I was 7 I hated if my parents got involved, and how nosy they were. Trust me, by the time I was 12 I would have moved out if I had the money. I had already done the financial research and the absence of privacy was far more than sufficient to motivate me to want to leave.

When will you people let your kid have a damn shred of individuality and intuition to figure things out? This is why people fail as parents and don't see it till the kids get older. "protect the children" my ass. Also, using the excuse that you pay for everything doesn't mean you deserve unconditional gratitude. That comes when people hit 18+. If you expect that from 5+, you're in for a bumpy ride raising your kid. Enjoy the fights! I assure you that the scars you inflict on the kid mentally as a child will not go away when they get older.

I got my niece into IRC harry potter chatrooms (which we all know are supposedly predator-laden) by the time she was 8ish. We watched and helped her figure out the goods, the bads, the dangers for maybe 2 days to a week, tops. After that it was free reign and "be careful", but not monitoring. It's not like people didn't want to talk to her. She not only turned out well from a computer perspective but turned out to be a computer genius.

I know people want to help their kid every step of the way but it doesn't hurt to let them kinda be their own person, since thats how they'll end up anyway.

What the hell

[entmike]

Take your kid outside and stop showing her your "GNOME".

Are you all insane????

[syousef]

Fingerprint readers? Crypto strenght passwords and pass phrases? What the fuck?

What does a 7 year old have to hide exactly? Give the girl a simple password. Better yet give the whole family a common password, and teach them not to snoop on each other. Yes the will break the rules occassionally and this is when you step in and teach them that it's not nice.

Until the girl has her own financial affairs. Bank accounts, phone bills etc. she doesn't need to lock anyone out. As for private diaries, contacts and the like parents shouldn't be snooping or opening the files without the child's permission! They should be asking the kid to show them the files and the child should know that's one condition they have for using the computer.

Re:What knowledge of child development do you have

[Scrameustache]

It's a pretty important question that only you can answer, especially if you want your comments to be taken seriously. Ah, you seem to think that I care how you take my comment. But, you see, you've demonstrated to me that you're the kind of person who makes numerous erroneous assumptions about people based on one comment they made. I therefore do not care what you think, since you've proven that your thoughts are utterly worthless.