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Good Email For Kids?
mgessner writes "My kids are starting to want email accounts of their own. Even though gmail does a pretty good job of filtering spam, it's not perfect. Searching the web the other day for kid-safe email, I found a few sites that say they can do the job. What do others do for their kids' email? Pay for it? Just use a free service like gmail or yahoo? I don't pay for email accounts out of my own pocket, so I don't really see the need, but if the cost was a few bucks a month, I'd do it."
You probably won't find a service with better spam filtering than Gmail, so what's the problem with it?
I'm not a parent, but if I was, I'd have an age when they could get on the Internet. The internet is not a safe place for young kids in my opinion.
God spoke to me.
That should be a fairly simple conclusion from the fact that (almost) anyone anywhere in the world can send email to any email address.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
People anymore are so paranoid about everything anymore, it is a wonder society can even function. If you are THAT worried about it, then DON'T get them an email address.
My wife and I are just at the point where we're talking about kids, but I think what we'd do is not allow them to have an email account until we felt they were old enough to understand what porn is and why we don't want them looking at it. That way, you can expect them to push porn spam into the spam filter, and ground them if you catch them seriously looking at it. Before then, I just don't see a good reason. I wouldn't give my kids an email account until they're at least 10 years old, if I were in your position.
Call that what you will, but it's a good and easy way of being responsible.
I'd recommend looking for a service based on a whitelist rather than a service with great spam filtering. This will help you two ways:
1) Probably no spam
2) You can actively monitor and controlwho your children get email from (which is OK, these are children not adults!)
Check with your ISP. My service lets me have multiple email accounts and as the account owner, I can read the messages in the other email accounts.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
I would NOT pay for any email service. If anything I'd say use gmail or yahoo or something free. But ... I would say no matter how hard they whine, they do not need an email account until perhaps junior high years or so (getting a job age, getting a drivers license age, somewhere in between). Instead if they're little and still in elementary school, I am just letting them use "mom & dad's" email account to email relatives or receive emails from friends, etc. That way I can filter what was sent and received. Kids that young do not need their own email account.
Try looking at Motorola? http://www.good.com/
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm not a parent, but if I was, I'd have an age when they could get on the Internet. The internet is not a safe place for young kids in my opinion.
As a parent, I am already planning what to do when this situation comes to light. My answer: moderate their internet usage. That's right. Me or the wife will be watching what sites they visit. I will set up a laptop just for them, with their kid games and such.
It will mean a lot of work, but it will avoid more problems than it causes. And as a bonus, it is spending time with the kids.
Bearded Dragon
Would you rather have your kid to another kids house and get on when no parents are online?
Would you rather have your kid sneak on when you're not around?
I say, force the kid to go online (assuming the kid is reluctant, which I doubt), and make sure you are always with them when they are surfing. I'd rather be there when the kid stumbles upon a bad site, than have them find it when I'm not around, or being told ignorantly what it is by the other kids with them (before, during, or after the visit).
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
You could create a filter for them that would automatically delete all email that doesn't contain a that is well-known to your family/those who would email them.
I really think you might have a hard time finding a "kid oriented" email account, at least that you wont have to monitor as well. I don't know the age of your children, but keep in mind that COPPA regulations don't allow people under 13 to do a lot of things online.
If you have the passwords to their email accounts, you can monitor what they do, and that's completely free, obviously. But if you want to filter incoming messages, a quick Google search turns up Zoobuh, and there didn't seem to be negative feedback about it when I tried another Google search. The website says it costs $1/month/child.
You can get your own domain name and an unlimited email plan for a few bucks a month from hundreds of highly reputable hosting companies. And make sure you have access to their email and check it regularly.
My 12-yr-old has an email under our ISP account that I can monitor and it barely matters. Email is what her Mum & Dad use. Instead, she's obsessed with IM ("MSN" is what she calls it), facebook & MySpace. *That's* what keeps me awake at night.
Cheers,
DCobbler
Do you filter their web access as well? Otherwise just face the fact that once they're online, they're probably going to see some shit you'd rather they didn't see once in a while, live with it.
Best you can do is sign up to something like FastMail, jack up the spam filtering to aggressive or whitelist-only (bit nazi, but if you really want control...).
Oh no... it's the future.
Any provider that allows you to set an address to only get email from those in your addressbook would be fine.
AOL (ducking for mentioning the name on slashdot) has allowed this for many years, and I'd imagine others have too.
Then, you also have to consider if clicking on a link in an email should be allowed. You may want to turn that off,
depending on the kid. The AOL client, which I haven't used in a couple of years, used to allow you to set preferences
for which websites a kid could visit.(I'd assume that's still possible in parental controls.)
What, exactly, are you trying to protect your kids from?
The natural tendency to make the world this warm, safe, fuzzy place for our children cannot be refuted. If we didn't look out for the basic well being of our infants, our survival as a species would be highly threatened.
But, I think that we as a society are suffering from over-protectionism. We take this natural urge too far. In order to learn that actions have consequences, they need to make some mistakes. Letting your child get a minor burn their hand on the stove when they are young prevents them from major burns later on. Letting your children make a few dumb mistakes when they are young and suffering the consequences results in mature, capable young adults.
But we aren't letting our youth make mistakes. When they do a few dumb things, we pass laws that say that you can do X until a later age. You can't drink until you are 21, and enforcement of these laws has result in a host of 21 year olds that are unable to deal responsibly with alcohol - the number of alcohol poisonings at the local college has been rising year after year.
And the response? "Don't let them drink 'till they are 25!". Not that this solves anything, because somehow the drinking age is just 16 in Germany and they don't seem to be having the problems with alcohol that we're having.
If you want kids that will grow up capable of handling the real world, you gotta give them a good taste of the real world so that they can work it through. If you want them to deal with sex responsibly, you have to let them see what sex is and does and what the consequences are of it. Don't hide them from hookers, let them see the real damage that prostitution does to marriages and families of those who engage with prostitutes. Let them see it for what it really is, rather than leaving them free to romanticize due to lack of information.
Sure, get a decent email host, with decent spam protection - that's just self respect. But don't think that if they see a picture of a penis pump, that they'll be ruined forever. Just answer their questions clinically and accurately, and trust that they can figure it out.
Remember, that kids tend to live up to your real expectations. If you expect them to be able to handle (for real) then they most likely will do just fine. And then, as adults, they'll be that much better equipped to handle all of reality.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
E-mail? Don't kids these days content themselves with MySpace mails and Facebook mails?
You just got troll'd!
Set up your kids email on yahoo,gmail, (whatever) but setup a rule anything with out youKids in the subject just get deleted. your kids can have have an email an you can be faily sure that they will only get email from people they know, you could also do like a hotmail with a safe sender list.
Seems cut and dry to me. Unless your kid is crafty enough to bypass your preventative measures, then the point is moot.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
www.wireshark.org
If you are a parent, you should be monitoring *everything* your kids do on the internet. Until they are at least teenagers, they don't even deserve the "right to privacy" in their IM/chat conversations.
At a certain age, you should probably start backing off on monitoring their chat, and then what sites they visit. But until they are 18, there is *no* reason why you shouldn't be monitoring all of their social networking profiles. You should be sure you have "friend" access to look at all their pictures, etc (and if they don't want you on their friend list as yourself, just make a profile for the dog and use that).
I'd also suggest putting a computer as your gateway with Dan's Guardian on it. It's certainly not perfect, but it's the best filter I've ever seen, and allows for different filtering levels through user names. It runs on a linux box, so you can combine it with iptables to disallow a lot of other things like p2p as well. I'd highly recommend it as a good tool to make sure that your internet connection gets used on your terms whether you've got kids or not.
If you used something like Gmail, but "filtered" it again through yourself to make sure nothing unwanted gets through. Say, you setup the kids Gmail, but do not tell them the password or how to get on it via the web, and just set them up a Pop3 client on the computer that will get the mail for them. I think GMail will let you pop in? I do this on my Verizon phone anyway so I assume it's possible, and I don't see my spam folder stuff come down that way. Perhaps in combination with some security on the OS front on your home PC (kids can't log in without getting you, can only use it at certain times, etc) you would have ample time to review what they're getting in their GMail, kill what you don't want to get to them, then allow them to "check their email" via the pop client and (hopefully) still allow them to have at least the feeling of freedom that comes with checking their email and such.
heh, that reminds me of some parents' attitude towards their children smoking weed/drinking. not that i disagree with either, it's just amusing that this sort of harm-reduction philosophy makes perfect sense when you apply it to other risky behaviors but parents still have such a hard time grasping it in regards to drug use.
I didn't see mention of whitelist email services like Bluebottle where users choose who they want to accept email from rather than swinging the gates open and filtering out the junk.
http://www.glubble.com/
This essentially creates a whitelist for the Internet.
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
GMail is not pretty good at sorting spam, it is the worst I've ever seen. Not only does it let tens of spam-emails through every day, it randomly tags one non-spam mail as spam every week. My former spamassassin only let 1-2 spams through a week, and false positives was limited to 1-2 per year. Compared to spamassassin; GMail is horrible. How can it be that bad, when it can compare so many emails and just check for duplicates????
I'm going to preface this comment with the fact I am not a parent- so maybe this is a lot easier said than done, but just let Gmail do its spam guarding and have a talk with your kids about the type of content one finds in spam (nudies and pills), why people send spam(To try and Make or steal money), and why they should never open file attachments or mail from people they do not know. I would also be clear that you can monitor their email accounts and get rid of unwanted content.
It's pretty fascinating that this generation might need a precursor to "The Talk" given when they start connecting to the internet.
... since your children will interpret censorship as damage and route around you. As soon as you make a decision they don't agree with, they'll be at Google registering their /real/ account...
And right after that, they'll learn to keep a slow flow of garbage to it they won't mind you catching, and then they'll learn compartmentalization, and by the time it gets far enough where you get suspicious, they'll already have so much damning evidence in their second account that they won't hesitate to lie to you about its existence, rationalizing it as being no worse than having indirectly lied to you these last few months, and...
Hmm. You know what? I wouldn't give them an email account. There's no way your expectation of control will match their expectation of privacy -- and for the purposes of this debate, I don't care what rights the parent has or has not, it's what the child expects that's important. If you want to teach your kids to lie to you, by all means, manage their email account. We've already got an industry trying to make a common good scarce and using fear tactics and hamfisted legislation; if you want your children to regard you with the same warm affection we give the RIAA, this is definitely the way to go about it.
Let them register an email account on their own. It's perfectly reasonable to reserve the right to extract the password from them, by force if neccesary -- but they should expect you won't do that unless you feel it's worth what it'll cost you. If you constantly snoop, you'll be snooping garbage inside a week.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
What's the point of cushionning young eyes from the reality of life? You think your kids do not have it in them to cope with life? if it's the case you'll be considered an old fart sooner than you think.
I have 3 girls, one who's 18 now, so she's old enough to handle herself as she's going into IT anyway. But my 2 youngest (12 and 9) aren't. My 9yo doesn't have an email account yet, mainly because anything she needs me or my wife will handle. My 12yo however, is another matter. In this case, setup Gmail (or hotmail or whatever, I do prefer Gmail's filters, though) to ONLY allow email from people listed in contacts.
That way anything else gets dropped.
Pax Vobiscum
Just this morning I check my Gmail inbox. I received an email from a friend who just moved to a new office room.
Email subject: here are the pics! :p
Email body: It's still messy, I know
Attachment: P1010510.zip (zip file containing pictures of the new office room)
And on the side, I can see a few weird google adsense, a couple of them are:
Girls In Underwear Pics
Find Fresh Girls' Underwear Info. Fast'n Easy.
-someunderwearwebsite
Meet Vampire Males
Meet Local Vampire Males Near You. View Profiles 100% Free. Join Now!
-somegothwebsite
Really? Look - Kids aren't stupid at all, especially if they're requesting their very own e-mail account. They can just as easily turn on a TV to watch inappropriate behavior or see a billboard with an almost fully naked male or female suggestion something inappropriate as you drive down the freeway or just the surf the web when you're not home or at their friends house to see smut. With that said, we're really worried about e-mail spam and the content of it?
Just give the kid a Gmail account and get over it already. If we're that concerned about it, then have him/her create the account, then setup a forward to your account to monitor what comes in so you both get copies of the e-mail...
I can see how this thread is turning out - so all I will say is that its a lot better to educate your kids how to deal with situations, rather than banning them from from getting into those situations. Blanket bans with no explanation will only increase a child's curiosity and lessen their ability to deal with what they find.
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
http://www.onlymyemail.com/services/services_omekids/
It's $24/year for up to 2 kids, and is pretty customizable.
From their site:
Messages we block may be easily released for delivery upon parental review and approval.
"Lock-Down" mode (most appropriate for very young children) is an option which will only allow email delivery from senders who have first received parental approval.
Parental oversight may be enhanced by enabling "Parental Review" which saves copies of all email delivered to your children's OnlyMyEmail addresses.
Our "Kids Carbon Copy" feature will send parents copies of all outbound messages sent from a child's OnlyMyEmail account.
Those features can be toggled as you see fit.
If your kids are old enough to want to have an email address, it means that their friends have email addresses. And if their friends have email addresses, then your kids will probably get too, whether you are aware of it or not. If you get them a baby proofed address they'll end up not using it, and get a "real" mail address like gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or whatever kids use these days (when I've told them to get off my lawn). Make sure that your children are aware of the dangers on the internet. Make sure your children understand basic concepts like privacy and security. They're going to use internet on their own anyway, in the same way their peers do, whether you're like it or not. Don't stop them or monitor them, just teach them to do it the right way. Plus, if your kids are in their teens, or near that age, you don't really wanna break their trust and their feelings of independence by logging into their account and monitoring their activity. You want to strenghten their independence and you want them to respect you for trusting them. That way, it's gonna be easier for them to do what you tell them to do. Parenting is not about monitoring whether your children are safe when you're not around, it's about teaching them to BE safe when you're not around. Of course, that doesn't make you any less worried, but you can choose to train them to be adults, or you can choose to baby-proof them. Just remember that you're gonna worry either way, but you can also make them more responsible in the process.
I'm not a parent, but if I was, I'd have an age when they could get on the Internet. The internet is not a safe place for young kids in my opinion.
As a parent, I am already planning what to do when this situation comes to light. My answer: moderate their internet usage. That's right. Me or the wife will be watching what sites they visit. I will set up a laptop just for them, with their kid games and such.
It will mean a lot of work, but it will avoid more problems than it causes. And as a bonus, it is spending time with the kids.
This is exactly what needs to happen.
The Internet is no more kid-safe than the rest of the world is. When you give a kid unfettered access to the Internet you're giving them access to the absolute worst kinds of hate, propaganda, and pornography you can imagine. And regardless of what kind of filtering you set up, eventually something will show up that you wish they hadn't seen.
If you think your kid is ready to handle pretty much anything the world can throw at them, go ahead and turn them loose on the Internet.
If not... If you're thinking about filtering solutions, you need to be there watching your kids. Filtering won't cut it. Something will make it through. And you need to be there to explain what is going on, why, and how best to respond to it.
Plus, you can teach them good computing habits at the same time, so they don't wind up clicking on something or opening an email that they shouldn't.
Parents these days seem far too eager to automate the process of raising a child. Folks want parental controls on their TV, filters on their Internet, and only kid-friendly video games being sold. They don't want to think, don't want to put any effort into it. That doesn't work.
Parents need to be actively involved in raising their kids.
Hmm, for a few bucks month you can run your own mail server. Citadel http://www.citadel.org/ installs in about 20 minutes and is zero maintenance. There is no easier email system on the planet and it Just Works (TM).
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm not a parent...
... but let me go ahead and give you parenting advice.
Yeah, because it takes a parent to have good ideas about how to look after kids! It's not like anyone can have children without having to prove their competence as a parent.
I would have thought that /. of all places would be free of this kind of bizarre logic.
You can setup MS Outlook to whitelist any email account. For stuff that isn't on the list, you can have it automatically deleted. If you choose, you can have the non-whitelisted stuff forwarded to your account so you can keep an eye on what is being filtered out from the kiddie's account.
(forgot to preview) title should be education > banning
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
I love all the people who bash gmail saying it doesn't have a good spam filter.
I have 0 spam that escapes the spam folder, and my gmail account has been around
I can only conclude they sign up their email to some real unpleasant sites
you can also underprotect
the balance is a gray area that a lot of people have a lot of different opinions on. but there are some clear and obvious areas of society you do not want your kids exposed to
especially with regards to sex, because there are adults out there who will prey on children for sex
this is not overprotectionism, this is not hysteria, this is not fear. this is a real and valid concern: predators who will sexually abuse children. they exist, and they are not rare
and if you in any way belittle or doubt that concern, you are simply out of touch with reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not really the same. Letting your kid smoke pot at home is more akin to letting them download porn, but monitoring what porn they download.
Gmail is actually your best bet. Google owns Postini, and Postini is the best commercial spam solution out there bar none.
Just because you have never personally experienced something, you can't have any knowledge of it? I guess all those male gynecologists should get new jobs then...
"But this one goes to 11!"
Set up some filters so that only people you know can send emails to your kids. If they need some new friends, you can add them to filter which also gives control on who they are talking to.
Even though our daughter isn't even out of diapers yet, my wife and I have discussed when a good time would be for her to have access to the Internet, and how much access to grant. As a computer guy myself any computer she accesses at home will be firewalled with an invisible proxy to track where she goes, plus having my own domain I'll be able to monitor email as well, which is what i'd suggest for you.
If you register your own domain name, which is like $9/year if that, you can use Google Apps to - http://www.google.com/apps - for email and have total control over our kids email accounts. Plus with your own domain you can pick any names you want, which is nice since all the decent names with Google and any free service have pretty much been taken.
If you're not a technical guy, it's not difficult to setup, and you can also use Google Docs to collaborate with your kids and family, which is what we do. It's actually a nice feature to have, and quite convenient when you bounce between home, work, laptop, school, etc.
Anyway, hope this helps...
I must second parent post. I used Dans Guardian and 3 VLANS (kids, parents, outside) at my home, and their internet access level defined by their login. It all started when my 8 year old googled for "butts"
Probably not what you're looking for, but one option is to get them a Wii. Each Wii has an associated email address of w[friend code]@wii.com, and you have to whitelist any addresses on the Wii that you want to be able to receive email from. Spam-proof, "child-safe", and you can play bowling on it!
Uh.. Huh? It's not necessarily important that you shield your children from "everything that's bad" (however you define that.)
But it's certainly healthy for you to have a policy of:
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
For younger kids, you can just use some sort of whitelist. I use spamassassin but there are many ways to implement it. It's obviously not foolproof, but it works pretty damn well. You can even set it up so that your KIDS can edit the whitelist.
I am a parent, and sucessfully raised two daughters, the youngest is 21.
Well, maybe not so sucessfully since they haven't made me a grandpa yet, but the 21 year old manages a GameStop store and neither of them have been arrested. They used computers since before I got on the internet in 1997, the youngest was ten then.
I watched their internet use, the computers were out in the open. Patty was a Jazz jackrabbit fanatic, and one of its artists once sent her a drawing of her as a rabbit.
I never saw anywhere unsafe. You want unsafe? The mall is sunsafe. Church is unsafe. School is unsafe. The youngest got her head bashed in at age 10 by another kid with a bottle. A high school coach here was busted for "inappropriate touching", it's in today's paper. You read about clergy molesting children all the time. In fact, if a child is molested, in most cases it's by a family member; I know a couple of women who've told me they'd been molested.
Your kid isn't going to get run over by a car on the internet, or have her head bashed in. She might break a leg on the swingset or her bike, but she's not getting any bones broken on the internet. The danger is in the real world, not cyberspace.
In the years of watching my kids and paying attention (I read to them, played whiffle ball with them, played dolls with them, played Quake with them, watched TV with them; they're "daddie's girls" now =) not once did I witness anybody trying to harm them - except other kids.
Free Martian Whores!
My daughter had an email address with bluebottle.com, which worked perfectly for the 2 or 3 years she was using it. They use a whitelist-only type system which requires new incoming email addresses to reply to an authorization email before their messages will be delivered. When they discontinued the free service, we did not sign up again, but it's probably worth the 10 bucks a year. Now that she is in middle school, she is more interested in using IM services and rarely uses email anyway.
As for the internet not being safe for kids, I've never really found it to be an issue. The kids learn by example and osmosis to behave responsibly. Up to a certain age, we always made sure a parent was around when they were on the net. In the dozen or so years of having internet in the house, the worst incident I can recall was one of my sons searching for she-hulk images and finding a naked drawing in the results. Big deal. He's in college now, and if he wants to find naked she-hulk pictures, at least he knows how to find them.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
The number one thing I did was put the computer in the living room, facing out toward the room.
That way Mom & Dad can quickly glance at what Junior is doing as they walk by doing other things (dinner, laundry).
The PC is out in the open, letting Junior know that everything is potentially visible.
The screen faces so that anyone can see it. Once again no hiding.
If I let them put it in their rooms (like mine, pre-Internet days), they could pretty much do anything. And in the days of modems & BBSes, I did do pretty much anything. Fortunately, I was in high school and BBSes encouraged a small circle of people. As opposed to a young young kid using the Internet and Everyone having access to the network (Internet).
I am not sure how well this will work as Junior #2 gets old enough that time sharing the PC will be an issue. Also, as time marches on, and laptops take over and mobile phones get into their hands, Juniors ability to hide things increases, but the hope is that by putting them on "training wheels" with the central family PC, they can handle themselves a bit better when they are on their own.
Eventually, I'll discuss that everything is logged, but Junior is too young to understand that now.
BTW, I am shocked at how PC-integrated their schools are now, even 1st grade.
Christ, a handheld spelling computer is recommended (and later required) as a school supply by the school.
It is your responsibility to protect your child from the internet not the internet. Any child allow to have unfiltered or unmonitored access to the internet is allowing their child to speak to Satan. See where that goes...
Question number one: How old are your children?
Question number two: What level of tolerance are you aiming for? Spammers use punctuation and spaces to get around filters, so spam will get through.
Question number three: How much freedom are your children allowed on the internet? If you don't use an e-mail address to sign up for every single newsletter, contest, subscription, game, and forum, you really shouldn't get a lot of spam.
Just remember, tighter controls give rise to more clever workarounds.
If you are using a Windows box for your kids, try K9
It's free for home use and the database is the best I have found, with very few of the false positives that you get from other filters (like finding source code examples on somebody's random blog).
It allows you to block video and file sharing sites, P2P, social networking sites, etc., as well as gambling, violence, hate, sex, nudity, etc. so it has a lot of options to turn on or off, giving the parent control. Apparently, it's very hard to uninstall without the password, too.
I don't work for them or anything, just a Dad with kids on the internet.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
You can get physically hurt on the internet. I have the callouses to prove it.
"You can't be a referee if you don't know the Game"
http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/003343.php
That way, someone will always be in the room with the child when they are online. I wouldn't even consider giving a child his/her own laptop, just as I wouldn't consider giving a child his/her own TV for their bedroom. Once the kids hit 8th or 9th grade, then yeah, it's a different story - by then you've already had sufficient time to teach them what to look for as far as dangerous sites go. But pre-teen? Keep it in a public place of the house.
is spend time with your child and help him or her understand the Internet enough to make his/her own good decisions. I think it is important to tell your child where not to go, and to keep his/her own email address private.
No filter in the world can help you if (s)he signs up for the wrong mailing list.
How old are these kids? If they're old enough to read and understand what the average spam mail is referring to, especially if pictures are blocked, then the amount of spam that gmail lets through that could be harmful to them is pretty miniscule compared to the amount of porn they could find in the average closet. Let them grow up a little?
I have 3 kids under 8. When they are old enough to read (or starting to), I give them an email account to practice reading and writing.
My solution requires:
First, I setup a mail account for each kid. I'll use family.com as the example. The account for each kid is their first and middle names (jilljane@family.com). Then I setup a mailing list at jill@family.com, and deliver that mail to her account and to my wife and I. Nazi style.
Next, I setup the mailing list names with a postini mailbox. I was running without this for a while, but one of my kids leaked their address to an email marketing firm and the spam started pouring in.
Next, I setup Mail.app. I turn on parental controls, and have all inbound messages request permission from me to land in the kid's mailbox. This way nobody gets in unless I explicitly say it's OK. I setup her client account to return jill@family.com as the identity email address, so replies to any message she sends automatically copy me. No one even knows the jilljane@family.com address exists (except me).
The last step probably won't work for older kids, but I have Mail.app default jill@family.com as a BCC address for any message she sends. This gets me and mom copied on her outbound mail. If she ever figures it out, she could delete that from the BCC field, but so far so good. It also means that I have to manage my own mailbox a little bit. I setup a couple of rules that look for jill@family.com and route that into it's own IMAP folder, just for tidiness.
If you are interested in finding a reasonable host for your own domain with IMAP and Postini support, I strongly recommend BlueHost. Just finished switching over to them, and they have been great.
I have them use my main account with their own email addresses. Since I own the main account, I can control their access. I also have the passwords to their computers, so I can read emails and track web usage. I don't regularly check up on them, but every now and then I'll pop in and see what's going on on their computers. If they change passwords to block my access, I block their access out of the house and to the computer. Very effective, only had my bluff called once. Grounded with no XBox, no computer, and no TV can be a powerful motivational tool...
Impetuous! Homeric!
The internet is available every where nowadays. I would assume by the age of 12 your child would be able to create a free email account by themselves any way. How can you stop them when the internet is everywhere? They can go to a public library and create a gmail or Yahoo! account. Also their friends with email accounts will certainly be able to help them set up their own. The web has such a wealth of information, id be surprised if you can keep them from creating the account. You can monitor them at home if you'd like...but if they are determined enough, nothing is there to stop them from setting up their own email. -Michael 1st time post
info@cowboyneal.org
Cha Cha Cha, eternamente gracias.
They are your kids, not mine.
Just raise them to know what's going on, and monitor them (and let them know you are monitoring them). Either run your own mail server that CC's everything to you, run mailsnarf, or give them accounts that you also have access to.
Yah that is responsible parenting: You can only smoke your pot at home, so daddy gets a contact buzz.
God spoke to me.
I can agree with having an age for when they can use the internet, but, regardless of age, I think that having a domain name is a good idea.
Getting something similar to [lastname].com for the family and then having sub-domains for kids is good. This way you can get something like Spam Assassin running to protect yourselves from questionable emails, and you have more control over the service. Plus, you can get Google Apps for your domain if they want an easy-to-use interface.
The main reason for this being a good idea is that later in life your child will likely appreciate having their own domain and it is good professionally for things like portfolios and work-appropriate contact email addresses.
Also, there's the added bonus of other kids thinking that your kid is cool for having his own "website".
Hi!
Here is how I fix spam issue.
Register your own domain (quite cheap). Register the domain with Google Apps (free). In G. Apps create u.name for your kid + u.name for your kid to use if (s)he need's to register at any web place,app, etc. In the second acc. set mail forwarding to the kids address. The kid has access only to the first acc.
Since you will not use gmail.com domain but your personal domain that is not as famous on the web as gmail.com, there will be a lot smaller spam flow coming in. Since the kid will use different u.name to register with web apps that the one he will have for checking the mail, the inbox and spam folder will be almost spam free. It is possible something will came through, but this is nothing than I had with normal gmail acc.
Regards, Luka
I just checked Hotmail and they have some options that might help you. In the "Filters and reporting" option you can set the junk mail filter to "Exclusive". This option will send all email to the junk mail folder unless the email address is in your contacts or is a safe sender (which you control). Lastly there is an option to delete all email that goes into the junk mail folder immediately, so the child will not have to see the email. I haven't tried this myself but it seems to fit your requirements....assuming it works.
for writing something that suggests the "think of the children" meme to you under a story entitled... drumroll... "Good Email For Kids?" (rolls eyes)
as for the prevalence rate of child predators, my name is chris hansen, and why don't you have a seat right over there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, because it takes a parent to have good ideas about how to look after kids! It's not like anyone can have children without having to prove their competence as a parent.
Sometimes we (all of us) propose ideas that sound practical, but are unworkable in the real world.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I think the key is to realise that as your child grows/develops s/he is going to need differing amounts of supervision. You want them to learn to be responsible "internet citizens" and that means taking care of themselves. But you need something that will protect them whilst they learn. http://safensoundmail.com/ is currently in beta but offers a variety of options allowing you to adapt to suit your child as they grow. Apparently you can put "beta" in the referral code to get a completely free account.
I use Thunderbird for my daughter's mail. I added all the addresses to her address book that she is allowed to receive email from. Then I created a rule that deletes any mail that isn't from someone in her address book.
Easy peasy...
then that's not harm reduction. at least not in the case of primary school aged children. i mean, if you're going to let them download porn then why bother to monitor it? so you can watch porn with them?
the correct analogy would be to allow your kids to access the internet at home, rather than forbidding them from using the internet and having them go somewhere else to use it (just as the GP posted). that is similar to allowing your kids to drink at home rather than having them do it elsewhere behind your back.
the benefits are, if your kids run into stuff they don't understand and shouldn't be exposed to--like porn or hate sites--you can address the issue when it arises and prevent further harm from being done.
similarly, if your kids drink at home, they don't have to drink & drive (nor do their friends, as you can drive them home), and you can also stop any other stupid behavior that can arise from drinking--thus preventing serious harm from falling on your kids.
of course, there are still rules that your children have to follow. harm reduction is just opposed to the abstinence-only approach. it facilitates trust and honesty between parent and child. and because of this trust and mutual respect, your child is more likely to obey the rules you set for them (like not drinking and driving, or not doing more addictive substances like cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.)
1) Wait till you think they are ready to have the "sex talk".
2) Sign them up for an email account and turn off free spam filter.
3) Kids learn about sex and human anatomy without you having to have an uncomfortable talk with them.
4) Another problem the internet has solved for us!!
I love technology!!
Agree with you totally. My grown kids have been on the internet since 1997. They know I can outpace them easily and know every step they've taken... without the benefit of filtering software. No problems with them. They have to know the parent is a step ahead of them.
What are your kids going to be doing that a fresh e-mail account is going to be getting enough spam on a day to day basis that you are going to have enough spam that Google isn't going to catch all of it AND you are going to have pornographic materials.
IMO, having _not_ made you a grandpa by 21 is a fair measure of success in a certain perspective. :)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
No moron but parents that have been through it generally have the better ideas. I find your logic bizarre and sad. And all advice is worth what you pay for it.
People with out kids can have very good ideas but don't call it advice because advice implies experience.
My son had a keyboard in his hands from the time he could sit upright. However he did not have internet access unless it was on my or my wife's computer until he was 10 or older and we monitored what he did pretty closely. When he got a little older he got his own internet access and I monitored what he did with the log function of my router. I also made it clear that his e-mail was subject to being read at all times then never really did. Mostly we talked a lot about what he was doing on the internet. Your mileage may vary. I offer no advice because the internet has changed drastically since my son was young enough for me to care what he does on the internet he is 20 now. Sorry about the AC but I'm too lazy to log in right now.
Frankly, let them use regular GMail and teach them what spam is. I had my first email account when I was like 9 or 10 and I turned out just fine. Frankly, spam will be part of the world for a long time and you should teach them to deal with it.. The same for Viagra or Penis Pumps or porn. Ever since it has been invented, parents have been trying to fight it and kids (well teenagers) have been getting their hands on it. Its a lost battle, instead make sure you teach them how to deal with it.
I'm not a parent, but if I was, I'd have an age when they could get on the Internet. The internet is not a safe place for young kids in my opinion.
The internet is fine, it's the people that changed.
I mean, kids used to see boobies all the time, back in the day, and they were fine. Then some moron made up a church, and a bunch of ridiculous rules that make seeing bodies some horrible thing. They're "traumatized" because you (yes, you, their parent) made a traumatizing event out of something that never was one.
The correct solution is to stop with all the ridiculous censorship, filtering of content, and properly teach your kids what's going on. They'll be fine. And they'll be less likely to go get impregnate someone / get pregnant because they're better trained than their "protected" friends.
It's exactly the same as alcohol - europe doesn't have a huge college drinking problem, because kids drink, and it's no big thing. We have a college drinking problem in America because a bunch of puritanical prudes dedided to make it a taboo, and take decision making power away from people that need to learn how to make decisions.
So... what I'm saying is, if you want to do your kids a favor; let them access the real internet, and teach them how the world really is.
A guy is sitting in a coffee shop. The waitress thinks he is cute and asks him out. The guy tells the waitress, "I am a gynecologist, you sure you still want to go out?". She says, "Sure, what is wrong with that?". He replies, "Well, let me put it this way, do you want to see another cup of coffee when you get home?".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Don't work to hard at locking up the computer or they will simply spend time at the public library using gmail or at their friend's house. If they are to young to get themselves to those places then just make a google mail account for them that you have access to and check it now and then. Google lets you add your own filters if you like. Once they are old enough to know how to change the filers and cover up emails then there is little you can do because they can also make their own gmail accounts and use them from school. One hopes that by then you've taught them to be smart. Filters and blocks only work on very young kids.
I have two kids. One is 17 and he can do "whatever" I don't care or rather if I tried to stop hm he's just go elsewhere. I do shut off the Internet via a rule in the router at a certain time each night. The other is 10 years old and she only cares about Disney Channel charaters and her freinds she knows from school. If I were to set up a filter, so far it would not yet have caught anything.
Uh, my teenagers would laugh at me if I asked them if they wanted an "e-mail" account.
They'd just "lol" at me while sending txt messages. Next thing you know they'd throw my cane at me!
http://childsafeinternet.weebly.com
I'm a bit worried about the 12 year old. But mostly I'm worried about the 10 year old, the 9 year old, and the 6 year old. And the one that's almost 2 years old will probably be wanting her own email by 5 (when the 6 year old did).
Parental control is needed for the youngest. I'm willing to step back for the teens. But the youngest do not yet know enough to always follow directions. And they sometimes just forget to do that. So they do need supervision. But it would be nicer for them to be able to do some things unsupervised.
The kind of email service I would want is one where the accounts have separate child access and parent access, where when the parents login, they can see the controls for all the child at once. And these controls need to not only include extensive anti-spam and anti-porn settings, but also a strict whitelist of email addresses that are allowed both ways (who they can receive from, and send to). Those email addresses would be limited to the parents, siblings, other relatives (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins), and their school teachers. The parent account can also reset the child's password, and restrict access times (no reading email during homework time, except that from teachers, and nothing from 10PM to 6AM).
I do not go along with the Darwin principle of raising children. I don't let the youngest ones cross the highway, for example. Children are not born with a knowledge of all the dangerous things society has created. That needs to be learned in childhood, and children need special protection before that is learned. It is a gradual process and most of it is learned by teen years.
Oh, and such a service needs to work with private domains (I just point the MX at the provider's designated MX host and configure the domain name in the parent control panel).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's not true. Did you know that paedophiles can make computer keyboards emit noxious fumes in order to subdue children?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Use more lotion.
At least your wrists weren't sprained enough to type that post, right?
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
I give my daughter a gmail account and let her surf the web (she is 10). I use Dansguardian on my firewall so any vulgar or unsuitable spam gets blocked so she cannot even view the page. If that happens, I go in and clear it for her from my PC so she can view her mailbox again. Easy enough.
Get a mobileme account - $99/£59 a year and almost no spam. You can set up a family pack too for a bit more.
I hate to admit it, but Microsoft has a great solution for this. https://fss.live.com/ Parents can use their existing passport accounts add the kids own hotmail.com or live.com email adresses, and then the parents are in control of every contact they can receive or send from. The kids can make requests, and then parent can grant them. It also works for Windows Live Messenger, only the contacts the parents approve are allowed to talk. I have been using it for my 10 and 8 year old. Works great. Even on Linux. You just have to live the stigma of giving your kids hotmail.com accounts.
harm-reduction doesn't mean "no rules." it just means taking a more rational approach to protecting your children rather than a strict abstinence only approach.
you are not going to be able to prevent a primary school student from ever using the internet. likewise, you can't expect your child to go through high school without being exposed to drugs. so instead of trying to shield your children from these things completely, it would be wiser to take a more realistic approach.
also, when you don't differentiate between different levels of risk, you're sending a bad signal to your child. if you treat smoking a joint the same as smoking meth, you probably won't deter your child from smoking weed, but you'll make them more likely to not make a distinction between the two drugs--since you don't either.
this is the same reason why many girls in high school whose parents are extremely overbearing and overprotective end up being more promiscuous and sexually active than most of their peers. in my experience, girls whose parents are the most strict (won't let them date boys, or even let them hang out with any male friends) are the ones that typically turn out to be nymphos.
If you don't want your kids having access to the spam folder, use gmail to filter it, and then automatically forward everything that ends up in the inbox to another email address. As long as you never give out that second email address, it isn't likely that you will start getting spam sent to it. I've never done this and I don't use gmail, but there must be a way to forward your inbox to another account.
I know this sounds like "invasion of privacy", etc. but if you really want to control what they receive, why don't you just forward their mail to your email account? Or better still, just have them set the password such that you know it too. That way you can log on every now and then and make sure that everything is in order.
Remamber what they say: In South Korea, only old people use e-mail. (or was it north korea?). This is true for most people I know, e-mail is usually only for corporate stuff.
Kids are going to be using IM, that's probably why they're asking for an e-mail (most people just assume any e-mail is IM-able).
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
On Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Kahlil Gibran
Source: http://www.katsandogz.com/gibran.html
I'm a strong supporter of protectionism, as is any responsible parent. If you protect your kids from getting run over by a car, why wouldn't you also want to protect them from sexual predators and pornography on the internet?
My kids, ranging from 1 to 10 years old, have been brought up in a moral environment and don't want to deviate from the rules we've established, but too often smut from the net comes knocking at your door uninvited. This is the kind of thing I've set up protections against.
I've tried a lot of the services, paid and free, mentioned on this discussion thread, but have ultimately settled on one that's partially my own invention, that works very well for us. It probably won't work as well if your kid is actively trying to be deviant, but then nothing but teaching them strong moral values can prevent that, in my opinion.
Here's what I've done:
E-mail:
My kids all have Gmail accounts. In fact, I've used Google Apps so that we have a family domain name ($10/year) and each kid has their own e-mail address (i.e. "jane@does.org"). I've then set up "passwords" on each account, which means that I made a simple Gmail filter that automatically dumps any e-mail without a specific keyword in it into the trash folder. The kids got to pick their own keyword. When they have a friend they want to e-mail with, they just tell the friend to include that keyword somewhere in the e-mail message. They actually take pride in doing this, because it's like having a secret club of people that can send them e-mail if they have the right information. This approach is somewhat like whitelisting, but with the crucial difference that it works without any maintenance at all on my part.
I also use IMAP to connect all of their accounts into my mail reader, so I know immediately when they have new mail, and I often read their messages. Yes, I'm sure there are some of you who will get all up in arms about this supposed "censorship", but I believe it's my legal and moral right to do it, and the kids have never had any issue with me doing it, so where's the problem? As a parent, it's also kind of fun to see the things your kids say as they try to be all sophisticated with this new communications medium, experimenting with smiley faces, etc.
Web: /. I'm sure) have a lot of computers in our house. Inevitably one would get out of whack, and then it would take me (as the resident IT guy) forever to get around to fixing it. It was also just one more app I'd have to install and configure any time I reinstalled an operating system or bought a new computer.
I used to use web filtering solutions that resided on each computer. This never did work well because we (like many on
Instead, I now use D-Link's SecureSpot. This is a device which sits between your modem and your router and does content filtering. This means of course that you only have to configure one thing, and that you don't have to install anything on the client computers. What's more, if you have a friend's computer on your network, you still get the same benefits, without any extra configuration. SecureSpot has lots of other features, like spam filtering and virus scanning, but I don't use any of those, they just make things too complicated. I'm also aware of a competitor to SecureSpot, called "iBoss" from "Phantom Technologies". I'm not sure which is better, they probably both would work fine.
This one I have personal knowledge of works well
A Google search shows these:
This is one
And so is this
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
Either deal with it or keep them off the net.
Because it will only take a week until your kid sees goatse. Or worse. If they havent already.
And don't even come bitch when you finally figure all this out after finding something you didnt want to know in your kids email.
Get a domain name.
Get webhosting with email.
Set the email up so that they have white listing only.
Configure email client for POP3 (not IMAP just in case).
Setup ~10 USD
Fee ~2 USD/month or less if you pay yearly.
Email's pretty robust and as such you don't even need expensive hosting.
cPanel with BoxTrapper Spam Trap is a fairly decent method to accomplish this.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Well, FUD is pretty much current-day culture. Chris Hanson, anyone? I'm pretty convinced half of that is staged, if the police can't catch these guys but network TV can. Either that, or the system really doesn't give a crap about us (and having had 911 hang up on me in the middle of Chicago when I had a gang chasing me, that wouldn't surprise me either).
My parents never regulated me Internet access. They didn't need to. They told me what was acceptable, what wasn't, and gave me the morals to not sit around and be a jaagov (I limit me /. usage to lunch breaks, so there!). I'm 26 now and have run my own software consultancy for the past 5 years. No felonies, no arrests, only 4 speeding tickets and 2 parking tickets in the past 10 years. I'm not perfect, but unfettered Internet access didn't keep me from having my own car, my own home, and my own business.
I think most people are afraid of kids being exposed to information that gets filtered on TV for sexuality and gore/violence, more so than they are worried about the molestation (though it's still a big concern to them). There's plenty out there that could be "harmful", but that's more a moral standpoint than actually based on psychiatry. But, there's also a world of knowledge out there that could be extremely educational. You're better off (as you have demonstrated) taking an interest in your children and showing them the difference between what's acceptable and what isn't, and then trusting them to respect your choices.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so they say. Show an actual interest and a bit of love for your kids, and they might respect your decisions. Gee, fancy that.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
Windows Live Mail has a child account (when you create the ID and the child's age is under 13). The e-mail is then subject to a white list of only his/her contacts (which the parent has the option to control). It is actually pretty nice solution for worried parents and protecting the kids.
OpenDNS supports blocking a wide range of categories as well and does the blocking at the domain name level. And at least from my personal experience, their name servers tend to be much faster than my own ISPs servers as well.
The last I checked, education wasn't instantaneous.
So one option is - no email for the kid till the education gets to the appropriate stage.
I guess some people want their kids to have email first.
Kids eventually learn enough to be sneaky enough to hide things from their parents, that is true, but comparing parental controls to financial protectionism by the RIAA is not a good analogy. Parental controls are designed (usually) out of love and concern for the lifelong well-being of the child - they are selfless in nature because they require more "work" on the part of the parent. RIAA controls are self-serving, and are designed to reduce "work" on the part of RIAA member companies and shareholders to create value in the goods and works they produce. Freedom of choice should be measured and released in appropriate amounts as warranted by the demonstrated levels of responsible behavior by the child so that the child can learn how to balance the responsibilities of their freedoms over time.
Would those of you who claim children should be allowed to make all their own choices on the Internet also hand a young child a fully loaded gun or the keys to your car without the instruction, experience, and maturity level to handle such things responsibly?
Got the link wrong.
"one of its artists once sent her a drawing of her as a rabbit."
Have you considered the possibility that the artist was a furry and could be jacking off over that picture as you typed your response?
Just a thought.
PS: I have kids and I loathe the "think of the children" mindset. I just couldn't resist the opportunity to put that thought in your head.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
How about not relying on technology to monitor your kids activity and do it your self. If your child is not old enough to see Viagra emails etc.. Don't let them online without direct parental supervision..
> Even though gmail does a pretty good job of filtering spam, it's not perfect
No spam filter is perfect, so if that is what you are looking for give up.. Either only allow white listed addresses as others suggested or act like a parent and teach your kids that you need to protect them and then depending on technology for everything is not really a great solution.
My oldest (now 8) never even tried to get under the sink, let alone get into anything really dangerous. She just listens to me and understands what not to do. (She has a gmail account, and I told her reading mail from people she doesn't know is like talking to strangers. That was enough for her.) My son, however, VERY different story. I would -never- allow him an email account until he actually stops jumping from the table to the couch after being told 1,000 times. (It shows a maturity level.) My suggestion as a parent; trust your instincts. Gmail is good enough for me.
I have to ask, what is the big deal? What undesirable consequences of viewing "porn" do you think you are protecting your children from?
The US as a culture is so averse to sexuality. Obviously there is some maturity level you would like children to have before they are exposed to sexual content. But I think children have the faculties to be exposed to sexual content before they have the intellectual framework to be exposed to violence, especially violence that is glorified or goes unpunished.
Kids are curious and you definitely want to teach them they should not allow other people to exploit them sexually, or try to exploit others. But if they are just innocently exploring something considered taboo, would you really rather it be violence over sexuality?
You've obviously not been in Cambridge (UK) on a Friday night.
I host my kids' e-mail. I also run a spam-filtering company, and I use a feature in our product that holds all mail for human review if it's coming from an unknown sender. If my kids get a real e-mail from a friend, I whitelist that sender.
Of course, now that they're older, they just went and made Hotmail accounts for themselves. So at some point, it boils down to trust and upbringing as opposed to technology.
Very simple solution, & free:
dadsgmail+littlesuzy@gmail.com
+ exactly 1 filter to drop incoming email in to little suzy's folder.
I set one up for my step-son to use. Only I know the actual gmail password, so he can't log into directly. I also have a forward of all the mail he gets to another account of mine just in case. Lastly, I set him up with Thunderbird using a master-password that he set up which is completely different from the gmail one. In the config I just made sure only people I want emailing him are white-listed, so Thunderbird takes care of unwanted things that will only show up in the gmail interface that I go in and delete periodically.
Most pr0n is not tastefully posed nude models or people engaged in acts of physical love. Most pr0n I have seen treats women as sex objects and not beautiful people. This does not set a good precedent and is not a good way for kids to learn about sexuality.
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
Chris Hanson, anyone? I'm pretty convinced half of that is staged, if the police can't catch these guys but network TV can.
My guess is that the reason police can't/don't do it themselves is because it would be a form of entrapment.
Looks like it has an <div id=":qq"> around it...
Problem solved.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
There are many list providers like http://coollist.com/
every e-mail that comes in will then be moderated to your e-mail address, you choose which e-mails your kids recieve and also can observe what your kids are talking about.
I discovered that my wife was sleeping with her best friend (who is a lesbian). You should take a look at it.
So you're saying an IM filter can eventually lead to a 3-way with my wife and her friend? Awesome!
You're not really clear on the concept of what "lesbian" means, are you?
(Hint: It means they like women, but not men, as in you'll not be welcome. You're thinking of bisexuals)
You could use gmail, and use the filters to create a whitelist. Then have them access the email only through POP and thunderbird, so they see only the inbox and sent messages, and don't see the spam and trash folders.
Set up your kids' email accounts so that it goes to you first, and then you can forward the emails to them that aren't spam.
If you want to give your older kids some privacy then you don't need to actually read the content - just scan the titles and delete what is obviously spam and forward the rest. Or you can use it as a good opportunity to interact with your kids. Add a note to the top of the email message 'Is this 40-year-old man named Jimmie Chomo a friend of yours, and is he giving you candy or asking you to help find his lost puppy?'
thats because its not harm reduction when it comes to drug use
the drugs are dangerous no matter where they are used, and they are not ok to use anywhere, anytime, or any method.
it makes sense when talking about beneficial tools that can be dangerous, power tools, the internet, the kitchen, electrical engineering, not drugs
We use Zoobuh (http://www.zoobuh.com) for our kids, and it's great. Not free, but not very expensive, either. You can have kids receive email only from a whitelist, and anything else gets sent to you for approval. So, spam is a complete non-issue. You can also get copies of incoming or outgoing messages if you want.
Of course any email service for kids is only relevant until they can figure out how to sign up for a webmail account, so it's really only useful for the youngest kids.
Try Pedobear mail. That's totally targeted at kids.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
It will mean a lot of work, but it will avoid more problems than it causes.
Yeah, but one problem it might cause is extreme awkwardness. You're increasing the chances that you'll have to use the line "Well, at least I know now you're not gay." Do you really want to risk those type of situations? Sure your kid might grow up with unhealthy views of sex, but at least you won't know about it.
Why are you trying to shelter your kids from spam? How old are they? People keep saying "5 year old kids shouldn't have such and such", but there's no age given.
If your child is old enough (which is some age less than 15 but more than 10):
Kids are eventually going to see spam and you need to teach them how to handle it. I have the same argument about trying to filter your kid's internet access. They're going to find it anyway, either get around the filter, or to go a friend's house, or whatever.
The solution to children seeing porn online is to teach them about sex. The key is that they know the difference between sex in real life and porn. That sex is something you should have when you're ready, and that porn is something done for completley different reasons than sex. It's stupid to expect that children will never see porn, and to believe that your children will never be exposed to it is ignorant, you need to teach them how to handle it properly.
Likewise, teach them that spam is all garbage. It's stupid and ignorant to believe that kids are never going to see spam. Honestly, it's not that big of a problem though, it's just like junk mail, it's not some horrible moral dilemma.
However if you're kids are too young to see "increase penis size" in emails then they're too young to see the viagra commercials on TV, and they're too young to allow to use the internet.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I just went through the same thing as you in that my children as they are learning to read and write, are wanting their own email accounts. At the same time, I have found GMail to be quite good at trapping spam, the spam does end up going into the spam folder, and much of it is not the type of email I want my children to see (pr0n, member enlargement schemes, pharmaceutical recommendations).
Since GMail is one of the best around, I recommend you use that with Postini, which just so happens to be another Google company. Postini is a pretty good spam filter that you point your MX records to and it filters your emails and sends it on to your email provider. It costs just $3.00, per year, and I still have yet to get any offensive emails that I would not want my children to receive. I have to say that my gmail spam box is mostly empty. The nice thing here is that you can monitor a spam inbox on Postini that your children will never see, and you can ultimately decide what can and cannot go through to their GMail account.
Safe2read is a whitelist based service where kids e-mail gets forwarded to you unless sender or receiver is on a whitelist you maintain. I've used it for a couple of years for my kids. Works okay, but my teenager used it to set up a myspace account. Mail from MySpace is scrambled and you need your e-mail to close or modify the MySpace account! Safe2read tech support was totally unreasponsive, so I can't fully recommend them.
That is not the important detail. The important detail is to talk to your kids so they understand how to not share email addresses (or real addresses or phone numbers, btw) and how to protect themselves. My kids have their addresses for about two years now and not a single spam email except for one or two chainletters passed on by their friends.
They use Thunderbird and if spam starts to become a problem eventually they will probably start using the spamato spamfilter plugin.
The solution is not in the internets but in their brains.
He's not saying that the controls are done for the same reason as the RIAA, he's simply saying that the reaction to the controls is the same. The child doesn't care whether the controls are done out of "love and care" or for some other reason.
They will simply see it as their parents invading their privacy and react as such.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
http://www.sanriotown.com/main/index.php?lang=us ?
Also, your argument about giving children a gun is completley stupid. The consequences of giving children access to the internet is perhaps exposing them to some porn, the consequences of giving them access to a gun is perhaps death. If you actually think that these situations are similar, you need to do some serious thinking.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I use MacOS 10.5.5's Mail.app and MobileMe, and set the permissions up so that whomever wants to send my child email, gets forwarded to me for permission first. I approve it or not, and then that way she can only get mail from folks I agree are ok. Is this the perfect solution? no.. but it works for us.
Parenting is something you learn by doing and learn by consulting people who have done. No offense, but most parents discount the advice of the childless because 1) we used to be one and remember how clueless we were, and 2) they come up to us all the time and tell us their clueless ideas. I won't say it's impossible for people without children to give meaningful parenting advice, just unlikely.
For example, the advice about setting a minimum age for using the internet is completely useless. First of all, what age do you set? When they start asking for their own email account makes a lot more sense than an arbitrary age set before you even know if they'll be interested or capable at that age. Second, you don't generally dump kids from 100% oversight to 100% independence when a certain birthday hits.
The OP has made the judgment that his kids are ready for an incremental amount of independence provided that they won't accidentally be exposed to inappropriate spam. He knows his kids better than anyone and doesn't need people to second guess that decision. The decision is safe email with occasional supervision or continuing to share the parent's account under close supervision, and like most parents, he wants to find a way to be able to say yes.
If you don't have your own children, you have probably only seen the end result of good parenting, not all the effort that goes into it. What looks like a child doing something merely because a parent asks is actually the result of a long period of constantly adapting discipline and diplomacy with the most immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered, and emotional people you have ever met. That's not an insult to children, it's how we all start out. It's not something that most people can grasp only by learning about parenting, observing parents, or babysitting.
This space intentionally left blank.
I let my kid use Hotmail set to only allow email from her friends. No spam except for what comes from Hotmail itself.
Yes, mostly when reading parenting threads on Slashdot. Face->Desk ensues.
Perhaps the best thing to do then would be to explain this to them. Sadly any amount of screening is going to be broken at some point so why not do it on your terms with some planning rather than waiting till they find it in the woods?
On if you trust them alone on the internet or not. As you can see above, that question is fraught with peril and controversy. I'll just give you my technical opinions and let you decide what's best for your kids :)
Option 1: My kids need very tight supervision on the Internet
Solution: Use "plus addressing" to create an address for your kids attached to yours. Email systems ignore anything that comes before the @ symbol and after a "+" symbol. So if your email is bob@domain.net then you will also get anything addressed to bob+cindy@domain.net, bob+joe@domail.net, or bob+prettymuchanythingthatcanbeinanaddress@domain.net. You then set up filters in your mail client to move the messages to a specific folder. You let your kids know when they have mail and they read it there or you print off a hard copy.
Option 2: My kids are net-savvy but I want to monitor the account.
Solution: Create a Gmail account for them that automatically forwards all received messages to your account. You will have to send the occasional test message (making sure that it gets immediately bounced back to you) to ensure that they haven't disabled the feature.
One additional suggestion for piece of mind: Get a router that can be programmed with a blacklist. This way if any internet traffic tries to come through with words you know your kids shouldn't be seeing (google bad words list) the browser will simply report a timeout (at least it does on my network). The nice thing about this is that tech-savvy kids can't disable it like they could with software running on their PCs (when I was 16 my Dad put NetNanny on our home PC. I figured out how to disable it in about 2 minutes!)
Hope this helps.
Pornography teaches about the basic concept of the modern western well.
Whatever makes money and is legal is going to be produced. Whatever makes money and is illegal is probably also going to be produced.
Something important to be learned for a kid (and even adults) is abstraction. People get paid to produce movies, pornos, whatever. It is not forced, and doesn't damage anyone.
I'm not saying that you should put 9 year olds infront of nonstop pornography, but explaining them that the world is big and bad doesn't seem as such a bad first step. Mostly because that may avoid them taking to long until the realize it.
Ever wondered why all those phishing scams worked? Naive, greedy people. You'll never get rid of the greedy part, but the naive one you can kill.
My kids each have a subfolder in our family mailbox on Firefox. They have unique email addresses so they automatically drop in their subfolder.
Computer is in the study that is has no door to the living room, screen facing the living room.
A little privacy you ask? YES for a 12yo and 14yo, they can have more as time goes on.
I'm sorry, but there is just TOO MUCH crap out there to allow my young kids to have their own email addresses. They don't need to read about B1G T!T$, 0ra1 $3X, and everything else. They just don't. Anyhow, I've found that Hotmail works quite well in this regard. As a parent, you can establish an email address for your kids with a "whitelist" only type of setup. Basically, you specifically define WHO can email them, and everything else is deleted. A bit of a hassle to maintain, but not as difficult as explaining why they're receiving "$3X w1th a D0nk3y" emails.... My $.02
AOL. Yeah yeah, I know, but they do have free accounts, a kids-only mode, and good parental controls.
Well put, but the GP wasn't stating the childless are equally informed as those with children, just that you shouldn't completly dismiss them either. I believe in a place where IANAL, and discussions of politics thrive, his words make sense.
I monitor her gmail through imap setup on my phone and mail program.
My mom needed an email to connect with family who lives abroad. I explained to her that she might get some really nasty stuff. Being that she is old school she's pretty offended with rude words, so pictures are even worse!
I set up her gmail account and monitor it myself - i just look at headers. If it looks fishy i delete. If it looks fishy but could be friendly i open it up and decide.
So far it's worked out pretty well... except one time there was a header that looked like it COULD be legit but triggered my radar, so i opened it up and it was about viagra, not so bad i thought and went delete it. While moving the mouse to the delete icon i was using the rollie pollie to scroll down and saw a naked dude with one leg up on a rock with a humongous penis hahaha I was like damn, my mom kept this for a reason... lol
anyways, only you will be the best line of defense against undesired things in email, because no one else is 100% yet.
good luck!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
"And right after that, they'll learn to keep a slow flow of garbage to it they won't mind you catching, and then they'll learn compartmentalization, and by the time it gets far enough where you get suspicious, they'll already have so much damning evidence in their second account that they won't hesitate to lie to you about its existence, rationalizing it as being no worse than having indirectly lied to you these last few months, and..."
Nice Slippery slope logical fallacy. Well done.
First, even of that does happen, by the times that can manages to get 2 gmail accounts on the side, they will be old enough to ahve their own.
"Hmm. You know what? I wouldn't give them an email account."
And them they get one on there own with no guidance? Doesn't that lead to the same place your Slippery Slope fallacy lead to?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What the hell does having grandkids have to do with successfully raising children.
You raised adult women, not baby making machines. It's their choice to procreate, and they are not failures if they do not do so. There is a lot more to life than procreation. I'm sure they would appreciate not having any pressure in that matter.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
IMO the Mac OS does a great job on the email front for controlling who is able to email your children.
You can create a list of email address you the parent have 'vouched' as acceptable to receive messages from. Everything else is blocked.
It's a bit heavy-handed, but at a younger age like pre-teen it's certainly applicable if you friend just wants to email a few of his/her friends in class.
The kid is five. You need to monitor a kid of 5 like 24/7 anyways. And even if he/she even sees something "wrong" they won't understand. I generally agree with you, but what you are saying about the internet not causing any damage is more relevant to a 10 year old. Porn is porn, they will find a way to view it if they want to.
That's really not a valid argument. If you weren't just being argumentative, you would have made space in your comment to respect the fact that the obvious alternative you suggested is not in a lot of people's minds (again, especially on Slashdot) quite as convenient or popular as email is. You basically just ignored geekoid's comment and used it as a shitty segue to your ill-informed opinion.
'fracai' said:
Yeah, but that wasn't because snailmail is fundamentally more appropriate for children, it's because you're over 20 and the Internet wasn't a viable option for most people in 1988.
In fact, I'm absolutely confident that had the Internet been an option at the time, it isn't the five year old in this scenario who will find email too challenging, it's going to be the grandparents, no contest. I mean, come on, plenty of people in their seventies these days are still afraid of computers, why would they have been quicker on the uptake 15 years ago?
Also, why didn't you use the phone or check the mailbox? You sound like you were a very boring child.
Mildly ironic side-note: Letting your kids bring the mail in is a great way to prepare them for their first email SPAM experience.
I set up the house network so that there are two computers (I have two kids) in the middle of the house, where anyone in the living room, den, kitchen, or dining room can see the screens without much difficulty. Anyone passing up or down the stairs cannot avoid seeing the screens.
I let my kids surf, I watch them surf, and I explain to them what is going on whenever they stumble across any of the many horrific things the Internet can show them.
My kids are 9 and 12 now, and it's still set up the same way. They don't know the wireless keys so they have to use the wired network. The 12 year old complains that we don't trust him and I just tell him that I want to be part of his life growing up and refuse to address the trust issue (since I was not trustworthy at 12, but didn't want to hear about it) at all.
My kids aren't going to stumble blind and uninformed onto the shared information channels when they are 18, they will already be well equipped to deal with the Internet.
Filtering, censoring, blocking, is all a very bad idea once they are old enough to type. You can't raise healthy, capable kids by preventing them from experiencing the world with a mentor and forcing them to learn things while your back is turned.
My 9 yo shares our Comcast account. I used Blue Squirrel's Spam Sleuth Pro and then set both it and Outlook to junk mail EVERYTHING except what I say is ok. THis cuts down on all spam. I also know that she will only get email from a source I trust.
I simply wouldn't give my children an e-mail address until I believe they're ready to handle the sorts of spam they'll receive. The real key to not letting your kids get fucked up, is to make sure they know about things before the world tells them. Some things you can shield them from for a while, and some things you can't.
At five years old, there truly is nothing they should really be doing on the internet without your direct interaction. At five years old, a child should still be tackling the hurdle we call "reading", and his vocabulary is still very small. There's basically no one he can contact that he can't contact just as well through you, the parent. There's really nothing he can do on the internet, anyway-- legally, he can't participate in a forum until he's 13, and most kiddie websites are geared toward selling things to the children's parents.
At the end of the day, just keep in mind that words the kid doesn't understand are things that he doesn't understand. A lewd phrase is likely to go right over his head. A picture is something to be concerned with, and a video is even worse, but a few words here and there really won't have a huge impact on him, if he doesn't know what they mean-- in which case, it's already too late: the damage has already been done.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
I know sociology is a field without a notion of controlled experiments, but we really owe it to society to raise 100 kids for every single childhood experience we assume will fuck them up for life, and see what happens.
My son is nine. He has his own email account with our ISP.
I keep an eye on his inbox.
It's that simple really.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I started sharing an email account with my step-father when I was six, and within three or four months I had my own account. My knowledge of computers was very basic, but I could clear the cache, cookies, browser history, install and uninstall programs, etc. I turned out okay. :) Relax, guys. I had no idea what the alt.sex people were talking about until I was ready to know what was going on. Porn was moderately alarming, but something I was going to be exposed to eventually no matter what.
The Internet is a big wide place, but they'll find their peers--What are you afraid of? That they'll become enamored with a different distribution of Linux than you? :) You raised them well. Tell them not to give out personal, physical world information, and let them go.
Why not register a custom domain name and then sign up for the free version of google apps for email management.
You then have the benefits of the gmail spam filter with the protection of a spam-bot "resistant" email address because it isn't generic.
I have an account only used for job applications I have handled this way. I don't receive any spam on it because it isn't posted anywhere but my resume and no bots are spamming random email addresses at my domain.
Also, if the child is that young, I'm also of the frame of mind that you should be keeping an eye on their activity any way.
Get a Mac, turn on parental controls. You can "admin" the parental controls from another Mac. All email senders, IM buddies, and urls are white-listed. When someone new tries to email your kids, the email is sent to the admin for approval before it goes to the kids. It really does work the way parental controls should work.
the ability to go anywhere, and have 50 men lined up at your front door within a week waiting to have sex with an underage child
this is not sufficient evidence for you to allow that parents attempting to protect their children from online predators is meing realist and prudent. no , they have to be hysteircal overprotective twits to want to do that, right?
hey you got me: being overprotective is bad for kids. rape is good for children, it teaches them about the real world
(smacks forehead)
being diplomatic has never been my strong suit: you sir, are a grade AAA fucking moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Were you using the same address with gmail and spam assassin? Or were you using spam assassin on your private account and gmail for your "business" account?
Honestly I pretty indiscriminately give out my Gmail account to any company I have a passing interest in that looks legit. I have no more than a few spams get through a month, and I have never in 3 years had it false positive an email.
Children (and I mean anyone under the age of say... 16?) with access to pr0n who then learn how to talk to strangers on the Internet who are paedophiles that then want to meet the child, can indeed be a life or death situation for the child. My argument that it can be likened to giving a child a gun WITHOUT PROPER INSTRUCTION is not completely stupid. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time that you were just saving time by not quoting my entire sentence rather than actually having misunderstood the differences between simply having a gun, and knowing how to use it in a responsible manner.)
Besides, your view of the long-term impacts of pr0n is a chink in your armor: You assume that pornography does no mental or psychological damage to a child, and therefore it is completely different and not a relevant comparison of the physical damage done to oneself by wrecking a car or firing a gun. On this we clearly disagree.
And it was the parent post's intent to draw the correlation (albeit in a roundabout manner) to how the child would view the parent in their love/hate for them: "if you want your children to regard you with the same warm affection we give the RIAA, this is definitely the way to go about it." So my argument about the motivations behind parental controls and the RIAA's controls still stands.
Yes, but you get there without the child defying your instructions and learning that your rules can be thwarted and your words are without value. Any law that can't be enforced is a bad one and engenders a lack of respect for the good ones.
I said what I meant to -- I wouldn't GIVE them an account. When they can register for their own, and they see the need for them to have their own, then they can have one. And as I said, I'd reserve the right to seize the passwords -- but this threat is acceptable because it's transparent (I won't spy on you without you knowing) and expensive (if I do invoke it I'd by-God better have a reason).
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Crap, you made me lose The Game.
You correctly understand me, and you've argued your point well, we're just disagreeing on the premise. My opinion is that trying to control someone's email is not dissimilar to preventing them from seeing the color blue -- there isn't any gap between "will effectively use email" and "can't find unmonitored email". When they're Really Little, you can sit them on your knee and compose a letter to Aunt Florence, sure, but as soon as they start wanting to genuinely communicate they'll immediately see the value in keeping those communications private.
And if they don't, then they'll learn it the instant you actually take any action based on the information you've gathered from monitoring them.
So if you agree with these basic premises, then there's only one place it can lead -- attempting to monitor a child's email account is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst, because if you can't find what they're hiding you can't crack it, and you only /think/ they can't hide it, and you only /think/ they have no reason to.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
... the oldest of which is now in kindergarten. Our current "computer policy" is a not-without-mom-or-dad policy.
The 5yr and 4yr old have a few age appropriate games that we will let them play relatively unattended and with permission (they love bejewelled, ms paint, and anything Blue's Clues).
As for the internet, we are big fans of Google's video search for finding things like rocket launches, the mentos experiments, painting elephants, erupting volcanoes, etc. We also look up articles on wikipedia to answer questions (usually of the science and nature variety). But we never let the kids drive and the computer screen is always locked when not in use.
The why's aside, here is what we have done for my 5yr, 4yr, and 2.5yr old regarding email.
1. I bought a google apps domain ($10/yr)
2. I set up gmail accounts for each kid (first names only)
3. I set up the password (remember "not-without-mom-or-dad" yet)
4. I set up the contact list (mom, dad, grandpas, grandmas, a few friends.
5. I set up a the following gmail filter for each account
(-(mom@address OR dad@address OR friend1@address))
with the action "DELETE". This takes any email not matching the addresses in the list and deletes them.
6. I set the "view" to be standard HTML - it's not perfect, but it is fewer gadgets and options.
7. I created shortcuts to their accounts on the desktop.
8. Finally, we sit down and check email about once every 2 or 3 days - together.
It's not perfect - I wish there was a simple way to compose an email based on selecting a picture of the recipient, but then again the five year old is the only one who can type his own email anyway.
As for the future, I am scrounging parts to build a "kids" computer. But that is mostly to keep their grubby fingers off the same computer my wife uses to do finances. By the time they are in their teens, I hope to have decent smart-terminal setup where we can use a central server to monitor use, filter sites, store pictures/video, etc.
I am a parent, and sucessfully raised two daughters, the youngest is 21.
Well, maybe not so sucessfully since they haven't made me a grandpa yet
On the contrary, if the 21-year old doesn't have any kids yet, I would count that as a success.
I believe Hotmail has a setting where you will receive emails only from people from your address book. That's one of way of making sure only approved emails are sent to the inbox.
I work for a school district and all the kids have a gaggle account there is a paid version and a free but I think that both have filtered email by that I mean if there is a curse word in the email it will take it out or just put characters there also, in the 5 year I have been working there I have not seen one spam email. Check it out the website is gaggle.com
about 99% of spam comes from when you post that email address out there on the internet whether it be signing up for forums or something but if you never allow you kids to post their email address out there then the chance of getting that naughty spam is pretty much null unless your posting that email address on adult sites.
So just let them use it to email friends and whatnot and with a decent filter to block bad sites then you should be good to go.
I use a filter on the browser plugin that automatically blanks the page and blacklists the site until I can review it. So if I host the email account which I do, or if I allow a gmail account with another extension that hides all ads, removes and/or auto deletes spam, hides the invite box, and disables chat, I feel pretty confident that if something distasteful gets in they aren't going to see it. There have been a few webpages that got blocked for funny reasons though... one had text that read "over 18 different challenges". No phrase "over 18" allowed! I do prefer to educate my children as best I can about why we are filtering, and what we are filtering for (for the most part and as age appropriate) this has been a neat way to explain how computers work, and why they can do repetitive tasks so well, and why they sometimes fail at them.
My son is 5 years and my daughter is 19 months. I think they are still a tad young to comprehend the implications of pr0n.
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
Nice troll.
Or are you really raising fucked up kids?
You need to monitor a kid of 5 like 24/7 anyways.
Really they don't. Not unless they have been badly raised, or are genetically damaged. This idea that a 5 year old cannot go 10 minutes without being checked up on is really new.
If she ever figures it out, she could delete that from the BCC field, but so far so good.
if you want to get your own MTA, postfix offers an always_bcc option. OSX can probably use itself as an MTA reasonably well.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For our younger children, we read everything. So far they haven't gotten much traffic.
We have a google apps family domain, all incoming messages are forwarded to my wife's email for review in addition to being available for IMAP.
The children don't know the google apps email password, they access their email through OS X Mail.app running on the family workstation.
All sent messages also go through the google apps gmail account, so we can log in and review all email traffic there.
As they get older we'll look at other options. Some of our children are special needs and thus vulnerable, they may have monitored email for a much longer time.
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
Our ISP account comes with free "kids accounts" which use a whitelist.
I'd have a mandatory test for everyone too.
Seriously. It would turn My Space into a ghost town overnight!
Parenting is something you learn by doing and learn by consulting people who have done. No offense, but most parents discount the advice of the childless because 1) we used to be one and remember how clueless we were, and 2) they come up to us all the time and tell us their clueless ideas. I won't say it's impossible for people without children to give meaningful parenting advice, just unlikely.
I have found this to be completely untrue. I have found that people who have not figured out how to raise children before they have them make shitty parents. I have found the people that DO know how to raise children well are the ones who have been proactive in figuring out how to handle situations BEFORE they happen instead of haphazardly making decisions based on their current whim, or trying to resolve situation a week later, after they have had a chance to consult other parents and the child has had the chance to forget about the situation all together.
Second, you don't generally dump kids from 100% oversight to 100% independence when a certain birthday hits.
While I agree that it should not go from 100% oversight to 100% independence, most parents are close to that. It is really more like 90% oversight to 100% independence. They want to 'protect' them from everything until they send them off to college where all hell breaks loose.
If you don't have your own children, you have probably only seen the end result of good parenting
I would guess that this isn't true. He has also likely seen the end result of bad parenting.
What looks like a child doing something merely because a parent asks is actually the result of a long period of constantly adapting discipline and diplomacy with the most immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered, and emotional people you have ever met.
What looks like a person that is immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered and emotional are really pretty logical creatures that have been taught to be that way from parents who waited until faced with a child to figure out how to raise them. Just because shitty parenting is common, so you see lots of ill behaved kids, doesn't mean that they genetically any worse than adults.
It's not something that most people can grasp only by learning about parenting, observing parents, or babysitting.
Only the immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered and emotional ones, and having kids generally doesn't change that. No doubt, there is a small subset of the population that goes from clueless incompetent to insightful and competent after they have kids, but it is a very small subset. The hard part of raising kids isn't figuring out HOW to do it. The most difficult part is deciding that you want to think about what is best for THEM, and being willing to carry through. That's where most people fall down, and it means that people without kids are often MORE insightful than those with them.
I do agree that the OP is taking the right approach if his kid is very young. I used white listing to solve the problem with my 4 year old. As others have said, nobody that I don't already know needs to be sending my 4 year old email. When he is old enough to ask for the white list to be removed, he will likely be old enough to have it removed.
Insightful?
Apparently mods and poster have not heard of blacklists and whitelists.
Seriously?! You just described most magazines (including womens), marketing and movies.
We used mailman, but in theory any mailing list software will do.
We created a non-archived moderator approved single subscriber mailing list called our_childs_name@our_domain. Then created a real mailbox called secret_mailbox@our_domain, then setup ACLs in the mailserver to deny anyone but localhost from delivering to secret_mailbox. Then subscribed the secret_mailbox to the mailing list. My wife and I are moderators of the list. When a new email comes in, we get an emailing notifying us theres a message, one click opens the approval page, and one click forwards the mail on, or drops it.
Done and done, all free software and it took only a few minutes with an already working mail server.
If you don't have your own mailserver, then I guess it gets more tricky :)
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
You'd need a 100 clones and a 100 cloned parents to raise them with strict guidelines. Behaviors to an extent are passed down genetically and wired into the brain during embryonic development (only explanation for the behaviors displayed after birth. Especially apparent in insect and other lower order animals)
... basically I'm looking for something else to blame for my behavior ;-) (American way baby ...)
I have a friend who grew up without ever meeting his father. The first time they got together they realized they had the exactly the same laugh to the point where his wife was in the other room and mistook his father laughter for my friends.
In any event I'm totally down with this experiment as being exposed as a child to many of these things
... for Kids Who Can't Email Good.
For adults, it makes a fair amount of sense to allow everything and then try and catch the bad stuff.
For kids, it's much more reasonable to adopt a policy of, "Only those addresses I've specifically approved get to send anything."
That's essentially what you're doing right now by not letting them have accounts - you're just blocking 100% with no exceptions. Adding exceptions on a case by case basis is therefore pretty reasonable. Sure, it's not all the freedom of true email... but that's not what you want to give them anyway.
last week I decided to let my kid (7) have an email account. I looked around, and hit upon zoobuh.com Its like $1/mo, and it is completely kid-safe. You can restrict emails (in and out) to pre-set contacts. I wont try to describe the rest of it - kit the site for their info.
Or go all the way http://www.91courtstreet.net/wordpress/2008/01/31/6-tools-for-keeping-kids-safe-with-open-source/
Bravo to you.
It will mean a lot of work, but it will avoid more problems than it causes.
I believe this calls for a cliche along the lines of anything easy isn't worth doing.
Don't bubble your children. Teach them about the REAL world. Currently 17, I've been lucky to be granted home internet access for around 10 years now (remember the good ol' days of AOL 4.0 :D). Throughout the whole time, my connection has never been filtered, monitored, or logged. Over the time, I have visited sites that many parents would not want their children visiting, but as a result, I have learned.
Every 13 year old boy has a burning curiosity about the opposite sex. A little bit of porn never hurt anyone. Moving on, I have a very strong feeling that the teachings of DARE (drug avoidance class tought in public school via typical propaganda) and sex ed. (here in the US, complete abstinance is all they teach in school. By law.) gloss over a few very important facts and don't provide an accurate understanding. Through the uncensored internet, I was able to research these subjects farther, through unbiased sources, and make better decisions as a result.
I have done research into political ideologies that many people don't understand or just consider to be evil. Instead of just calling communism or facisim evil, I have a more complete understanding of them and have my own views about where they succeed and where they fail. I can also detect when these ideologies effect our own precious capitalist state (which unfortunately isn't a very ideal implementation of capitalism anymore)
Through many of the darker memes of the internet (goatsetubgirldetroithardcore2girls1cupbmepainolimpics, stereotyped memes, and the darkest depths of /b/) I have learned to be much more laid back. I am no longer homophobic (though strait) and I find incredible pleasure in goatseing homophobes. The penis is a body part. Get over it. I understand steriotypes. They exist because they are true, but I understand they do not apply to everyone - everyone is unique. It is easy to separate the black people with no interest in education who play with their $350 phones all day from the black people who live in the real world. I strongly dislike the former (call me a racist), but associate with plenty of the ladder. As an individual, you can't complain about steriotypes when you prove it true yourself.
That rant went off topic and covered a bunch of bases. Thinking about it though, it all comes back to where I started. I am who I am because my outlet to information was never blocked, cencored, or distorted. I think I am better off as a result.
I hadn't thought of needing to find "Kid Safe" e-mail. Not being a parent (yet) you know. I am working with two amazing women on a conference to consider the whole spectrum of issues about Kids Online and how to Balance Saftey and FUN. Cause it can't be just one and not the other. We are inviting anyone who wants to discuss the issues to attend on November 13th in Mountain View. Http://kidsonline.eventbrite.com.
Gennex has a product (with a fee) that can filter all email that isn't on a white list, and so on. It's used in some schools and seems really very good for this purpose. It's worth a look: gennux.com
headbone zone email! i used it as a kid (i'm 23 now) and it was great. it's a whitelist system, so they never get spam and only get email from friends. www.headbone.com
http://www.clairehenry.net//powered by linux
I will set up a laptop just for them, with their kid games and such.
It will mean a lot of work, but it will avoid more problems than it causes.
Just to check: you do realise that this simply means that they'll view pr0n on their friends computers instead?
Personally, I would have thought that education about the evils of the net would be better than banning your child from using it (and thus making it more attractive in their eyes). I'd explain about spam (and teach them to laugh at the ways spammers play on the feeble-minded), explain about chat rooms (and how the girl you're talking to might not necessarily be a girl). And when they reach puberty, explain about pr0n sites, and about hidden costs and addiction.
They're going to find out anyway. Your kids are going to read spam and surf for pr0n, whether or not you prohibit them. Forbidding something only ever makes it more attractive, after all. The real question is: do you want them to learn about the dangers and how to avoid them, at the same time? Or would you rather that they blindly stumble into all the traps set for the inexperienced?
In reality this is a war where the spammers are trying to get past the filters and the filters are trying to stop it. You want to prevent spam from getting to your kids email then you need to use a more effective means that will prevent their email from being exposed to the spammers. Never give your email to anything on the internet that is not directly a trusted friend or family. Instead use a email create specific for spam. Then all the spammers get to work with is not your email. Teach your kids responsibility by having them use the spam email when ever they register on a website that asks for it. Never let them register unless it is with your supervision. Always assume that your email will get out to the public if you give to any web company. Finally they are never to give their email through Chat or public IM. Do this and you will never have to worry about your kids getting spam.
Most magazines, marketing, amd moves don't usually show the women with ejaculate splattered on their faces or vegetables shoved up their a$$ or screwing animals.
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
when i look both ways before crossing the street i'm a fear addled twit
when i lock my car doors at night i'm a hysterical fruitcake
when i do anything prudent and obvious to protect myself or my children, i'm a fool
clearly, i must be hit by a car, how else will i learn? nobody ever has their gps stolen, what kind of fearmonger am i? and my children should be raped by a 40 year old excon, how will they be able to stand against rape themselves without first experiencing it? and even so, nobody ever takes advantage of children sexually, it's the same chance as getting hit by meteor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Try Fastmail.fm's family account. The features are available here: http://fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/features.html#family They have very good spam filters. You can even write your own anti-spam script.
-- Bijesh
Apart from the possibly biased conclusion (just winding you up, relax) I agree with you 100%
Two main arguments:
1 - my job as a parent is to ensure my kid can exist in this world. That means building awareness of right and wrong (moral compass), respect for others (instead of being politically correct) and developing his senses for where danger may lie and what to do about it.
2 - I'm not always around (neither is any other parent). Choose your preference: the kid standing a chance on his own because he knows how to use his own brain or him being a rabbit in headlights?
That doesn't mean I won't keep an eye on what he does, because a child's innocence can be used against him, but I won't impose limits on his exploration. He's already learned that there are safe sites and "very scary" ones (his term) where a mistype landed him, and he comes to me with questions which I can answer.
I've kept a "no lies" policies for all his life - I can tell him that something isn't really for his age but he won't get BS from me, it means he's got someone he can trust to give him confidential, open and honest answers when he grows up. In this world, kids need that, and he now expects me to give him the unvarnished reality. Sure, it means I sometimes spend hours with him to get through a complex topic, but that's what being a parent is about.
Simple summary: "I should have" is a useless phrase, it translates to "I didn't".
Insert
I've been an email admin for several years and I just had to deal with a case where my neighbors' 12yo daughter's school-issued email account was hi-jacked and used to send cyber-bullying messages to everyone in her address book (her best friends and a few teachers). The account was stolen pretty easily because the school gave every student an email account but did not give them a lecture on the importance of password selection.
IMHO, children not yet in high school should not have their own email account. You should have a family email account so you can monitor all message traffic. If there are emails that your 14yo child doesn't want you to see, any good parent would want to see them.
It is NOT OK to keep kids off the internet these days. Any child who does not learn to responsibly use the internet really can't hope for a job as an adult that doesn't involve fries. Thinking that you can protect your child from the evils of the world by keeping them off the internet is irresponsible, a display of extremely poor judgment, and borders on grounds for intervention by child protective services (while this last paragraph is my opinion, it's based on conversations with several members of my family, who are all psychologists).
Quickly quickly. Roll it out!! Quickly now!
Well, maybe not so sucessfully since they haven't made me a grandpa yet
Quick, somebody reply to me and make him a GP.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
done
Hmmm, for most kids "hard to uninstall" is a moot point, they just ask their friends until they find someone who either knows how to do it, or how to run ubuntu/reinstall so that the filter just "goes away" when convenient.
Kids arn't the idiots you take them for :)
Work with whitelisting only; forward everything else to another account that you inspect (and use to maintain the whitelist). It might mean cutting and pasting your own SMTP server together, as I did, because I didn't know of any solution either.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Yeah, cool. So what do you do for IM and Facebook?
expandfairuse.org
Our entire family uses fastmail. Our middle school aged kids
have "lite" accounts which meet all their needs. Fastmail
has excellent spam filtering options and their account management
rules allow harmful and inappropriate content sent to the kids
to be redirected into folders managed by the parents. They also
allow us to share contact addresses in useful ways.
There are great coaches who never played the game. Buddha and Jesus and my second grade teacher didn't have any kids of their own.
2) Porn spam in their inbox, showing nearly gynecological views of women "ready to make you shoot your load" or "watch me get it on with a horse".
The fact is that most of this kind of image are stored of-site, on the SPAMers webservers. /> - so the server knows that SPAM number #ea1476f4 has actually been opened)
Not only does it lower sending bandwidth requirement, but very often the remote image is used as a ping-back mechanism. (as in <img src="sluttyserver.com/dog-porn.jpg?tag=ea1476f4"
The few images that are actually attached/embed in the email are the SPAMs where the text body is in a (CAPTCHA-style noisy) GIF, and the rest of email is just some random markov-chain-generated rambling to confuse the Bayesian filters.
Simply disable automatic remote images viewing (disabled by default in Thunderbird) and almost no naughty pictures has any chance to reach your kid (I've been on the net for a while and never encountered such embed pics even on my most spamed accounts).
Besides another thing is worth considering : except if your kid's email is "jane_2002@hotmail.com" or "joe_1999@aol.com" or some similar easy to auto-guess-generate, there are fewer risks that a SPAMer will get hold of it.
And it is a good time to talk to your kids about best behaviour online :
in addition to the usual security measure (never divulge any personal data online nor assume the correspondent's identity is real, etc.)
it's also a good time to explain how to protect the e-mail itself from abuses :
- using decent password (and disabling the "secret question" feature, isn't it Ms Palin ?)
- never making the e-mail visible on a website / profile, etc.
- only use it to register when registration is obligatory. Even then, ask parent's help to determine if website is trusty or if a throw-away temporary email wouldn't be better.
- also try to limit sending his/hes e-mail around. Chance are someone among the kids' friends may have an infected PC with a bot harvesting addresses.
- corollary to the precedent rule : Learn to use "BCC:" when sending an e-mail to a huge group of friends.
- appendix to the precedent corollary : Chain-mail are stupid, teach the kid to go check Snopes/Hoaxbusters/etc. with parents whenever a chain-mail arrives (and no, no matter how many friends are forwarded, no magical pony is going to spontaneously materialize the next morning).
Last but not least :
It's good to be open with the kids and have factual non-taboo discussion about sex, etc.
But it's also important to teach them that some people aren't as well adjusted and healthy regarding some of those delicate subject.
It's important to teach them that there are people with disturbed idea out there, and they *could* expect meeting goat-porn and similar on the web, as shocking as it may seem.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've used Dan's Guardian before also and it's been rather successful. I have my doubts about the blocklist being kept up to date when the number of sites on the net is constantly growing.
OpenDNS provides an excellent filtering service for free and will let you skip trying to figure out if your ISP has updated it's BIND servers after the recent DNS exploit.
Babies having babies!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Why on earth would you want to prevent them from reading something? You could try letting your kids learn about the world in an environment in which they can come to you for help when they're confused. Sheltering them will only help them to end up like Americans, who can't solve anything without lawyers and therapists and guns.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I set up Yahoo accounts for my daughters using their names. They no longer use those accounts, but still use Yahoo accounts (with their self-defined aliases) and have little problem with them.
Cranky educator.
It was the exact same address. I changed my email-setup from having one machine pull emails from multiple places and filtering them locally into forwarding all emails to GMail. I would never use GMail for business purposes because their license says they own everything you send through it, we can't have them own our business secrets or copyright material that is emailed.
What looks like a child doing something merely because a parent asks is actually the result of a long period of constantly adapting discipline and diplomacy with the most immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered, and emotional people you have ever met.
Republicans?
No more so than prostitution stings.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
I'm sorry.. are you arguing for or against overbearing parentage? Your last paragraph kinda threw me.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Try gmail with POP3 enabled, then use Thunderbird as a client. Turn on TB's SPAM filter and choose the delete option to delete the SPAM vs. sending it to the junk folder.
Then make a few of your own keyword filters. I usually start with Carlin's 7 words and variations.
You can even put this on a USB stick with portable apps, and include FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.
Starfish Family Mail - http://www.lincolnbeach.com/sfm_main.asp
Allows whitelists controlled by parent, authenticates emails, no scripts are run, codewords must exist in emails for delivery, etc. etc.
Tequila - drink of the gods.
I couldn't think of a better way to say it, but some people have one email account they give out to friends and family so the chances of getting on a spam list are lower. Then they have an account for signing up with companies and registering for accounts online. That is what I meant.
I knew personal gmail had a fairly broad EULA. I wonder if google apps for businesses has the same wording. If so, I wonder why any business would use it.
Safari has parental controls turned on, too. Only white-listed URLs are visible. I'm banning iChat completely today, but I'll probably turn it on for the oldest pretty soon -- still with parental controls, and probably local LAN-only to start.
This has been bugging me the whole page, hey writer never said the kid was five, if he is then I'd suggest Gmail, if he's like 9 or 10 Gmail because its an all around good e-mail service.
"That's where most people fall down, and it means that people without kids are often MORE insightful than those with them."
My anecdotal experience tells me that your anecdotal experience is completely wrong.
We've been using Zoobuh (http://www.zoobuh.com/) for a year now, and apart from one outage that was caused by DoS apparently, it's been very good. Not free, but $12/year/child, with no maintenance from my end, is great. You setup their address book, and can set it up so that all email has to be approved by you first (outgoing and incoming). You can get copies of all their outgoing and incoming mail. This works for our little ones (under 7 years old) so far. Might not be the solution for teens.
jimmysSecretAccount@gmail.com ???
1. Gmail will include the "secret" account address with every email they send (in the "Sender" header and in the envelope-from address ("Retunt-path"). It will be no safer from spammers than the other address.
2. A brand new email address that is not too short or a very common name used by a child will not receive any spam. It's not a new account of an adult that would be fed into every online merchant's site and immediately shared with "select partners" a.k.a. spammers (I was going to write "an account you setup for your wife" but decided to avoid male chauvenism). Though I might be completely wrong about what children do with their email addresses. My kids only exchange emails with very few friends and teachers.
3. Google's spam filtering is not anything close to being "good". They not only miss a few. They also have a quite high rate of false positives ( I saw more than 1% one month that I made counts). They provide absolutely no control on how spam is filtered (such as sensitivity or opting out of spam filtering) and they do not pass detected spam through filtering rules. There is no way to define rules that precede spam filtering. Also there have been reports on legitimate mail that Gmail haven't even filed in the spam folder (or whatever it is in Gmail that's "not a folder").
4. Anyway the spam is not the real problem since the child is not going to get any. My two sons have email accounts for about 3 years and not a single spam message (but they don't use them to "sign up" for anything, and if they do need to sign up I do it for them with disposable addresses).
5. The real issue is that parents have a esponsibility to watch their childrens actions.
Recently my 8 years old son was required to provide an email address "of his own" to his teacher to communicate with his classmates. What I did is provide an alias in my domain and create a rule to forward a copy to his mailbox and keep a copy in my inbox. I also created a personality in his account that uses he address in my domain by default and bcc's by account with all his outgoing mail (all this is using fastmail.fm that hosts my domain so there is no revealing of his account's direct address). That way I can monitor all his mail. Usually I get his mail before he does because I watch my mail much more often (Actually I setup email notification on his computer so he gets notified in real time about incoming email but he is not online all that much). What I plan nest is to open a family account at fastmail.fm and then I can (from my account that I will setup with admin privileges) watch the childrens accounts (when they grow older I can use the "privacy" option that allows the admin to be blocked from reading content of individual accounts so older kids can have privacy but still have dad pay for their account).
BTW: I don't have anything to do with FastMail.fm except for being a happy customer for many years.