THE wireless network at Mayhem Manor spreads from the router in the workroom to the living area of the one-storey hillside dwelling, but not as far as the bedrooms. And that's important.
Your correspondent has often been tempted to upgrade his WiFi router with the latest 802.11n technology--as much for the increased range as for the four-fold boost in speed. Being eight time-zones behind many of his colleagues, he often checks e-mail in the middle of the night. His trusty little Hewlett-Packard palmtop computer, with its Cisco wireless card, would slip easily under the pillow.
But he's resisted boosting Mayhem Manor's wireless signal for several reasons. First, while it would quicken transfers between computers in the house, the internet connection would be no faster. Its speed is governed by the pathetic dribble of a broadband connection that's
15,000 feet from the nearest telephone exchange in the village below.
The other reason for not upgrading is that he would prefer his tweenage daughter to do all her web surfing, e-mailing, online gaming and social networking not from the privacy of a bedroom, but from a common area of the house where an adult is invariably present.
It's not a matter of trust. It's about trying to be a responsible
online parent by keeping cyber-dangers away from vulnerable kids.
It used to be enough simply to keep a child's computer in the living room and set the parental controls on its search and browsing software.
No more. For security reasons as well as social pressure, many children now carry mobile phones as well as laptops. Despite the freedom this provides from watchful parental eyes, the benefits far outweigh the chances for misuse, even though the latter will happen--especially with
phones that have internet access, built-in cameras and other multimedia services. Be prepared.
Sooner or later, your child will receive unsolicited text messages that can open the door for harassment by strangers or even acquaintances. With internet-ready phones, they will stumble across undesirable web
sites, and get involved in inappropriate conversations. Gigglingly, they may even e-mail embarrassing photos of themselves to friends. Impetuous kids do such things.
Out of thoughtlessness, amusement or spite, others may then post such images on the web, along with fabricated or real profiles and diary musings. Such records will live forever on the internet, and let the sick, spurned or vengeful bully and humiliate your child.
What precautions can parents take? WiredSafety.org[1] offers sensible advice. For a start, get to know your child's online friends, and ask to see your child's profile page on MySpace, Facebook, Xanga or wherever they spend time online.
If you can't be around when they are online, install child-protection software like WebWatcher, SpectorPro or SpyAgent to help keep a watchful eye on their web behaviour in your absence. Above all, make sure they understand they should never meet anyone in real life they've met online without a parent being present.
In her book "A Parent's Guide to the Internet", Parry Aftab notes that the prime targets for paedophiles are kids who are new to chat rooms, message boards or online communities; appear to be loners or emotionally unstable; and complain about having problems at home. Four out of five of the targets of online harassers and cyber-stalkers are young girls.
That's no different from the offline world. But media hype has led many parents to believe there are more sexual predators in cyberspace than in their own back yards. No denying there have been some nasty cases of sexual harassment online, but cyber-bullying and other forms of verbal abuse remain far more common.
It's a sad fact that the anonymity of online chat makes some people much ruder or more insensitive than they are in person--and far less likely to be censured for bad behaviour.
To be on the safe side, teach your children to adopt a genderless screen name, and never to give out personal information (phone number, home address, school) about themselves or their friends. Warn them against flirting online.
Kids also need to be aware that "flame wars"--exchanges in which insults and verbal attacks are traded online--can escalate into something uglier and more real. If someone makes threats, tell your child to notify the community moderator or website operator immediately.
And be sure they use an e-mail service that shows the sender's real IP (internet protocol) address. One of the worst offenders in this respect is Gmail, Google's browser-based service that's popular with kids thanks to its generous free storage space.
Google says that, because personal information (including a person's exact location) can be gathered from their IP address, Gmail doesn't include this in its outgoing mail headers. True enough. Send an e-mail from, say, a Yahoo! account to a Gmail account, and the header received will show not only the name of the sender, but also the sender's full IP address. Do the opposite, and all you'll get is the name of the sender and the IP address of the Gmail server that sent the message.
You can easily fool the recipient with a phony e-mail name, but hiding the IP address of the computer used to send the e-mail (or, at least, the router used to connect it from your home network to the internet) is much more difficult. Plug the IP address into a forensic program like Sam Spade, and you'll usually find the sender's computer.
And even if the internet service provider allocates a temporary IP address (as most do) each time a user goes online, it will always know precisely who uses it. More than a few cyber-criminals have been caught this way.
Hiding the sender's IP address in Gmail may protect users from governments who eagerly hoover up personal details. In doing so, however, it makes Gmail a haven for suspicious individuals who want to keep their real identities a secret. Don't let your children become victims of such unscrupulous anonymity.