Woo Tang!

[manlymatt83]

Text

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages -- and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

"This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology," said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. "You don't put children's personal information at risk."

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Why can't parents just trust their kids?

 

[bobross419]

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Text

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages -- and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

"This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology," said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. "You don't put children's personal information at risk."

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Why can't parents just trust their kids?

I don't think its necessarily (though in some cases I'm sure it is) that parents don't trust their kids. I think it is the rest of the people out there that they don't trust.

 

[Drako]

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Text

Why can't parents just trust their kids?

If you were your son, would you trust you? I didn't think so .

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Why can't parents just trust their kids?

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:
I'm guessing you were very sheltered growing up, and that you don't have kids (or they're equally sheltered)

Trust kids... that's rich :laugh:

 

[spidey07]

That's pretty bad. They probably just saw the end user license agreement, didn't read it and just clicked OK.

 

[Baked]

Originally posted by: manlymatt83


Why can't parents just trust their kids?

Because most don't trust their spouse in the 1st place, what makes you think they'll trust their children?