UCAP - Filters 101

Here is my discussion of filters from the "Protecting Children and Families From Pornography and Other Harmful Materials" conference earlier this year.

UCAP - Intro to "Cyber Safety"

I posted some excerpts from my talk at the "Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and Other Harmful Materials". Take a look here:

Utah Coalition Against Pornography Annual Conference

The Deseret News today had an article about the "Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and other harmful material" conference sponsored by the Utah Coalition Against Pornography. They quoted my break-out session. Very nice write-up of a great conference!

C u l8r. Will these be your final words?

Seen on a billboard along I-15 in Utah: "C u l8r. Will these be your final words?". According to a University of Utah professor, distracted driving is responsible for more teen deaths than drunk driving. As quoted in this article, 1 in 10 drivers are talking on the phone at any given moment. And, although some states have enacted laws against texting while driving, many continue the practice. While this is dangerous enough for adults, it is even more dangerous for less experienced and more easily disatracted teen drivers.

Parents - urge your teenagers to put away the cell phone while driving. Help them understand that there is nothing so urgent that they have to respond to it while they are driving. Leaving the cell phone in their pocket while in the car could quite literally save their life.

Soldier court-martialed over his Facebook Status

Adults also need to be cautious of what they post on Facebook - this story tells of a soldier who posted the details of a pending raid, and was court-martialed for it. The "digital natives" who grew up with technology engrained in their lives often don't think through the consequences of sharing everything on their favorite Social Network!

Public Library Computers

I continue to be amazed that many public libraries do not install filters on their computers. As this story from the Salt Lake Tribute shows, there are individuals who are so drawn to their addiction that they will not hesitate to view inappropriate material in a public place, where our children can look over their shoulder at any moment.

While we can control what our children see on the computers in our own home, we do need to remember that they have access to the Internet in many other locations, including the public library, their school, their friends homes, and - if they have a laptop, netbook or smart phone - anyplace they can find a public WiFi hotspot. Even if we have protected our home computers, we need to talk with out children about what is available, and how they can avoid it.

How to set Parental Controls on Game Consoles

After a recent Cyber Safety event, several of the participants asked me how to set parental controls on their game console. Since each one is different, I could not provide step-by-step instructions at the time, but I thought it would make a great blog post.

As you may know, most game consoles today allow Internet access, either to enable multi-player games over the Internet or to even to enable web browsing directly from the game console. These web browsers are not filtered by the content filter that you may have installed on the computers in your home, so you may want to make use of the parental controls to disable web browsing altogether.

Parental controls can also be used to set limits on the types of games that you allow in your home. Most games today have an ESRB rating, which is much like a moving rating - it informs parents of the target audience for the game, and helps communicate what type of activities are found in the playing of the game. For more information on ESRB ratings and how to interpret them, click here. You can use the parental controls to limit the games based on their ESRB rating.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for setting parental controls for the three most popular game consoles on the market today:

XBox

Wii

Playstation

Remember that your game console is every bit as powerful of a computer as the desktop and laptop machines that you may have in your home, and require just as much parental oversight.