Phone Prize

Increasingly, younger kids now create online lives, offering challenges to parents who must grasp the new realities and master the nuances of raising kids in this new age.

Is This Thing On?, or ITTO, is our Wednesday column showing how everyday people use technology in unexpected ways.

Parents are getting wise to their kids' interactions on social media sites like Facebook, but it seems as soon as the older generation picks up and joins the trend, the kids take it underground to new places.

The players have changed, but the cat-and-mouse game of parents trying to keep tabs on their restless kids is as old as time. Still, the novelty and the permanency of the modern child's digital activities requires a greater parental awareness, since what kids say or do on the online playground -- unlike a skinned knee at the neighborhood playground -- won't likely disappear over time.

The issue is moving beyond what specific sites are popular to understanding that kids become drawn to these things -- and like it or not, are leaving digital footprints. Parents may well consider starting earlier to ensure safer, more positive online experiences for their kids as they pass through adolescence and into their own adulthood.

Where The Kids Are

Facebook, formerly a cause for parental confusion and tween enchantment, is going public, in more ways than one. Coinciding with the social network's IPO are increasing reports of parents using the now familiar social networking tool for their own ends.

Most recently, the case of Denise Abbot, the mother who used her daughter's Facebook to send a stern message to her 13-year-old daughter illustrates how the simmering debate is bubbling over, turning the tide a little more firmly in parents' favor.

Many teens and tweens are already one step ahead of the Ohio mom, and in response to their growing awareness of grownups' access to Facebook, are turning to Twitter over Facebook to talk with friends.

Teenagers demanding a more private online communication channel nearly doubled Twitter's use for the coveted demographic as they flocked to the site's unique benefits. Twitter's default settings allow public access, but teenagers are finding ways to use the site differently. For example, teenagers can lock their accounts, use anonymous handles and establish multiple accounts to keep their communication under the radar, beyond prying eyes.

Teens who embrace Twitter because they are able to restrict who monitors their activity may still explore other options, especially in light of news the senior set and other adults are finding fun with the micro-blogging site. While society may cheer the granny trying to get 80,000 Twitter followers, to teens and others, it may be a signal to move on.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr or Google+ have policies meant to bar kids under the age of 13, but savvy kids are finding answers in many free apps to create more private spaces. Apps like Instagram, the photo filtering program, are serving as a backdoor for kids to gather for private communications and sharing.

Often parents don't know these handy programs, which seem like sensible learning tools for their children, can be used to share their creations. For example, many kids are using Instagram, Versagram and Viddy to post and "like" photo-jokes and text messages they create. Instagram does have an age requirement, but parents may not be aware of this other use, and children can enter fake birth dates to satisfy it.

Starting Early

Kids are good at finding new places to connect, preferably unsupervised by their families. Despite their concerns about online predators, bullying and lost hours in front of the screen, parents are learning how difficult it is to prevent their kids from interacting with social media, when new options and mutations sprout up apparently daily.

The kids' persistence, combined with the parents' belief that it is in the children's best interests to be nimble with technology, is sparking growth in social networks and other interactive content younger kids can engage with and parents can monitor to make these early exposures fun and educational.

This summer, Microsoft and Scholastic will help sponsor an inaugural conference, which takes place June 29-July 1 in Philadelphia, to bring together over 200 creative teens and tweens from around the country along with their families. At the three-day conference, teens will develop skills through hands-on workshops and interactive sessions, learn how they can take their creative endeavors to a more professional level, explore the impact that kids are having on the broader digital culture, and meet other like-minded teens.

"We have teens, college professors, business people, bloggers, editors, entrepreneurs, and programmers coming together for this event. These remarkable online professionals are committed to sharing their expertise and experience with the next generation of digital creators in a way that is both entertaining and useful in the real world," says conference co-founder Jennie Baird.

The conference reflects what emerging companies are already capitalizing on. Social media start-up KidzVuz, for example, helps kids create content at an early age without using their names to ease concerns about establishing a permanent record.

KidzVuz, developed by two technologically active New York City mothers, lets kids create a profile with handles like "LittleMermaid" to showcase their video reviews of books, movies, trends and activities, and parents have to approve the account. There is no private messaging, and comments are actively monitored.

The idea behind this and other social network entertainment networks for kids under the age of 13, like Walt Disney's Club Penguin, Imbee, Kidsocial, Scuttlepad and Everloop, is to create a safe place for children to learn how to communicate effectively and politely on a more controlled medium that will be key to their social, academic and economic lives.

For example, the children learn lessons about film production like lighting and dialogue by making videos to post on the networks, and they can understand, with advice from parents and peers, what topics are interesting and proper as they create their own content.

By starting younger kids out on "training wheels" of social media, and stressing some good sharing practices, parents can plant early seeds that will bear fruit when their children hit the tween and teenage years.

Influence and Instruction: A Combined Approach

For parents with children who are already teenagers and missed the window these social media "starter networks" give, developing an evolving rulebook for kids' online activities is crucial.

Letting teens know what's okay and what's not on Facebook and Twitter and learning a few things about privacy settings can greatly diminish the risks of social-network snafus. Teens understand some of the bigger implications, so talk with them about setting these options to "friends only," meaning no one outside the child's immediate, approved circle can interact with them. Facebook also allows disabling its location services, meaning status updates won't include the child's whereabouts.

On Twitter, explore options like Tweet Privacy, which protects the user's tweets by making them visible only to approved people -- not the world at large. Another setting worth enabling is the "Always use HTTPS" feature, which tells Twitter to use a secure connection when possible, thus reducing the risk of the user's account getting hacked.

Also, just because social media is so appealing to tweens and teens doesn't mean it is an absolute right. Parents can use their kids' fascination with social media as a parenting tool to reward their children's behavior and accomplishments.

Ignoring social media and your children's digital lives is not an option, since they aren't going away anytime soon and could feature prominently in college applications and job prospects.

Parents can influence their tweens and teens' online behavior and get a head start teaching younger kids about the implications of privacy, the permanence of their Web footprint, the basics of brand building and something about online manners.

Consider the issue of your kids' digital lives not with an attitude of resignation, but as an opportunity to bolster your child's understanding. After all, if parenting is done right, these kids will one day head out into a world where you aren't there at every step.

The Secret Online Lives of Tweens: What Parents Can Do originally appeared at Mobiledia on Wed May 16, 2012 12:52 pm.

Cyber-attacks on small businesses are repelling customers and costing a fortune, leaving owners with tough choices on how to strengthen their online defenses against increasingly common security breaches.

According to a Neustar study, 70 percent of surveyed businesses experienced prolonged distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks that drove away countless customers and millions of dollars in potential revenue.

Over five hundred IT professionals admitted their greatest fear is the customer backlash and heavy cost of distributed denial of service attacks. DDoS attacks overload servers with requests, overwhelming websites in a heavy flow of traffic.

Retailers worried about hacking the most, as such attacks cost an average of $100,000 per hour.

"This is a significant amount of money," observed Ted Swearingen, director of the Neustar Security Operations Center. "People don't realize there are a lot of other costs associated with DDoS, such as brand damage."

Neustar's study suggests if large firms suffer monetarily from cyber-attacks, small businesses have an even harder time handling increased security breaches.

For instance, Sony stands out as a significantly damaged brand, following a string of Anonymous DDoS hacks from April until October 2011. The attacks cost millions in cleanup and forced the company to compensate disgruntled users for failing to protect their data.

The Japanese company was big enough to stay afloat following this disaster, but most small entrepreneurs would have sunk in its wake. And in this case Anonymous hackers didn't even aim to steal from Sony's financial centers, preferring instead to humiliate the electronics maker by publicizing user information.

"While Anonymous has been getting a lot of headlines, our data tells us that most of these attacks are happening for the old-school reasons of why you'd want to knock out a site: financial gain and competitive advantage," said Sweringen.

Small businesses are just as vulnerable as big corporations against financial DDoS attacks, since the payout is lower but the threat of retaliation much slimmer. And financially motivated attacks are increasingly common, as Swearingen states.

"You have a one in three chance of a DDoS attack. It is something that IT teams and companies need to prepare for," he warns.

But under five percent of participants in Neustar's study have any protection against DDoS attacks, using only firewalls and rudimentary software to discourage hackers.

Further, many businesses use generic passwords like "password1" and "1234" to shield sensitive data rather that switching to complicated, unhackable codes.

Cyber-insurance, sold by firms like Travelers Companies and Chubb, also offer a refuge to both small and large businesses seeking protection against cyber-criminals. Still, this method is only partially helpful as it may not cover certain claims like civil lawsuits.

New government regulations may also soon enable small businesses to collaborate with the National Security Administration in warding off cyber-criminals. But civil rights advocates say these bills violate the First Amendment and may eliminate more liberties than they grant.

With the number of cyber-hacks is the rise, small companies will need to set aside finances for comprehensive preparations to fortify their electronic defenses to avoid Sony's fate. However, they will also need to weigh whether the investment will be money well-spent, or if any company can really be protected against the ever-increasing -- and more aggressive -- amount of cyber-attacks.

How Cyber-Hacks Are Hurting Small Businesses originally appeared at Mobiledia on Wed May 16, 2012 9:12 am.