Ask Marian

Watch this YouTube video of a two year old girl using her father's new iPhone. If she can do it, so can you! Read more...

The innovative effort to find justice for Megan Meier by moving the case to California is causing dismay in legal circles. Today's Los Angeles Times' editorial page features a column decrying the lawsuit since it is based on a law intended to stop hackers, not misguided parents and supporters from tormenting children via the Internet. "Drew and the unnamed co-conspirators -- reportedly, three girls who were 13 to 18 years old at the time -- are accused of violating not Megan's rights but MySpace's terms of service. These included prohibitions against creating fictitious profiles, sending abusive messages and soliciting personal information from minors. By that logic, criminal charges also could be brought against people who adopt fake identities online for good reason -- for example, to criticize their employers or hide themselves from abusive spouses." Read more...

Four counts have been filed against Lori Drew, the creator of an fictional, online boy who cyberbullied victim Megan Meier, the Missouri school girl who hanged herself in response. US Attorney Thomas O'Brien, also known for his efforts to prosecute botnet criminals, led efforts by the Los Angeles federal Grand Jury to indict Ms. Drew for one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. Read more...

Today is the United Nation's International Day of Families. This year's theme is Fathers and Families: Responsibilities and Challenges. While the focus of the UN's considerations for family-related issues has been health crises such as AIDS, migration and refugee situations, the UN is also promoting healthy societies by emphasizing the importance of the father's role in the family. Read more...

Most kids have cell phones. Most cell phones take and receive photo messages. The only way for you to check whether your kids are taking or receiving photos with their cell phones is to monitor the monthly telephone bill (which will identify only the number of photo messages sent or received) and to regularly review what is on the actual cell phone. Read more...

It's a universal concern: the ease with which our children encounter adult material on the Internet. Even with the use of strong filters, the junk seeps into our lives. It is often because the porn vendors use aggressive marketing techniques, linking their sites to normal search terms and causing us to accidentally arrive at their site. Also, it's a normal developmental curiosity for our teens to "check out" nude celebrity photos or videos and other forms of porn. There is substantial peer pressure, especially with photos of a famous person, such as Edison Chen in Hong Kong or Vanessa Hudgens in the US. Perhaps we even encourage it with our concern about porn. Read more...

I had the pleasure of speaking to the viewers of Sunrise, Australia's most watched morning news program, during my recent visit to Sydney. We covered topics ranging from the bot problem to drive-by downloads, even how to secure your home wi-fi connection. Read more...

Why pay someone for a service you could do yourself? Each of us can come up with an explanation depending on the service in mind: housecleaning, tax preparation, manicures, even dog walking. There is a service out there for those lacking time, patience, skill or interest in taking care of the matter for themselves. We would certainly save money if we did these things ourselves. What if the service is to save us money in the first place? Read more...

Gaia Online, recently awarded an award from CNET's Webware for Best Social site, is also the online teen destination site where a Wisconsin teen met an adult woman looking for a real world tryst. We parents will need to add this site to our watchlist for our kids, just as we monitor the use of other social networking sites. It's a very cool site, with gaming areas, great graphics for creating a personalized avatar (or online representation of yourself) and a very busy community. In fact, the site claims they have the "world's most active online community with more than 1 billion forum posts to date." Read more...

Reading through a Morgan Stanley report (quite long but chock full of cool stats) I found a list of the fastest "rising" or growing search terms for both global users and US users. Read more...

Whether we admit it or not, one of the most common activities people are doing online is viewing pornography. And even if this isn't the case in your home, your children will learn about porn from their peers, from online advertisements, from mistakes in typing web addresses or search terms or out of normal curiosity about their own sexual feelings. I highly recommend you talk to your children about online porn and your expectations/rules for your kids in regard to it. It's out there and no amount of hiding will change that. Read more...

Marian@norton.com is my email address for any customer with a question. Very often, I get asked things like: How do I change the email address on my Norton account? The simple answer is to visit our online account system at www.mynortonaccount.com . Today's question is: I use Norton Internet Security software to protect my computer but today I found spyware. How did it get there? Read more...

I attended the TechCrunch/PopSugar party in Hollywood last week and was introduced to a new genealogy site called Geni.com. I love the idea of moving my family tree work off my laptop (what if it crashes and I lose everything?) and to an online, collaborative site. And since it's online, it's not dependent upon a particular operating system the way my Family Tree Maker software is. So that means my father, who works on a Mac, can add to it. Or if I'm visiting a relative and they suddenly mention a new family detail, I can borrow their computer to add it to the file. Read more...

The latest phishing attack happening is a fake subpeona for a California court, targetting senior executives around the country. Thousands of potential victims, those blue suited muckety mucks, have received emails containing a very credible looking image of a subpoena, referencing a lawsuit and providing a weblink to get more information. Those who fail to engage the software between their ears will find that malicious spyware software has been loaded onto their computer when they visit the destination website. That spyware will then be used to monitor any online banking activity and forward the account and password to the phishers. Read more...

The fine people who work in law enforcement and especially those who strive to protect our children from pedophiles deserve our thanks and so much more. The men and women who work in the elite Internet Crimes against Children divisions (known as ICAC) have the sad task of having to review the actual photos and videos taken of child victims in their pursuit of those evil people who prey on innocent children. Larry Magid has written a fascinating news story on how Google's technology is helping this important work become more efficient by using computers to find linkages between images from child pornography (a logo, a sign) and finding other images on the Internet to link the two. In this way, ICAC officers can speed up their ability to find the perpetrators and get them away from our children. I really want to thank the engineers at Google who worked on this project. What a wonderful way for technology to really fix something terrible and broken in our world! Read more...

I love Brian Tong on CNET's Prizefight series. He stars in a series of silly but fun, consumer friendly reviews of technology and today he takes on social networking sites. Specifically, Brian reviews MySpace versus Facebook in a series of 5 video rounds. Check it out: http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-50001799.html Read more...

You can sense the buzz the news producers at the Today Show, CNN's Nancy Grace and the others must have felt when they first got the emailed report: "We have a video of Florida cheerleaders beating a fellow teenager for 30 minutes and there's a tie-in to YouTube and MySpace." They must have tripped over their Ferragamo laces getting the news vans rolling to Lakeland, Florida to interview these young lovelies, their parents and the local sheriff. Sex, violence and the Internet? We'll all get Emmys! Read more...

I've been at Symantec/Norton for more than 11 years now. And I remember waaay back in the olden days when we have a very robust user forum area - a great environment for company to customer product help, peer to peer product help and direct feedback for the product team. And I'm so happy to announce that the forums are back!!! They are just hatched, in beta form for the moment. I hope you'll check them out, register and bookmark the location. It's meant to be a service for you, our valued customer. I'll even pop over from time to time to answer the questions that aren't so techie. Read more...

Before you click "Buy" on the photo of that oh so cute and cuddly Labrador Retriever, you might want to check out the newly released internet crime report from the IC3 organization. Their compiled statistics for the calendar year 2007 show a disturbing increase in the amount of online fraud ($240 million) as well as creative new methods used by the online criminal groups, including two kinds of pet scams. Read more...

I'd like to introduce a new concept in helping our children learn to be safe online. It's called the Talk. I'd like every family to have at least one "talk" with each of their kids every year (minimum) to review family rules and to reintroduce Mom and Dad to their children's online lives. 50% of US parents say they've spoken to their children about online safety (source: Harris Norton Online Living Report, January 2008). Is that a regular, ongoing discussion or a once "stay away from online strangers" chat? I'm proposing we formalize this a bit, in order to improve the results for the parents and the children. Read more...

The highly respected Dr. Tanya Byron of the United Kingdom was commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to conduct an extensive review of the issues around e-safety for children and make concrete recommendations for what government, education, private industry and the public should do in order to improve the safety of gaming and in the Internet. The report has now been issued and includes such directives as public awareness campaigns, new age-based game guidelines and parental controls included in all new computers sold in the UK. Additionally, the report recommends changes to social networking and search sites to solidify their secure settings. Read more...

RSS Feeds. You see their little logos all over the web (hey there's one right here, down and to the right!!) but perhaps you are still unsure of what those are and how you might benefit from them. I've put together some info on the topic that I hope will convince you to give it a try and report back on your successes. I've used several RSS aggregators (or programs) over the years: both the "on the web" format where you have to remember to visit a page to see all your combined news and a version that sends updates directly into a folder in my Microsoft Outlook. Read more...

There is a form of guerrila street art active in Los Angeles. Perhaps in your town, too. Some feature cartoon birds hanging from power lines at major intersections, some are intricate line art of politicians with ironic captions. Another is a skeleton talking on a cell phone. The more familiar and commercial form of street art is our familiar friend the billboard. It's a highly effective and cost efficient form of advertising and the MBA in me loves them. (Disclaimer: Symantec often advertises with billboards.) The urban resident in me thinks they are an annoying part of city living. And the new electronic billboards with constantly changing images are a distraction when I'm driving and an intrusion into nearby homes with the flickering and overly bright images illuminating upper floors without pity. Computer programming determines the array of ads to be displayed. And where there are computers, there are often hackers lurking to disrupt or worse. Our local Clear Channel electronic billboards recently began displaying the graffiti image of a cellphone-yakking skeleton and the rumors began to fly among the hacking community. How did the artists hack into the system to display their guerrilla art? Kudos and high fives were flying in the blogging community and then...it turns out, it was what it should have been. It was legitimate advertising! As Dr. Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Read more...

You take a job in technology, you are just happy because your colleagues are so smart and your work is usually pretty interesting. But no one would ever say a job in technology is glamorous. Then why did I find myself deep in conversation last night with Courtney Cox at an exclusive party at Eva Longoria's new restaurant, Beso? By definition just being in the room with Ms. Cox, her BFF Jennifer Aniston, her husband David Arquette and a long, long list of other A list celebrities is pretty darn glamorous. So how did a nice girl with a tech industry career find herself amid all the glitz? Read more...

My daughter is in 8th grade and we've finally settled on her high school choice for next year. One of the highlights of the chosen school is their award-winning student newspaper. We enjoy reading the articles already, as it gives us a flavor of what the environment will be like. A recent article that caught our attention and sparked some very intense family conversation was about the use of laptops at the school. Apparently, they are permitted in the classroom for note-taking but it's not well policed and the high schoolers have been frequently found to be using them for Facebook, email and web surfing right in the middle of a lesson. Read more...

Users of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services such as LimeWire are often very naive about how much someone else can access on their computer. If you are sharing your family PC where you do your taxes and other private and important financial work with a teen who might be getting music and video via P2P, please sit down and evaluate how it was set up. You need to make sure that nothing else can be accessed other than the target folder where your own music and video is stored. And please note, P2P can often be used to illegally share music and video and you don't want to be the next house where the RIAA knocks with a warrant. The news item du jour? CNET reports the first conviction of ID theft via peer to peer. Please take a read! Read more...

Addiction. We usually reserve this powerful term for drug and alcohol abuse, gambling and similar behaviors or indulgences, for when the individual has lost control over their use and allowed the activity to rule their life. For parents of children who can no longer balance their gaming or Internet activities with the rest of their real lives, or who've allowed their passions to change their personality, it must appear as though the Internet can indeed be clinically addictive. But for those who are the experts in the area of addiction, psychologists and researchers, it's not so clear whether or not we should classify computer and internet use right alongside alcohol and cannibis Read more...

Remember our Christmas story about virus infected digital photo frames? Earlier this week, AP ran a story about virus infected devices in general and featured a mention and photo of a Los Angeles-area resident who had purchased one of those viral frames. His name is Jerry Askew and when I read the article, I thought to myself, "Hey, I know that guy!" Indeed I do. We were buddies at our first post-college job way back in the 1980's. I even attended his wedding. I used this opportunity to reconnect and gave him a call. I wondered about how the reporter had found him, and it turns out Jerry had reported his damaged photo frame to The SANS Institute, a highly respected organization for information and training on computer security topics. The reporter had gone there looking for information on the issue and was given Jerry's information. It also turns out that Jerry's computer was saved from being infected by the viral photo frame by his antivirus software. It's nice to read about someone benefitting so clearly from software like ours. Read more...

It's that happy, wacky time of the year, when my husband suddenly realizes how much we've spent on clothing at our house. Yes, it's tax time, when we pull all the credit card statements, medical bills, income and outcome estimates together, and figure out whether or not Uncle Sam will let us keep the house, kids, dogs and other tax liabilities we've come to know and love! As you begin to contemplate your own tax prep work, I just want to remind you of a few internet security related issues for this season. It's not the only thing to consider but it is extremely important to bear these in mind: Read more...

I think people get confused when we talk about putting the computer in a public area (not your child's bedroom) or reviewing the PC's history. We aren't talking about spying. What I'm advising parents to do is monitor their children's online activities but to do so OPENLY. Tell your kids what you are up to and ask about anything you see that you don't understand. I'm not a fan of covert efforts like keystroke loggers or hidden devices. If you are stooping to using technology to secretly discover what your child is doing online, I hope you know what you are doing. Should your child learn you've breached the trust bond between the two of you, it will be incredibly hard to repair that relationship. I know there are people out there happy to sell you all kinds of spy devices for your teens. I just watched a Today show segment on secret keystroke loggers, GPS tracking systems and hidden cameras, not to mention drug test kits for your kids. Truly, I hope you and your children will always be able to stay very far away from ever considering needing any of those devices in order to feel safe. Read more...

A child won a content with her easy mnemonic device to remember our newly established 11 planets. Montana 4th grader, Maryn Smith, entered the National Geographic contest and will get an entry in a National Geographic book and recording star Lisa Loeb is turning her entry into a song (both are due in March). I thought we were still debating if Pluto was a planet or not, but that's what happens when you get your science news from Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. So here is the updated planet list, including three dwarf planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Eris. The three dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto and Eris. And the award winning phrase? My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants. Great job, Maryn! Read more...

My kids have a pretty sweet life. Mom gets loads of info on all the new tech toys and likes to check them out too, so my kids all have Ipods, we have several GameBoys, coupla Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii. They don't have everything but they continue to want more. MORE! Like Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors", their demand for technology has an unsatiable appetite. "Feed me, Seymour!" Great show, by the way, my kids loved it! These toys have introduced some new technology challenges to the home and our lives on the road too. I've mentioned before that the Nintendo Wii uses any available wireless networks to display the Internet right on your TV. Parents can shut that off using the built-in parental controls. But it was a treat to watch my nephew's YouTube video of his robotics' built dog "Toto" for his school's production of "The Wizard of Oz", while in our living room with the grandparents. Despite poor display quality, we were all more comfortable than crowding around a laptop or monitor in the den. So at least for now, we're allowing the WiFi capability to be used on our Wii. Read more...

A whole lot of spam in February. As you know, Symantec issues a monthly Spam report from our researchers in Symantec Security Response. Ours just came out in March for the previous month and (ugh!) shows what you've already seen in your own email boxes - spam is now 78.5% of all your email. Oh what the heck - let's just say we're now seeing the 80/20 Pareto rule of spam (in memory of the management guru, Joseph Juran, who created the Pareto rule and recently passed away.) 80% of the email you get is useless, but you still need to manage your inbox diligently to find the 20% of email you really want. Read more...

The State of California has created a special "Kid's Corner" site with an index of "safe" websites our children can use to gather information or do research for their school work. I attended California Public Schools from K-12 and just reviewing some of the recommended websites was a sentimental journey through the assignments of my childhood. "California Missions" and "Exploring The Faultline" are just two examples of sites linked from the "Kid's Corner". Even today, when I'm on an airplane flying from San Jose to Los Angeles, there is one approach used that goes right over the tectonic violence of the San Andreas Fault and I get a real shiver just looking at the evidence of powerful plate shifts. Read more...

Our friends over at Google have run tests, evaluating 66 million urls over the course of 10 months in 2007, to see whether or not these webpages hosted malicious code that might infect the average web-surfer. It's not surprising, at least to those of us at Symantec, that they found plenty. The chart over on their blog "shows the percentage of daily queries that contain at least one search result labeled as harmful. In the past few months, more than 1% of all search results contained at least one result that we believe to point to malicious content and the trend seems to be increasing." Read more...

Our 2.0 release of Norton 360 (my all time favorite internet security program for every family) is out today! www.symantec.com/norton360/ gives all the juicy details on new features and improvements. We use Norton 360 at our house and I just love that because it takes care of so many security and maintenance tasks without me doing anything, I no longer hear my kids telling me about a security alert I need to deal with, or a website that was incorrectly blocked. Norton 360 works really well for us and has kept our home computer virus-free since it was installed. Another big win for all Norton 360 families are some improvements to the free, add-on pack, bringing back user accounts so you can customize the settings to protect each child. The younger children get a pre-approved lists of websites to visit, while older children get protection from blocked, objectionable categories of sites, like "adult" or "hate" sites, while retaining the ability to research and get homework done. And if backup is the one thing you never find time to do, with Norton 360, you might just get it taken care of. You will need to think about what you want to protect (photos, music, tax records, etc) and where you want to back it up, but once you've set things up, Norton 360 will manage getting it done for you. And with the improvements in the new 2.0 version, it's also going to keep you aware of the backup status better than before. Read more...

"Mom, can we get this new game for my PSP? It's totally awesome; I played it at Justin's house and it was so cool? Please oh please??" Does that scenario sound at all familiar? You are in the mall, in Toys 'R Us or your local big box retailer and your previously sullen and mopey pre-teen child has suddenly sprung to life. Depending on your personal view about spending money on new game titles when it's not a birthday or gift-giving holiday, let's just assume that it's not the money you are concerned about. It's trying to know whether or not the new game is appropriate for your family environment and your child's age and maturity. Are you going to get this new game home and suddenly realize it has foul language or excessive violence? As the song in "Enchanted" says, "how do you know?" Read more...

Is there a difference from one bank to another when it comes to identity theft? Who is the best, who is the worst at protecting you from fraud and who is under the greatest attack by fraudsters? How could the average consumer possibly know this? A recent study indicates a slew of bad news here for customers of HSBC, BofA and WAMU. Read more...

I didn't get a chance to blog about this but last week I spent a good portion of Thursday and Friday in a yet-to-be-opened Hollywood restaurant hosting TV and film stars at an Oscar gift suite! My very first Oscar-related event, ever. I grew up in LA and many of my friends have, over the years, attended parties, stood along the red carpet viewing area and even volunteered as Oscar seat fillers, but for me, this was my first time doing anything "Oscar". Read more...

Nice blog entry on recognizing when YOU are a victim of identity theft!! Also, the phone numbers for the three credit reporting agencies (in case you were hunting for those.) http://www.walletpop.com/2008/02/24/protecting-your-identity-signs-of-identity-theft/ Read more...

A growing number of identity theft claims are related to MEDICAL identity theft. This means someone is using your insurance benefits for their medical needs, or to resell drugs prescribed in your name. An estimated 250,000 instances of medical identity theft were recorded by the FTC in 2005. As awareness of this issue grows, you can expect to be asked to prove your identity at the doctor's office by showing your driver's license. This is a good thing, something you should ask your doctor to begin requiring because it serves to protect the both of you from the dishonest employee who is trading in your private information. www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/03/03/prsc0303.htm Have you been a victim of medical identity theft? Let me know! Send your comments to Marian@norton.com. Read more...

Take that, Mrs. O'Brien, the AP English teacher who said I couldn't write! My little Family Online Safety Guide won an award! Full disclosure here: it wasn't actually a writing award but maybe I did learn something in her brutal class about effectively communicating a thought or two. She was actually a wonderful teacher and I've never forgotten the sting of criticism from someone I respected. The 2008 iParenting Media Award in the Best Books category is lovely recognition for the whole Symantec/Norton Family Safety team that the material we've developed in the free (and downloadable) Family Online Safety Guide is helpful, educational and useful for anyone struggling to protect their online kids. Please download your copy (also available in Spanish) and share with a friend. You can even download the file and email it as an attachment. And we do have limited numbers of printed copies if you need them for an event at your school. Just send me an email at Marian@norton.com and I'll be glad to help. Read more...

Many of you know how much I love the Nintendo Wii. From the moment we got one (and I became a hero in my children's eyes because I got lucky enough to find one when they were so scarce), my children are up off the couch playing games and breaking a sweat. I never knew I'd be encouraging my children to go play a video game on a rainy day! And of course, of equal surprise was how much fun the Wii turned out to be for the whole family. We're going to bring ours to a family reunion this summer, planning to stage a Wii Tennis tournament between the generations! Come this May, Nintendo is upping the exercise angle with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii Fit. A special add-on board allows the player to engage in yoga, dance and balance exercises. There is a nice video showing the board in demo with gorgeous, sporty and fit models having the time of their lives in well lit and beautifully decorated homes. Take a look! (No price has been set yet.) Read more...

Online predators do not usually pretend to be kids when they approach our children online. Usually, they are honest about their age and their objective. This from a recent article in USA Today citing research in American Psychologist magazine (I can't access the full original article). This information is consistent with the demonstration of internet predation presented by the FBI at the Albany meeting I attended several months ago. Perves sit in adult-oriented chat rooms awaiting the inevitable arrival of kids looking for attention from adults. The kids may begin their online communications because of disarray in their home lives, lack of parental supervision or involvement or simply boredom. But during the demonstration I witnessed, the adults made it clear from the beginning that they were adults and that they were seeking sexual relationships with these "young girls" ( both virtual and physical sexual relationships). And the research goes on to say that the kids who end up in these inappropriate relationships demonstrate their risk with other actions, such as talking to strangers about sex, not restricting their "friend" lists on social networking sites and "being rude or nasty". Read more...

New York Magazine has a very interesting article about kids and lying. Any parent should want to read this because it drives home the point that all children, good and bad, lie. Often, they learn to lie from watching us and our "white lies" that ease our daily life. As someone who cares about guiding families away from Internet dangers, I read this article with such interest. If your child will lie to you about minor concerns such as which movie they actually saw at the mall last night, won't they also lie to you about the websites they visit or their social networking activity? You betcha! Read more...

While I was away from home in the UK, we received a nice little booklet in our household mail from the US Postmaster General, John E. Potter. The enclosed brochure, "Deter. Detect. Defend. Avoid ID Theft." is a publication from another government agency, the Federal Trade Commission. They have a fantastic portal website at www.ftc.gov/idtheft with many easy to understand articles on topic. The contents of the booklet go through the typical ways that id theft occurs: dumpster diving; skimming; phishing; fraudulent change of address forms; and old fashioned stealing. Some of the agency's advice for preventing id theft include old chestnuts such as shredding any mail or documents you are discarding that include financial or personal information; guarding your use of personal information; avoiding phishing attacks by not clicking links in email, Instant Messaging; and using complex passwords. One thing they fail to recommend is to install a locking mailbox. I thought that to be an ironic omission since the tips booklet came courtesy of the US Postmaster and misuse of the mail is such a common id theft front. Locking mailboxes prevent someone from removing checks, bills or other personal, financial information from your incoming mail. It doesn't prevent the mail carrier from delivering your mail. We recently installed one (purchased very inexpensively from Home Depot) and it's worked out very well for us. You just need to keep your own mailbox keys in a secured area (and not like us, occasionally forget where that area is.) Read more...

Yesterday I had the good fortune to spend the day with Parry Aftab and her TeenAngels at the 8th Annual Wired Kids Summit in Washington DC. It was a beautiful, warm day in Washington (an unseasonal 70 degrees) but it was such a lively program in the Cannon building, no one seemed to mind being indoors. The adult attendees included Chris Hansen from TV's "To Catch a Predator", Marsali Hancock from our partner organization, IKeepSafe Coalition, and representatives from AOL, Microsoft, Webkinz and others. Each table featured an impressive display of junk food and free takeaway toys from Webkinz and Neopets. My colleagues and I were joined at our table by three young ladies from Parry's teen volunteer group, the TeenAngels. We also met some younger participants, called "TweenAngels". These children perform countless hours of community service, visiting schools with a presentation on internet safety. Read more...

Where's James Bond when we need him? This past Wednesday two of the underwater cables that serve business and consumers in the Middle East and Asian markets were severed. People in countries like Egypt and India are experiencing what must feel like a return to the dark ages of Internet living, back to the speeds of dial-up connections or no service at all! Read more...

Hi, I had the good fortune to be interviewed on kids and online safety for a newly launched parenting podcast, called MommaJam. It goes live today. I hope you will hop over to www.mommajam.com or subscribe on Itunes to the fun and serious issues being discussed. Read more...

I submitted my freeze requests to all three agencies and received 9 identical "rejections." The short story version is that since none of my children have been victims of id theft, there is no record of them in the "system". Therefore no record requiring a freeze exists. Read more...

We've moved into a cubicle-farm office set up in our new Culver City office space. One positive aspect is that I'm now far more likely to learn about cool doings from our researchers just by eavesdropping on the brilliant people who sit near me. Unfortunately, I'm not usually able to tell you about what we've got in pre-release mode. But today I can because our research has appeared in the press. Symantec/Norton is investigating ways to move beyond "parental control" technology and to introduce a more collaborative method for managing the internet risks in partnership with our children. Symantec just previewed some of this new thinking at our DEMO event. You can read about it and then please comment and let me know what you think! Read more...

This just stinks!!! Apparently some of the very popular digital photo frames come with an extra, added feature - a computer virus! Folks using solid internet security software (such as Norton) and who keep it up to date are protected even if they got a dud frame. Did you get one of these frames for Christmas? If it's still in the box, read up on which models are affected before you connect to your family pc. Read more...

Someone asked me about how they can use online dating safely. Inspired, I've come up with some tried-and-true tips for keeping it safe, both online and off. Here they are, just in time for Valentine's Day: Read more...

When I was in the UK last year, I was introduced to a relatively new term (at least for me), of "Happy Slapping." That's the term popularized in Europe for the sick trend of kids getting into fights, recording themselves with cellphone cameras, then uploading the video clips to YouTube and other video sites. You can check this out yourself, entering terms like "Girls Fighting", "Cat Fight" or "Happy Slapping" into the search field. Or you can take it from me, there are thousands of these videos. Read more...

This is such an interesting development in the cyberbullying case of Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairies, MO. You'll remember her poor parents could not find protection in the law to go after Lori Drew, the parent who supposedly concocted the fake MySpace identity that cyberbullied Megan and led to her suicide. Now, the Grand Jury in Los Angeles has issued supoenas to gather evidence that fraud may have been committed against the MySpace company Read more...

We met with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper back in September at a Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club. We were presenting him with an award on behalf of his work to protect children online. At the time, he discussed with us his plans to work with all the US State's Attorneys General to get MySpace and other Social Networking sites to do more to protect our children online. Today's news announcement shows us just what he and his colleagues have accomplished. www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/14/myspace.agreement.ap/index.html Read more...

Consumer Electronics Show. A week in Las Vegas. A suite at the Venetian hotel (hey Symantec Accounting, they are ALL suites at that hotel!!) 145,000 other technology fans. Survival methods: flat shoes in my tote at all times (if I wasn't wearing them to walk around in.) Hand sanitizer. A daily acetaminophen tablet in the morning. Several bottles of water per day (most of them got started and then I'd forget where I'd put them down. Next time, I'll bring a Sharpie to mark my water bottles.) Breath mints or gum are a must! I tried to use long-lasting lip color but the dry desert air and the over heated Sands Expo center made that feel too drying so I had to switch to my old standby, Bobbi Brown lipgloss. I didn't get sick (!) and I even made it to the snazzy Canyon Ranch gym in the Venetian three times! I've never seen a gym before with a climbing wall in it, but I've also never spent $35 per day for a hotel gym. Read more...

I just got off the phone with my beloved, computer-genius nephew. It would seem that the well-meaning technology department of his high school has a policy that prevents any students' lastnames from appearing on the school's website. In a quick spin around the school's impressive site, I found this to be poorly and haphazardly implemented. Read more...

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful Holiday season, got all the gifts you wanted, made out like a bandit at the after-Christmas sales and have your gift cards organized so you will avoid losing any of their value to service fees and expiration dates! See, I wish you only the BEST! Getting back into work mode has been a little harder than I thought it would be. I'm spending a lot of time just going through the backlog of emails and reading news releases about research reports, end of year statistics and predictions and requests for Family Online Safety Guides. We've relaunched our Family Resource website (looking awesome!) and now have the Family Online Safety Guide online as a pdf file so you can easily download it and send to friends and family. We've made a Spanish translation too! Mark your calendars and set your Tivos for an upcoming special edition of Frontline on PBS about teens and their online lives: called "Growing Up Online", it's scheduled for January 22nd at 9:00 pm (but be sure to check your local listings). Read more...

You often hear parents complain that their children no longer read books. And the data would indicate that they are right! A recent study from the National Endowment for the Arts (yes, that group of crazy reading fanatics!) found that over the last 20 years, the number of 17-year olds who never or rarely read rose from 9 to 19 percent. And there is a direct correlation between low reading activity and academic achievement. See? When I'm nagging my kids to read and read and read some more, I'm not just being a pest who is trying to tear them away from GameBoy and Hannah Montana! I'm not anti-gaming or anti-TV. I'm pro-good grades. Read more...

Kevin Wehner is a man who had the nightmare experience of seeing his own photo flash across the national news as a suspect in the September 13th murder of a Miami police officer and the shooting of three other policemen. Imagine his horror when his own mother telephoned him to ask why he was on the television, why he was accused of murder, what was going on. On that Thursday morning in September, Wehner was some 350 miles away from the scene of the crime, in his home in Jacksonville, Florida. Turning to his wife and two small children, Wehner dialed 911, hoping to stave off additional drama as law enforcement went into overdrive to find the perpetrator. Within minutes, police arrived at his home. They quickly handcuffed and put him into the back of a patrol car while his family watched. Read more...

There are a number of ways for identity thieves to work their black magic within MySpace. A common one making the rounds is to send emails through MySpace accounts to people's networks. The email instructs you to visit a particular MySpace page (usually to check out some sexy photos or to get a free department store credit card.) And when you get there, you will be told you need to log in to MySpace. Even if you were just on MySpace and hadn't logged out, you will need to reenter your account name and password. Most of us won't pay any attention to that little voice in our head saying, "well isn't that kind of wierd" because we want to see the hot photos without any delay!! If you fall for these sites (and many people will) the page you link to is a cleverly-disguised identity theft site, not within the MySpace domain at all. And in your haste to see something "not appropriate for the office", you've now given a criminal access to your MySpace account and all of your friends. Read more...

I had the good fortune to travel to London a few weeks ago. Symantec is working to create Family Online Safety programs in our European markets, just as we've done in the US. We're in very early stages but it's very exciting to meet my international colleagues and discuss the cultural norms that are emerging about children and the Internet. For example, in France, it seemed like people wouldn't be as easily convinced to get the computers out of their children's bedrooms. We have some work to do!! After all, 75% of children in the US access computers in public areas of their homes. (We have to convince the parents of the remaining 25% since private computers encourage risk-seeking behavior.) Read more...

I did some dumb things in my college days. I'm sure we all did. But I'm grateful that any photographic proof of my shenanigans was long ago discarded. I just can't imagine what thousands of college-aged women are thinking to join a Facebook group dedicated to celebrating their drunken escapades. Apparently 172,000 young women have joined a Facebook group named "Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night" and then gone on to post 5,000 photos. The photos celebrate their alcohol-fueled partying, dancing on tabletops, vomiting, public urination. You know this is a natural result of having a cellphone when you are drinking. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time to take those photos. Read more...

Now that my teenaged daughter is an active emailer, she's joined what has to be the second generation of email hoax and chain letter participants. This week she forwarded her whole family an email hoax about a supposedly missing teenager. She did this, thinking her involvement was the "right thing to do." After all, the way the email was written, it was her civic and moral duty to help the grieving family find their boy. And she has such a big heart she was really happy to find a simple way to help. Read more...

My 11-year old son would still be happiest with hour upon hour of unfettered PC time. We have limits in our house, especially on a school day, which is our attempt to keep him focused on school work. And though it's a constant battle, for the most part we've kept the PC and gaming to a minimum. And when he picks up a book to read in bed, he makes my day! Read more...

While we Americans focus on "door buster" holiday shopping specials, and creative uses for turkey leftovers, our cousins in England are coming to terms with a potentially very serious data breach. Two computer disks containing records for families of children receiving government benefits (not a welfare program but a small subsidy for parents) have gone missing in transit from one government office to another. Some 25 million individuals' records are potentially at risk, containing names, addresses, national insurance number and banking details. Some government officials have resigned in disgrace while others scramble to make political gold out of the problem. And, as you might expect, advertising for identity theft insurance is on the rise. Read more...

Just had to share this: WiFi detector shirt, it lights up when you are in range of a wifi connection! check out the shirt! Read more...

Retailers are pushing the start time of their Black Friday specials earlier and earlier. Some retailers, including Wal-Mart, will post their specials for online shoppers starting Thanksgiving Day! Given the crowds I saw in my local Best Buy and Costco today, I'd say holiday shopping is off to a good clip. But most of the people I watched were checking prices, reading the packaging and otherwise not making their purchases. Smart. Wait just a day or two and watch those prices drop significantly. Read more...

Anticyberbullying programs are getting a LOT more attention of late. No country is doing more to fight this issue and its companion, schoolyard bullying, than the United Kingdom. They have even declared this week to be AntiBullying Week. Read more...

There are some stories that leave you wondering if the rest of the planet is operating on a different frequency or received a different set of instructions on how to behave than you did. There are some things that are so obviously wrong for a parent to do that it's hard to see how other people can do them. And do them all the time. Some examples: Yelling obscenities at a sporting event - especially one where your children are the players Organizing a physical battle between your children, to settle a score or fight over a boyfriend Posing as a child on a social networking site, which leads to an online relationship with a child, and your objective was to harass that child or worse. Read more...

As of November 1st, consumers in all 50 states can now take advantage of a service called a "credit freeze". A freeze means that no new credit (no credit cards, no car loans, no mortgage refinancing) can be done in your name while the freeze is in effect. For someone who has experienced the pain of identity theft, where a criminal gets to go shopping or borrowing using your good credit to finance the spree, this is really, really good news. Read more...

Habbo virtual world thievery gets real world law enforcement attention How this effects you? Teach your children never to share passwords or account information when they are in their online game or virtual worlds. Manager uses Facebook entry to find employee who called in sick How this effects you? You never know who will see what you post in your blog or social networking site, so think twice before you upload an embarrassing photo! Wondering exactly how you set up Facebook and the other social networking sites to be safe and private? Here are some great little video tutorials to show you most of the best practices with screenshots and everything! Click on this page and scroll down to find the tutorial for the social network you use. Read more...

I mention this whenever I get a chance to talk to teens or parents of teens; the biggest real worry about ever popular social networking sites like MySpace isn't online predators (as most people believe) but phishing attacks. Scores of MySpace pages have been hacked so that each visitor with an unprotected machine gets keystroke loggers or requests for passwords or other attacks on their system. Read more...

Recently I had an annual medical checkup and was sort of taken aback when the receptionist asked to take a digital photo of me first. "For the files," was the reason she provided. But knowing a little more about what's going on than perhaps she realized, I told her the likely reason was to put a stop to medical identity theft. This occurs when someone gets a hold of your insurance information and piggybacks on your coverage to get their medical costs paid for by someone else. You might not even notice it happening unless you suddenly max out on your coverage and find yourself paying out of pocket for things you thought would be covered. Read more...

Both are games. A "Googlewhack", for the uninitiated, is a search result of just one item using the Google search engine. I've never been able to come up with one myself but I'm also really, really busy. An example of a googlewhack is "spoonable snowdrops". At least for now, if you enter that in your search field, you'll just get the one result. I found it listed at the www.googlewhack.com website. And Dave Gorman, a brilliant British comedian and stage-performer, actually turned the silly pursuit of the Googlewhack into an amazing, round the world chase and stage show about his own role in googlewhacking. My husband and I saw him when he came to UCLA and it was a very fun evening! Read more...

Earlier and earlier, the signs of the holiday season turn up in our lives. I was in the Century City Mall this week and noticed the Christmas lights are already up and the landscaping is wired with little twinkly lights. Today's USA Today had a feature story on great Christmas movies (as part of promoting the latest release, called "Fred Claus" with Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughn.) And the annual "state of the holiday shopping studies" are arriving on our doorsteps.... Read more...

It was a warm Denver afternoon last year when Serry Winkler's relaxing couch-surfing was interrupted by a pounding at her door. Three Boulder, Colorado sheriff's deputies were there with a warrant...for her computer! Somehow, during one of her marathon 12 hour days on the computer doing work as a political campaign manager, she had allowed a bot - or computer robot - to infect her PC. And the botherder, or hacker using the botnetwork, had used her computer as a staging area for purchasing merchandise online with stolen credit cards. Read more...

I have a suggestion for everyone who is getting their little ballerinas, firemen, Hannah Montanas, and Luke Skywalkers ready for tonight's trick or treating. Since you won't be using your computer tonight while you are taking them through the neighborhood or giving candy out at home, use the time to update your virus definitions (before you go out) and then scan your whole system for internet ghouls and goblins (aka viruses, worms, trojans and bots) while you are out having fun. When you are sure your system is clean and healthy, your next task is to back up photos and other important documents. Read more...

As I've said so many times when I talk to kids and parents about cyberbullying, the statistics are so high that it is more than likely our children are both the victims and the participants in this high tech form of bullying. It's going to take an effort from each of us, working with our children, to turn this ugly trend around. We need our children to understand and recognize bullying when it occurs (whether in person or online) and give them the tools and techniques to address it. Read more...

Flying is always a challenge. And if you are Lauren Nelson, Miss America 2007, and you travel 20,000 miles a month, getting delayed or missing a connection just goes with the territory. So when we arrived late last night into Tallahassee, we discovered Lauren's suitcases didn't make the trip with us. The airline (who will go nameless and blameless right now) had no idea where the bags were. Dejected, we went over to our hotel where emergency supplies were rounded up, so that at least Lauren could have a reasonably good night's rest before today's flurry of media events in honor of Tallahassee's Mayor declaring today as Cyber Security Awareness Day. Read more...

"Thanks for participating in our live demo for the New York State Cybersecurity Conference" "huh? what do you mean?" "I mean, our chat was displayed on a big screen in front of 300 in a conference in Albany, NY" "bye" That was the end of just one of three live, simultaneous chat windows operated by an FBI agent and a police officer at yesterday's NYS Cybersecurity Awareness Conference. The FBI agent was showing us how incredibly fast it would be for a child to be approached by an online predator if they wandered into the wrong public chat room. Read more...

With all the noise about social networking sites, a lot of parents might be overreacting about their child's profile on MySpace, Facebook and the like. New research out today from the Pew Internet and American Life Project might just set some minds at ease. Yes, there is a high likelihood a stranger might contact your kid on the internet. In fact the number you usually hear from me is that 1 in 7 kids will get contacted by a stranger for a sexual solicitation (ick!). In today's study we learn that 32% of online teens will get a stranger contact of any form. That is a much higher figure than my "1 in 7" so I was initially quite concerned when I saw that. Read more...

I've just returned from a trip to Oklahoma City with Miss America, Lauren Nelson. We visited Capitol Hill Elementary School, the largest school in the city and certainly one of the less affluent. I had the pleasure of delivering Symantec's financial contribution to the D.A.R.E. officers at Capitol Hill. D.A.R.E. officers are going to add cybersafety lessons to their already successful anti-drug efforts. They are going to use the IKeepSafe Coalition's Faux Paw curriculum, which is getting such great reviews at the schools who already use this creative, easy-to-understand cartoon cat to teach a serious lesson about staying away from online strangers. Read more...

This came to me from SafeKids/NetFamilyNews, written by Anne Collier. I thought it would be of interest to all of you: New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram wants all social-networking sites to have the "Report Abuse" button at the bottom of every page, NJ.com reports. Her plan, she told a Gannett New Jersey reporter, "will give users a standard form to report concerns such as suspected child predators or violent or sexually explicit material. Anyone who files a complaint will receive a confirmation number and contact information they can use to follow up on their report." New Jersey-based myYearbook.com and six niche sites run by CommunityConnect have adopted General Milgram's program so far. Read more...

Even though my three kids are middle-school aged or younger, we're already feeling significant pressure to help them aim at their college career. Regardless of my kids' actual strengths or interests, does every lunch or dinner conversation with the other parents have to include the phrase, SAT? And I don't go anywhere without hearing about strategies to get your kid into an Ivy League school, or conversely, discussions about lesser known "gem" schools we should focus on in the future. I hate the whole thing. Read more...

Yesterday, I snuck off for a little spa time at the gorgeous hotel in Las Vegas where we were staying. As I settled back for my facial, the aesthetician and I got to chatting about our work, our lives, where we are from, and so forth. When she found out my job is to travel the country talking about online safety, she surprised me by saying, "have I got a story for you!" It turns out that her husband is a band member for a still-touring 80's rock and roll star. Their band website.... Read more...

A year's worth of job hunters to Gap stores (including Banana Republic, Old Navy and the Outlet) in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico have a new risk to their identities and financial security. A thief stole a laptop containing unencrypted personal information related to online and telephone job applications from a third-party vendor who handles the applications for the company. And how many people applied for those jobs? 800,000!! If you or one of your kids is among this group, make sure you monitor your/their credit activity like a hawk. What I find so painful is there are sure to be very young kids in that group, kids who haven't even applied for their first credit cards. It would be so devastating to have someone steal or damage your credit, before you even get a chance to overspend on your first Visa card. Read more...

Today is October 1st, which as all of you know from your At-a-glance® calendar, kicks off National Cyber Security Awareness Month!! (Ok, I made up the calendar thing, but someday this might be true.) While I wish we were all so cybersecurity aware that taking care of securing our computer was as frequent or normal as buckling your seatbelt when you get in the car, the reality is a bit different. At today's National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Summit in Washington, DC, there was a lot of information shared about the current state of consumer security and awareness. And I'm afraid the news isn't all that good. Read more...

On Sunday, I'll be heading for Washington, DC where the National Cyber Security Alliance, a non-profit organization intended to be the "go to" group for cyber security awareness and education, will be meeting to kick off October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Read more...

I have to admit, I love using the various online photo sites such as Snapfish (owned by HP), Shutterfly, and Kodak's EasyShare Gallery; to get high quality prints of family photos, to order coffee mugs with the kids' pictures on them, and my newest favorite, digital photo books. They are an improvement on the traditional magnetic page albums, since printing the photo directly on the paper takes up far less room. Now when we finish a vacation or even celebrate a significant milestone event, I upload the photos, add some captions, select a cover and order the book/album. You still need to have digital prints around for sharing with others or using for collage or scrapbooks but these photobooks are GREAT! My father and I compiled scanned historical genealogical photos and information and made copies for everyone in our family. What a great way to celebrate the results of your family tree research! Read more...