Teach Kids Online Safety

The Internet is not as dangerous a place for children and teens as we previously thought, according to a recent law enforcement task force report. Real threats remain, however, and parents need to educate themselves and their children about online safety and privacy.

Be aware of Internet safety.
There are six major areas parents need to be concerned about:

• Amount of overall Internet/computer use
• Inappropriate websites—violence, pornography, hate groups
• Internet predators, perhaps posing as children or teens
• Online abuse and bullying
• Divulging confidential family information or ID numbers
• Downloading/installing malicious software

Create a family policy.
Your Internet policy will depend on how old your kids are and what level of individual responsibility you’re willing to grant them. The point is to have a policy.

• Use parental controls (see below) to enforce the level of safety you’re comfortable with.
• Ask the child to suggest a reasonable amount of daily computer usage. Reach agreement on this and then hold the child accountable. Renegotiate if necessary—again, the point is to have an agreed standard, not to expect that the limit will never be exceeded.

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Tags: children, internet, pornography, privacy, Security

Windows 7 Released to Manufacturing

Just thought I would pass along this note I just got from Microsoft:

It’s almost here! We’re very happy to tell you that we’ve hit the last big milestone on the way to Windows 7: release to manufacturing. We’re packaging up copies and manufacturers are putting it on new PCs. On October 22, you’ll be able to get the final shipping product. Your feedback has helped us make Windows 7 more reliable, compatible, and manageable-and we’d like to thank you for that.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Windows 7

Microsoft Warns Of a Serious IE Security Hole

As you are probably aware, Microsoft releases security updates on the second Tuesday of each month. However, this week there is a dangerous security hole in Internet Explorer that they’ve haven’t patched yet. This vulnerability is so severe that users are advised to immediately apply a workaround fix.

This particular flaw lets attackers infect the victim’s computers (running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003) after they’ve clicked on a video link in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability allows attacker to run arbitrary code under the same user rights of the local user. The worst part of it is the fact that this is not some theoretical hole; Microsoft clearly states that they’re already aware of malicious hackers exploiting this vulnerability.

If you’re running Internet Explorer under Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you should go apply the emergency fix, which can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890#FixItForMe, right away. The real patch will likely come in seven days, with Microsoft’s regular security update bundle.

Note that this flaw does not exist on Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, this does not apply to users of the Firefox browser on Windows XP. If you haven’t yet tried out Firefox as an alternative to Internet Explorer, you really should.

Tags: internet explorer, Microsoft, Windows