How can you be sure that your child is safe on the Internet? It can be easy if you set the following Internet safety guidelines with your kids.

Among our top ways to stay safe. Remind your kids to:

1. Be careful with strangers on the Internet. Never give out personal information, including your last name, address, phone number or password. If someone asks for any of this information, kids should not respond; they should log off and tell a trusted adult.

2. Never agree to meet anyone without you, the parents, in tow.

3. A child should tell her parents immediately if she ever feel uncomfortable in a chat room or other online situation.

4. Stick with "kid-friendly" websites.

As adults, parents can use software, like My Kids Browser, to insure your child will not be able to access any adult-only websites.

ParentDish has complete, up-to-date information on the latest Gadgets & Tech.

June is National Safety Month, Mom. Are your children safe? Although you can't control everything that happens, there are lots of things you can do to prepare your children for emergency and make your home and yard safe for play this summer.

Take this short quiz, and then check your answers to discover what steps you might need to take to protect your children from harm. It may be the most important few minutes you spend today.

It's enough to send a chill up any parent's spine: a 14-year-old girl agrees to meet an online friend, presumably another teen, without telling her parents. Only the "teen" turns out to be a 38-year-old man ... and a predator.

To parents and child safety experts, the Internet is a virtual version of a dark and scary wood, where our Little Red Riding Hoods might meet up with the Big Bad Wolf if they take the wrong path. But when a task force of 49 district attorneys recently took a closer look at actual cases of sexual solicitation and abuse, they discovered the the Big Bad Wolf may really be just a fairy tale after all.

"This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet," said John Cardillo, a member of the task force. "Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons." When children are solicited, the report says, they're likely to be willing participants. Which honestly doesn't make me feel any better.

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A new study released yesterday suggests that the typical online predator is not who you might think. Rather than an adult posing as a teen in order to gain kids' trust, online sexual predators are often adults who make their intentions quite clear to vulnerable teens.

"The great majority of cases we have seen involved young teenagers, mostly 13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls who are targeted by adults on the Internet who are straightforward about being interested in sex," says Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

These findings were based on phone interviews with 3,000 kids between the ages of 10 and 17 conducted in 2000 and again in 2005. In addition, the researchers interviewed more than 600 federal, state and local law enforcement officials in the U.S. and researched data from similar studies.

What they found was that online predators pretended to be teenagers themselves in only about 5 percent of the crimes studies. And the kids who were most vulnerable were those who engaged in risky online behavior such as having buddy lists that included strangers, discussing sex online and being rude online. "One of the big factors we found is that offenders target kids who are willing to talk to them online. Most kids are not," Wolak said. Using instant messages, e-mail and chat rooms, sexual predators form relationships that teens interpret as "romances."

The study notes that contrary to popular belief, social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace don't necessarily expose teens to greater risk. It's what the teens are doing online, not where they are doing it. "If everybody is looking for violent predators lurking in the bushes, kids who are involved in these relationships aren't going to be seeing what is happening to them as a crime," she said.

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As our friends over at That's Fit point out, there is very little to surprise in the results of the National Poll on Children's Health. The poll, conducted in March for the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, asked a nationally representative group of 2,076 adults to rate 17 different health concerns for children.

Topping the list with 40% of respondents ranking it as a "big problem", is smoking. Teen drug abuse is a close second at 49%. The entire list is here.

Being a parent didn't seem to alter the perceptions of the respondents; those with children and those without ranked their concerns the same. Race and education did seem to make a difference, however. Black adults rated teen pregnancy as their top health concern, and adults with college degrees were more likely to rate childhood obesity as a top concern than those without degrees.

The concerns that didn't make the top ten list were: psychological stress, depression, eating disorders, suicide, autism, childhood cancer, and food contamination. Food contamination is moving up on my personal list.

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I know the Internet can be a dangerous place. But let's stop it with all the boogie-monster scare tactics. Just because you write about yourself online, it does not mean you're going to be recognized in real-life by dozens of creepy perverts.

That's essentially the message of this new TV commercial aimed at teens who post personal information on the Internet. The ad follows Sarah, an innocent-looking girl who is noticed by random male strangers. A coach at her school asks "how's the new tattoo, Sarah?" A ticket guy at the movie theater asks, "what color underwear today, Sarah?"

Even if Sarah was posting info about her undergarments online, the chances of her writing being so popular that she'd be recognized by local strangers is minuscule -- to put it mildly. (This is assuming she also posted photos of herself in addition to the racy writing.) Plus, even if she was world-famous ala Lonelygirl15 (assuming that wasn't a hoax), unless she was dumb enough to post her full-name, she'd still be almost entirely anonymous. (And according to recent research, kids aren't that dumb -- far from it, in fact.)

I'm all for educating kids about online safety, but over-simplistic, misleading information like this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[via Geek Sugar]

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As someone who's part of the last generation that wasn't connected throughout my childhood via blogs and social networking sites, I've often wondered how today's kids will navigate their lives as adults with so much personal information accessible to anyone with Internet access. Will this private information they've made available come back to haunt them later in life?

However, a recent study suggests that we shouldn't worry. Most teens seem to be fully aware of these consequences, and are subsequently guarding their privacy. While it's common for kids to post a real first name along with a photo, the majority refrain from including their full names, and many don't allow access to online profiles without a password.

In fact, only 45% of teens who spend time online don't have a profile at all, and of those who do, only half are actively seeking to meet new people.

I know it's a hot button issue -- especially amidst stories of kids getting lured by predators they've met online. Fortunately, it appears kids who've grown up with access to this kind of technology also have an understanding of how to use it without getting hurt.

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During a recent conversation about an Internet fraud case, my girlfriend interjected, "And I don't even want to think about how we'll keep Edan [my 2 year-old daughter] safe online. Fortunately that's a long way off."

Unfortunately, however, I'm afraid we'll be faced with those decisions sooner than we realize. Edan has already shown interest in playing games online, or watching classic Sesame Street cartoons while I'm checking my email. Soon enough she'll want to be at the controls, using the computer to play by herself. Amongst all the spam for "male enhancement," Internet predators -- even unfiltered Google search results on seemingly innocuous topics -- there seems to be a mountain of content on the Internet that either isn't safe, or just isn't appropriate for kids.

CNET, an online hub for nearly anything technology related, has published a very useful "how to" guide for keeping your kids safe while they use the Internet. It not only covers topics like parental controls, but also more emerging problems like cyberbullying. Offering advice both from tech professionals and everyday parents, it's a fairly comprehensive look at what we can all be doing to make sure our kids are reaping the benefits of growing up "wired," while minimizing the pitfalls. This is a great resource for new parents trying to gain an understanding of what's out there.

Parents of older children: how do you strike this balance in your family?

[via Lifehacker]

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At six years old, Ellie is not allowed to get online by herself. I enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing exactly where she is going and what she is doing on the Internet. She's too young to chat or have a MySpace page anyway. In the meantime, she knows a little bit about the dangers to be found in cyberspace and by the time she's old enough to go out there on her own, she will be well informed.

According to two Australian surveys, the fact that she is a girl may bode well for her future safety online. The surveys, conducted independently of each other by ninesm and NetAlert, showed that boys were more trusting of online friends while their female counterparts were likely to put trust in friends they actually knew in person. They also found that if bullied online, girls were more likely to seek the help of an adult, while boys preferred to ignored it.

The surveys also asked parents about their involvement in their children's online activities. While 80% reported checking on their children's Internet activity, only 46% of the kids said their parents set online rules.

That last part is what puzzles me. Do the majority of parents utilize checks on their kids in place of Internet rules? I am going to have to deal with online safety very soon and wonder how parents of older kids are doing it. How do you do it?

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The Internet is good for so many things: information can be pored through, communities can be formed, the world can be made smaller.

These days, Internet communities are as common with modern kids as giggly prank calls were when we were younger. 

The dominance of My Space - a virtual community where friends and strangers can post stories, photos, and personal information - is as commonplace amongst school-age kids as television and cell phones.  It's estimated that more than half of eighth to twelth graders have some kind of personal account online.

It can be a source of harmless networking and mindless fun - but there's also an ominous side, and law enforcement want parents to be aware.

According to a Sherriff's presentation made in Albany this week, one in four 10 - 17 year olds have had unwanted exposure to sexually explicit pictures online, and one in five have received sexual solicitation.  The presentation demonstrated how a preditor could take an email address and a little brother's name, spend 20 minutes online and learn a kid's full name, schedule, and home address.

Scary stuff.

This article has tips for web safety for kids - and tips for parents to protect their kids while respecting their privacy.

Family "contracts" on Internet blogging and networking can be found here. It's worth looking at if you're concerned about what your kids may be doing online.

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Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico are warning parents to keep tabs on their kids activity on MySpace when a man was arrested for statutory rape after meeting a 15-year-old girl at the social networking site. While no other details are available, alocal television station reported that the man gave police two different birth dates that make him either 18 or 24 years old.  Meanwhile another man was arrested on the East Coast for trying to lure a 13-year-old girl into sex using the same site. Apparently his profile on MySpace made him appear to be much younger.

How sad is it that these stories don't surprise me? We've posted several stories about Internet safety for kids, potential dangers and tidbits of information about how kids are actually using the Web. The Albuquerque attorney general's office recommends that parents consider purchasing software that allows them to monitor their kid's online use. That's fine when your children are at home, but what about at school? or at a friend's house?

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