Teens Vulnerable to Contact with Strangers on Social Networks

At least 55% of online teens have profiles online today.

In a digital world increasingly dominated by social networks like MySpace and Facebook, new concerning issues have arisen in reagrds to the online safety of younger consumers and the marketers who covet them. According to a new study released by The Pew Internet & American Life Project, some 32% of online teenagers and 43% of social-networking teens have been contacted online by complete strangers.

Additionally, 17% of online teens -- 31% of social networking teens -- have "friends" on their social network profile who they have never personally met.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project study examined how teens understand their privacy through several lenses: by looking at the choices that teens make to share or not to share information online, by examining what they share, by probing for the context in which they share it and by asking teens for their own assessment of their vulnerability.

The study was reassuring about teens' ability to protect themselves online. "Most teenagers are taking steps to protect themselves online from the most obvious areas of risk," according to Pew's report. "The new survey shows that many youth actively manage their personal information as they perform a balancing act between keeping some important pieces of information confined to their network of trusted friends."

Among the teens who have profiles, 66% of them say that their profile is not visible to all internet users. This means 34% are visible.

Teens do limit access to their profiles in some way. Among those whose profiles can be accessed by anyone online, 46% say they give at least a little and sometimes a good deal of false information on their profiles. Teens post fake information to protect themselves, but also to be playful or silly.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project study was based on the findings of a nationally telephone survey of 935 U.S. teens American teens ages 12-17 late last year.

Online Threats: Chat-room predators are only one menace

Cyberspace presents an array of risks that may be hazardous to your child's well-being.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

"The Internet once was seen as a golden "information superhighway" transporting the next generation to the Promised Land. Now it may feel more like a minefield -- seductive on the surface, but seeded with subterranean hazards.

Few families have escaped the warning sirens about sexual predators stalking children via the computer. It's hard to miss roadside billboards claiming that 1 in 5 children has been sexually solicited online, although only a tiny fraction of those involve aggressive solicitations from someone believed to be over age 25. What experts fear is that parents remain relatively unaware of the much more ordinary hazards for their children in cyberspace:

>> Online bullying, with kids taking harassment from the playground to an exponentially wider audience.

>> Profiteers who run online pharmacy and gambling sites -- and couldn't care less about the ages of their customers.

>> Computer addiction, as players of elaborate online games such as World of Warcraft and City of Heroes become hopelessly obsessed.

>> Web sites in which teens reinforce self-destructive behavior -- for example, "Friends of Ana" sites advocating anorexia.

>> Blog blowback from hip cyber social registers such as the wildly popular MySpace.com, in which kids become confessors and poseurs -- at their peril.

American parents always have fretted over the newest recreation fad. A quarter century ago, they worried that Pac-Man and Donkey Kong fostered attention deficit disorder. A century ago, they panicked that a new pool table would trigger truancy, tobacco use and trouble in River City.

Defenders of cyberspace -- including its frequent young inhabitants -- say it encourages creativity and personal expression, and helps kids with similar interests connect across the globe, in a forum where race, accent and other physical attributes are irrelevant.

Fair enough. But adults and kids alike should be aware of potential pitfalls."

Safekeeper helps inform parents how their kids use the Internet and how they may be facing threats they don't know how to handle. With Safekeeper, sites are pre-blocked and easily customized by parents as they decide is best for the family.

Try Safekeeper today and help protect your kids online.

To learn how to stop cyberbullying threats to your children, go here.

Are your kids chatting with Internet freaks?

In real life you protect your children, teaching them life lesson in order to keep them safe and help them smart decisions. Teens sometimes forget those real life rules when they go online.

In chat rooms and with profile on friendship websites like MySpace, Facebook, Xanga and many others, teens often use fake or exaggerated details enhancing their personalities.

For example, breaking house rules about "talking with strangers".

That's part of the online appeal for teens...having blunt and sometimes intimate conversations sharing personal thoughts with people you don't really know. Teens think "what's the consquences?" Of course, there are many. And that's just with text chats.

If your teen also chats online using webcams, those conversations can turn even more personal and intimate...exposing teens to very real dangers they simply don't realize.

It all takes place in your own home. In your teen's bedroom.

Yes, the Internet can be a safe, educational and productive activity for teens. It should be. But, sometimes, it is not. And teens may not make the right decisions to stay safe.

Help your teens. Protect them on the internet and keep the Internet freaks out out your teen's computer...and out of your home.

Here's a YouTube video demonstrating the point:

Sex Offender Applies for School as a Boy

The top skills all Internet sex offenders possess are their ability to lie, persuade and disguise. Chat rooms are a favorite place where predators can lurk and seek their prey.

The graphic listing above (from a recent PSA campaign from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) is a common sight for any online chat room where teens like to gather.

According to a new AP report:

A school in Phoenix, Arizona alerted authorities to a 29-year-old sex offender who tried to enroll there, pretending he was just 12, in what sheriff's officials said Friday may have been an attempt to lure children into sexual abuse.

A total of four men were in custody in the case Friday on various charges, including fraud, forgery, identity theft, and failure to register as a sex offender.

Detectives learned in interviews with the men that Rodreick convinced others that he was a boy after meeting him two years ago over the Internet. Rodreick apparently shaved his body hair and used makeup to keep up the guise.

Cyberspace can pose a real threat to your teens, who are eager to form new friendships online. Twenty-five million American kids have been -- or are -- online...amd 71% of teens online have received personal messages from someone they don't know. Safekeeper -- a new PC online protection application - is specially designed to keep your kids safe when on the Internet.

For important Online Rules of Teen Safety, click here.

Safekeeper is an important new digital tool for parents helping them monitor their children and teens Internet usage and keeping them safe online. Know what you kids are saying through Safekeeper's ChatMonitor and block access to websites you don't approve.

New surge in spam--tops 90 percent of e-mail

Spam continues to be a global email problem...and it's only getting worse, not better. Last month the amount of spam that was send across the world increased by a whopping 35%, according to a report by Neowin.net.

How does spam find its way into emails boxes? Spammers often use several common tricks. Often it comes from visits to inappropriate websites that invisibly track visitors, collecting their IP and URL addresses or that entise visitors to register their email addresses, which then get sold off to mail spam emailers.

Today, despite recent anti-spam laws and efforts to prevent spam, it's estimated that globally more than 90% of e-mail sent daily is spam. This is causing serious trouble for regular users like you and me as well as e-mail providers as this reduces the usability and reliability of the service.

David Mayer, product manager Ironport systems said "From 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28."

This current rate of increase was beyond the expectations of internet analysts. Many are pointing out the new methodologies like the extensive use of images in the spam messages instead of text, surge in botnet (zombies) usage by spammers, the increased number of URLs that are available to spammers and under developed spam filters.

Most of the current generation spam filters are not efficient in managing messages that contains images.

The profit motive work that the spammers are doing has made spamming to a whole new "professional" level. They are always first in introducing innovative ways to penetrate into users in-boxes. The application of hacking technologies in the junk mail "industry" has increased manifold from last year. Thanks to new softwares, from fetching e-mail addresses to fooling spam filters everything can be accomplished with easy to use software.

In mid-November, IronPort witnessed a new, massive spam attack that dropped filter efficiency by more than 10 percentage, letting millions of messages through to in-boxes. "It's a reaction gap," says Mayer. "It takes time for vendors to respond and come up with appropriate rules, but with their distributed [botnet] networks, spammers can send a huge attack in a matter of hours. It takes time for anti-spam solutions to catch up with the attack."

As Mayer says "It's going to be a long battle."

Safekeeper is committed to battling spam, giving parents easy and effective software to prevent their teens from accessing spam-farming sites. Take a strong position battling against spam by using Safekeeper's award-winning PC protection software, which is updated 24/7 by its staff of anti-spam professionals and which automatically updates to protect your family computer.

Download a free 14-day trial of Safekeeper and see how quickly your computer works better for your family.

It's all-in-one computer protection. Block porn, gambling, drugs and millions of dangerous websites. Everything you need to keep your family safe online — and guard them from online predators.

Making Search Engines More Kid-Sensitive And Kid-Safe

Search engines make things findable online. Google. Yahoo. MSN Live. Ask. And dozens of smaller, more specialized search engines designed for niche web users.

However, search engines are not very kids-sensitive or kids-safe. Without effective Internet filtering, kids can easily be exposed to content they shouldn't see.

There are custom search engines designed just for kids:


Yahooligans
StudyBuddy
KidsClick
Ask for Kids
Kids Search Tools

Schools use strict search engine content filters to keep kids safe online, such as these:

Awesome Library
Diddabdoo
Education World
SearchEdu.com
TekMom's Search Tools for Students
ThinkQuest Library

At home, though, parents often don't place tough Internet filter restrictions on the home computer. If they do use filters at all, parents may just rely on their web browser settings. These filters are not enough.

Parents need to be aware most major search engines get their listings by crawling the web, rather than through human review and categorization. This means its easy for possibly objectionable material to appear in search results...even with browser restrictions.

Automated filtering can not keep out all the potentially-naughty results from an innocent search, and sometimes overenthusiastic filters would filter out things that were actually innocent. Hand-built directories of resources suitable for kids are possible (including those listed above).

But they still have their problems.

One search engine tool designed for 8-to-13-year-old kids has been recently red-flagged for its problems allowing inappropriate content to be seen by kids: Zoo.com (run by InfoSpace.com). SearchEngineWatch.com reports "this search engine has a serious issue that needs to be addressed."

No search engine is perfect on its own. That's why using effective filtering software on your computer is essential when your kids use the home computer.

Safekeeper combines web crawling algorithms with smart human review and categorization, which constantly updates and indexes web content 24/7. Safekeeper delivers effective filtering protection customized for your family's needs, to help keep your kids safe online.

6% of Internet searches include a sexually-explicit result

Kids are naturally curious. With the Internet, they can freely explore without restriction. Including adult content parents wouldn't want their kids to see.

So what are your kids searching and seeing online?

Without proper internet filtering protection, keeping kids safe online from inappropriate content is nearly impossible. Search engines deliver results depending on the search terms typed in by the user. Unless an internet filter is activated and locked for strict content filtering protection, the Internet is not naturally a kid-friendly zone.

Kid-specific sites -- such as AOL's "KOL", Nick.com, Disney, etc -- keep content safe within its own site. But what happens when your kids surf elsewhere on the web?

Google's SafeSearch tool and ratings filters controlled by the browser (such as used for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox) help but don't always do the job parents expect. Adult content still slips through search results because content is judged through code and algorhythms, not by people.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department -- seeking to revive and strengthen the 1998 Child Online Protection Act to block content "harmful to minors" -- released a comprehensive study on the Internet, specifically addressing adult content. Both the Supreme Court and the American Civil Liberties Union, supports the importance and usage of internet filters.

Among the findings:

-- About 1 percent of Web sites indexed by Google and Microsoft are sexually explicit (the most recent estimate of the web's total amount of webpages is 11.5 billion. 11.5 billion times 1 percent equals 115 million estimated sexually explicit webpages)

-- About 6 percent of searches yield at least one explicit web site

-- The most popular search queries return a sexually explicit site nearly 40 percent of the time.

-- Half the sexually explicit web sites found in the Google and MSN indexes are foreign, making them beyond the reach of U.S. law.

Award-winning Safekeeper is a new KidsSafe Blocker software tool to give parents effective internet filtering protection. Safekeeper employs an active team to constantly update its custom Internet filtering restrictions as the Internet continues to grow and evolve. And, if you find a site you want blocked for all Safekeeper users, it is easy to submit a site for community blocking.

Safekeeper makes it easy to tailor the level of Internet restriction you need for your family and keep the Internet age-appropriate.

Safekeeper is software that works to protect your kids and computer

When you or your kids use the family computer, you want it work and you want to avoid problems. Using a computer shouldn't be a hassle. Software that helps your computer run better and more smoothly make PC usage so much better and less frustrating.

When you have kids who need to go online, keeping them safe from Internet threats while also protecting your PC becomes really important.

According to recent studies, one in seven teenagers has met, face-to-face, total strangers they first met online. 54% have communicated with a stranger online, and 47% have received pornographic e-mail.

Parental control software can help concerned parents protect their children online will also educating them about the risks.

Safekeeper is a new program that can give parents the confidence both their web-surfing kids and their computer can remain safe on the Internet. And it is already winning awards.

Last month, Safekeeper received the Financial Times' recommendation from tech guru Paul Taylor, noting "its impressive content filters, internet chat monitoring tool, and ability to track sexual predators".

With Safekeeper, your children can avoid inappropriate content and be able to access the tremendous resources of the internet in complete safety.

In October, Service Provider Weekly gave Safekeeper a 5-star Editor's Choice Award for protection and price recommendation, saying "It keeps kids safe from more than 30 million websites", providing "a high-level of Internet parental controls and virus protection."

Just last week, Safekeeper's internet content filter partner NetIntelligence received the 2006 BCS Information Management Award -- recognizing Safekeeper for excellence and innovation in the management of content information.

Within the field of global information technology, the BCS Information Management Award competition is fiecely contested and highly valued, which stating a new software technology is "very sound", "well-conceived" and "highly successful".

Safekeeper -- a powerful new PC protection tool for safer teen internet use

Safekeeper -- a new PC online protection application - is specially designed to keep your kids safe when on the Internet. And to keep your computer safe from online threats, too.

Among the recent news stories Safekeeper can help your family:

Safekeeper partner Family Watchdog. Before you move into a new neighborhood or buy a new home, knowing there are registered sex offenders in the area might influence your decision.

The Potential Dangers When Your Kids Use MySpace. MySpace.com makes it so easy to create virtual social communities online for teens to build friendship networks and to express their personalities. But Internet "relationships" are not the same as real-time relationships. allowing young people to make themselves vulnerable to dangers they would never face if supervised by a parent or responsible adult.

Online and In Danger? How to Protect Yourself in the Virtual World. Cyberspace can pose a real threat to your family. Twenty-five million American kids have been -- or are -- online...amd 71% of teens online have received personal messages from someone they don't know.


Safekeeper gives parents more control over their kid's online time. Many parents want to limit their children's time on the Internet -- especially for their tweens and teens. However, parents often don't know how to do it without yelling, nagging or asking over and over to them to turn off the computer. Safekeeper can help.

Why Safekeeper? So parents have effective digital tools to help keep their kids safe online. Safekeeper is an important new digital tool for parents helping them supervise their children and teens Internet usage and keeping them safe online.

Seven In 10 Tweens Surf Web At Home. Children between the ages of 8 and 11 are almost as likely to surf online as watch television. With Safekeeper, you can keep your kids safe when online.

Cyber Communities Are Huge With Teens; Safekeeper Monitors - And Blocks - Them. Teens are at risk online. Safekeeper helps parents become "digital parents" by putting parent-approved Internet rules, controls, monitors and blocking securely in effect.

Go to mySafekeeper.com today and download a free trial for your PC and make the Internet safer for your family.

Safekeeper partner Family Watchdog featured in Gawker, Conde Nast's Cookie Mag

Before you move into a new neighborhood or buy a new home, knowing there are registered sex offenders in the area might influence your decision.

Family Watchdog, one of Safekeeper's partners, provides the Predator Alert feature letting you know exactly when and where a registered sex offender listed with the Department of Justice has moved into your neighborhood. You receive an emailed report showing the address, the map location, the distance away from your address, even an up-to-date DOJ photo, description and details about the offender's crime.

You might be surprised and amazed to learn just who is living near you. Type in your address here and see right now for free.

Gawker just posted an article ("To Text A Predator") about Family Watchdog last night, where the author was startled to realize who was living nearby:

Cookie, Conde's newish mommy mag, brings word of a new cell-phone alert service...Family Watchdog also alerts you to the comings and goings of a certain class of people; in this case, sex offenders.

Let Family Watchdog tell you when an offender moves in or out of your area! Our notification service provides you with peace of mind. We will notify you by email as soon as we detect that a registered sex offender moves near you. It's simple and fast.
Sounds handy!

Download the free 14-day trial of Safekeeper today and know your neighborhood.

The Potential Dangers When Your Kids Use MySpace

MySpace.com makes it so easy to create virtual social communities online for teens and early twentysomethings to build friendship networks and to express their personalities.

This new digital media world allows teens to form "relationships" much on the Internet as they are in reality.

But Internet "relationships" are not the same as real-time relationships. They allow fantany to merge and confuse reality. They also can allow young people to make themselves vulnerable to dangers they would never face if supervised by a parent or responsible adult.

Dangers as serious as murder. The amount of violent crimes associated with MySpace in its short life history of less than 3 years is disturbing to parents and police officials alike.

The December issue of Wired writes about "Murder on MySpace":

With more than 120 million registered users on MySpace, odds dictate that some of them will die by violence. The ghoulish, encyclopedic Web site MyDeathSpace chronicles about 600 victims and more than 35 accused, convicted, or executed murderers with MySpace profiles.

As a parent, are you blocking MySpace access to your child? Do you know how to successfully block MySpace from your computer to protect your child? What about other social network community sites with their own tragic stories, such as Facebook or Xanga?

With Safekeeper, you can easily block these sites and prevent your teen's access to it on the family computer. Or, if you do approve access, you can monitor exactly what they do on it, receiving daily reports of all your teen's online activity.

Download the free 14-day trial of Safekeeper today and get peace of mind knowing you are being as strong a digital parent as you are a parent in real life.

Online and In Danger? How to Protect Yourself in the Virtual World

Cyberspace can pose a real threat to your family.

Twenty-five million American kids have been -- or are -- online. The number is staggering, but even more startling is that, according to recent data gathered by Safekeeper's partner The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 71% of teens online have received personal messages from someone they don't know, 45% have been asked for personal information from a stranger; and 34% have had unwanted or unsolicited exposure to inappropriate images.

Even more shocking to parents, 20% of kids have received a sexual solicitation over the Internet, 30% have considered meeting in person someone they met online, while 14% have actually done so. Approximately one million kids have received an aggressive sexual solicitation: someone asking to meet in person, calling on the telephone or sending snail mail, money or gifts.

Here's the problem: fewer than one in five kids who have experienced any of the above, have told a parent or guardian. When families don't talk about the threats, their kids may be at serious risk.

One tool to help keep families safe is Safekeeper -- a computer application which protects your family online as well as the family PC from cyberthreats. It's easy to set up and use, with a free 14-day trial download available here.

To help you discuss potential cyber threats, check out with your kids the new Nick special hosted by Linda Ellerbee this weekemd.

For 13 years on Viacom's Nickelodeon cable channel, Linda Ellerbee has smartly delivered topical news issues from the point of view of kids, specially tailored so kids can really understand.

By including kids in the story and the show studio, kids get to ask her the questions they want to know. Often, her programs create an opportunity for parents to talk about the subject more with their kids without embarrassment. Lasy year, she took on the issue of cyber-bullies.

This Sunday (December 10 at 8:30 EST), she takes on the subject of staying safe online and the threats of cyberspace to kids in a program called "Online and In Danger? How to Protect Yourself in the Virtual World."

Parents should watch this one with their kids. If you use email, you know how much unwanted spam and solicitation you recieve, including adult content. It's no different for your kids if they use email. Check out Ellerbee's new special this Sunday as she discusses with both experts on the Internet and kids the potential dangers and how to stay safe online.

Included on the show: Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; Internet lawyer Parry Aftab; and Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer.

Safekeeper gives parents more control over their kid's online time

If you parent a teen, you've seen "the look". You try to get them to turn off the computer, the TV, the video games...you hear "In a minute". You say "Now!".

Then you get the look...the look of push back.

Many parents want to limit their children's time on the Internet -- especially for their tweens and teens. However, parents often don't know how to do it without yelling, nagging or asking over and over to them to turn off the computer.

Safekeeper can help.

In a new national study released yesterday by the University of Southern California, 21 percent of parents (1 in 5) believe their kids are online too long (a 90% increase since 2000). About 80 percent of the children say the Internet is important for schoolwork, three-quarters of the parents say grades have not gone up or down since they got Internet access.

Read that again.

More parents think their kids are online too long.

Most parents say the Internet is important...yet most also say the Internet has had no impact on grades.

Some might think if the Internet is not yielding positive results for grades, then that is a negative impact on grades.

Just think about the "extra/too much" time kids spend online daily instead of studying, reading or doing homework. YouTube. Emailing viral videos. Downloading music. Or worse -- adult content. None of which helps grades.

So, what's a parent to do?

Argue, yell, discipline, punish...whatever a parent can do.

The USC study did say that 47% of parents say they have withheld Internet use as a form of punishment. But what if that still doesn't fix the problem?

Safekeeper can help. Safekeeper can limit when and how much time your kids can be online. And working parents can even make usage approval changes from the office when special needs arise. Customizing usage approval for your kids is quick and simple.

Best of all, parents may find less yelling and screaming to get the kids off the computer.

Because, as a parent, you get to decide your kid's computer usage...by using Safekeeper's easy-to-use, award-winning online software, the computer user is logged off when time has elapsed.

Safekeeper gives parents more control of the children's online time and usage. Download a free 14-day trial now.

Why Safekeeper? So parents have effective digital tools to help keep their kids safe online

Safekeeper is an important new digital tool for parents helping them supervise their children and teens Internet usage and keeping them safe online.

The Educational Cyberplayground informational website advocates strong parenting involvement when it comes to teaching kids Internet Safety Rules, saying:

"The bottom line is that your kids do NOT have a right to privacy when it comes to internet or computer use, and you as a parent have a right and a responsibility to see to it that they're not getting into anything they shouldn't be getting into.

If it's illegal offline, it's illegal on the Web.

Children from 0 - 16 are entitled to exactly as much privacy as they can safely handle. In the case of the Internet, that means none. Children should be told up front that their communications will be monitored on an ongoing basis. This is a condition of their use of the Internet. If they don't like it, they can find something else to do with their time.

Parents need to know where their children are, who they are hanging out with at all times. The internet is the same as mall or anwhere else on earth. Parents are allowed to know where their child is on the internet and what they are doing there. And it's pretty easy to keep them in line, because the alternative for them is to not be permitted to use your machine -- end of story.

Too many parents are afraid to take control of their child’s computer. They’re afraid of their kids. They somehow think because technology is involved, they’re no longer the parent. You’re the parent. If you don’t like it, unplug the computer. If they don’t follow your rules, no Internet at all. If you’re not the parent and if you’re not going to step in, no Web site on earth is going to be able to help your child be safe."

Safekeeper helps parents become digital parents by providing software designed to protect your kids online. Safekeeper uses smart filters to make sure your kids surf the Internet safely and monitors usage which you can later view to see exactly what they do, where they go...as well as all IM and chat room chatting.

Safekeeper helps parents to prevent their kids from illegal downloading. And much more.

Go to mysafekeeper.com to learn more and download your free 14-day trial.

Seven In 10 Tweens Surf Web At Home

Children between the ages of 8 and 11 are almost as likely to surf as watch television, according to a recent report by market research company Youth Trends. Youth Trends reported that 81% of 8-to-11-year-olds have a computer at home -- just slightly less than the 95% that have a TV at home. The vast majority of that group (87%) also access the Web from home.

Mediapost.com further reports:

Overall, about 70% of children between the ages of 8 and 11 go online from home, according to Youth Trends. That figure appears to be similar to an estimate by research company eMarketer, which reported in October that 67% of U.S. children ages 8-11 are online.

Youth Trends reported that 60% of the tweens with Web access from home go online at least once a day. An additional 33% said they go online at least once a week.

What do they do online?

* More than one in three (37%) said they have used instant messaging in the last month
* 35% have played games
* 31% have visited sites geared toward youngsters
* 30% sent an e-greeting card
* 23% posted photos
* 18% watched music or video clips.

Do you know what your kids are doing online? With whom they are IMing and chatting? What they accidently are seeing when they surf online? Do you have proper PC protection to ensure proper digital parenting rules online for your kids?

Safekeeper helps protect your kids online, using smart filters to make sure your kids surf the Internet safely and monitors usage which you can later view to see exactly what they do, where they go...as well as all IM and chat room chatting.

Cyber Communities Are Huge With Teens; Safekeeper Monitors - And Blocks - Them

Cyber communities and other social networking sites and IM tools are huge with teens.

Whenever parents hear something about the popular MySpace or Xanga sites on the Internet, odds are it’s bad news. And yes, teens are at risk online. Safekeeper helps parents become "digital parents" by putting parent-approved Internet rules, controls, monitors and blocking securely in effect.

The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding explores the role the Internet plays in teens’ lives and the role parents can play in protecting them, seeking to "demystify the whole process of these online social communities.” The Center estimates at least 50 percent of teens go on these sites, and among those teens users, about 60 percent end up getting accounts on places such as MySpace and Xanga.

Xanga profiles helping teens live "double lives". Child predators communicating and luring underage girls online so they can meet in real time. Cyber bullies, porn images, adult sexual advertising or offensive text postings on teens' MySpace sites.

Then there are real life Internet stories like Mark Foley.

It’s enough to make parents pull the plug on their home computer.

But Ken Mueller, director of media resources at the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, says that may be an extreme reaction.

Is the Internet is safe? No, Mueller says, parents must be vigilant. The Internet is considered by many people a necessary part of life these days. “We want parents to understand their kids’ culture,” says Mueller, who has three children of his own, ages 17, 14 and 11, and he knows it can be tough to monitor kids’ activities while letting them gain independence.

“We can’t be paranoid. You want to trust your kids,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean not knowing what’s going on in their lives. If you have a teen and he wants to go out on Friday night, the typical parent wants to know, ‘Where are you going, who are you going with, when will you be home?’ And if it’s a friend you don’t know, you want to meet them first and get to know them better.”

It shouldn't be any different when a teen goes on the Internet.

With Safekeeper, you can monitor Internet usage -- including transcript reports from your teens' IM and chat room usage. Even Yahoo's new IM-within-email tool. Parents control web access, customizing which sites are approved and which are not. And Safekeeper helps protect your kids from child predators through Family Watchdog.

Go to mySafekeeper.com today and download a free trial for your PC and make the Internet safer for your family.