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Parents – beware the chain email

October 19, 2011 in Integrity & Safety

After speaking at a Christian school earlier this year, I received an email from a parent about an issue that I hadn’t heard about in all the research I’d been doing on the topic of online safety.

And that is – chain emails.

Chain letters have been around for years, so it’s not surprising they’ve moved online. I just hadn’t heard of this particular threat to the safety of kids.

As I followed up on email, the lady I spoke with said this:

“What is amazing about them is how many email addresses that can be ‘harvested’ from these emails and how many kids forward them. The fact that they don’t tell their parents they receive them is a concern. And also that they can threaten violence. I don’t think the content is really any different from chain letters but they are much more easily forwarded.”

Below are two examples she forwarded to me – the second is worse than the first. Parents – as if the internet wasn’t a challenge enough, here’s another area to monitor! However, this is important to be aware of – can you imagine the fear a younger child might have in receiving the second email?

Example 1

FIND OUT WHO  IT  IS ! HERE’S WHAT  U  HAVE 2  DO  BUT LISTEN  VERY  CAREFULLY!!

SEND THIS  LETTER  2  YOUR FRIENDS . AND  IF  U  DONT HAVE ANY  FRIENDS  NO    SWEAT  JUST  GO  2  A CHATROOM  PICK  OUT  SOME  NAMES AND  BINGO!
BUT  REMEMBER PASS  IT  ON!!  AND  IF U  DON’T  PASS  IT  YOU  WILL  PAY
WITH  YOUR LIFE!!
U. HAVE ONE  HOUR  2  SEND  THIS  SO HURRY. AFTER  U SEND  THIS  A SNAILWILL CROSS THE  SCREEN  AND OUT  OF    IT’S SHELL WILL  POP  OUT  YOUR  SECRET CRUSH’S FIRST  AND LAST  NAME    HIS/HER  ADDRESS  AND  PHONE NUMBER.
IF  U   SEND  THIS  TO  0 PEOPLE-YOUR  LUV  LIFE IS  OVER!
5 PEOPLE-  AND  YOUR! CRUSHWILL SAY HE/SHE  LIKES U  AS  A  FRIEND    ONLY!
10  PEOPLE -AND YOUR  CRUSHWILL  SAY HE/SHE LIKES  U.
15 PEOPLE-AND YOUR  CRUSHWILL  ASK  U  OUT.
20 PEOPLE-AND YOUR CRUSHWILL  ASK U  OVER   HIS/HER  HOUSE ! ; FOR  DINNER.
25 PEOPLE-AND YOUR  CRUSHWILL  KISS U  ON  THE  LIPS!
30 PEOPLE-AND YOUR CRUSHWILL  MARRY  YOU AND  YOU’LL  HAVE  TWINS!!!
so do me a favor and pass it on!

tomorrow morning your crush will fall madly in love with you. You guys will hook up, and your crush will ask you out. Tomorrow will be the best day of your life. However, if you don’t send this to at least 10 people bye @ least 10:00 tonight you will have bad luck in you love life for the rest of your life. This is not a stupid one or a fake Just copy and paste. Start sending SECRET CRUSH?…

Example 2

THIS EMAIL HAS BEEN CURSED ONCE OPENED YOU MUST SEND IT.

You are now cursed. You must send this on or you will be killed.
Tonight at 12:00am, by Bloody Mary. This is no joke. So don’t think
you can quickly get out of it and delete it now because Bloody Mary
will come to you if you do not send this on. She will slit your throat
and your wrists and pull your eyeballs out with a fork. And then hang
your dead corpse in your bedroom cupboard or put you under your bed.
What’s your parents going to do when they find you dead? Won’t be
funny then, will it? Don’t think this is a fake and it’s all put on to
scare you because your wrong, so very wrong. Want to hear of some of
the sad, sad people who lost their lives or have been seriously hurt
by this email?
CASE ONE -
Annalise [Surname Removed] :She got this email. Rubbish she thought.
She deleted it. And now, Annalise dead.
CASE TWO -
Louise [Surname Removed]: She sent this to only 4 people and when she
woke up in the morning her wrists had deep lacerations on each.
Luckily there was no pain felt, though she is scarred for life.
CASE THREE -
Thomas [Surname Removed]: He sent this to 5 people. Big mistake. The
night Thomas was lying in his bed watching T.V. The clock shows
’12:01am’. The T.V misteriously flickered off and Thomas’s bedroom
lamp flashed on and off several times. It went pitch black, Thomas
looked to the left of him and there she was, Bloody Mary standing in
white rags. Blood everywhere with a knife in her hand then
disappeared. The biggest fright of Thomas’s life.
Warning… NEVER look in a mirror and repeat -’Bloody Mary.Bloody
Mary.’ Bloody Mary… I KILLED YOUR SON’ Is it the end for you
tonight! YOU ARE NOW CURSED
We strongly advise you to send this email on. It is seriously NO JOKE.
We don’t want to see another life wasted. ITS YOUR CHOICE… WANNA DIE
TONIGHT? If you send this email to…
NO PEOPLE – You’re going to die.
1-5 PEOPLE – You’re going to either get hurt or get the biggest fright
of your life.
5-15 PEOPLE – You will bring your family bad luck and someone close to
you will die.
15 -25 OR MORE PEOPLE – You are safe from Bloody Mary

Resources for St Matthews, West Pennant Hills

July 26, 2011 in Integrity & Safety

Last night I had the privilege of speaking at St Matthews, West Pennant Hills. I spoke on the topic of parenting in an internet age, and the challenges of protecting kids online.

As promised, here are some resources for parents, teachers and children on the topic of online safety.

Interestingly, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday with the headline: ‘Family holds the key to keeping children protected online‘. It’s worth a read too.

Avoid porn on the iPhone with Covenant Eyes

January 16, 2011 in Integrity & Safety

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. – Ephesians 5:3

Covenant Eyes has been a life-saver for many men and women who are tempted to look at porn on their computer.

It’s a tool that not only offers a filter (so that certain content is inaccessible), but accountability. When you sign-up for an account your internet activity is logged, and the details sent to one or more accountability partners.

It’s also a very useful tool for parents who want to keep their children safe from unsuitable content. If you’re a parent, I strongly recommend you sign-up for Covenant Eyes today, especially when 90% of boys and 60% of girls will have been exposed to internet pornography by age 18. I’d also suggest checking out this list of resources for keeping your kids safe online.

But back to Covenant Eyes – watch this video to see how it works:

While Covenant Eyes has been a great help to men and women as they access the internet on their computers, the battle for purity has moved off the computer, and onto phones, where the internet makes porn almost as accessible as it is on a personal computer.

The good news is that Covenant Eyes has developed an app for the iPhone (as well as the iPod Touch, and the iPad). While some people might ask about Blackberrys and Android phones (and there’s a need here too), the reality is that the iPhone is the dominant phone in Australia. 60% of phone are now smartphones, and 36.5% of these are iPhones.

How does it work?

Covenant Eyes has developed an app, that is very similar to Safari – the app used to browse the internet on an iPhone. To get started, follow these four steps:

  1. Sign-up for a Covenant Eyes account.
  2. Download the Covenant Eyes iPhone app.
  3. Click on the app, and sign-in with your Covenant Eyes username and password.
  4. Disable Safari and YouTube, and ask your accountability partner to use a password to prevent you from accessing these apps. This means that if you access internet on your phone, the only way to do it will be via Covenant Eyes, and therefore all your activity will be tracked, and sent to your accountability partner. Read more here.

Got questions? View the iPhone User Guide.

Got a friend or a spouse who can access the internet on their phone? Ask them how they’re going with online purity – it’s a bigger problem than most people think. The Covenant Eyes blog has some great resources on the problem of porn.

Disclosure: I am a part of the Covenant Eyes affiliate program. What does this mean? I get a 15% commission on all sign-ups from people who click-through to Covenant Eyes from the links in this post. Is this a get-rich-quick scheme? Hardly! So why am I a part of the program? Because I believe in the product. So why don’t I just promote it without being an affiliate? Being an affiliate helps me to promote a product I believe in and use, while also helping to cover the costs of running Communicate Jesus.

Keeping kids safe cannot be outsourced

July 22, 2010 in Integrity & Safety

After all the recent discussion on the proposed internet filter, I’ve written an article on Sydney Anglicans on my closing (at least for the moment!) thoughts – ‘Keeping kids safe cannot be outsourced‘.

The post has also been republished at Gizmodo.com.au.

I welcome your thoughts.

Links I’m reading about the proposed internet filter

July 15, 2010 in Integrity & Safety

I’ve been doing some more reading on this topic (perhaps I’m really slow, or perhaps this is part of my personality – wanting to get the full picture!) Either way, I’ve been doing some more reading tonight on some recent articles, media releases, and recapping some of last year’s discussion.

Thanks to those more technically-minded who’ve helped me to get a better understanding. I’ve found it hard to sort out the facts from the hysteria (on both sides of the debate), and appreciate a more measured discussion.

Three internet service providers (ISPs) have come out in support of voluntary filtering (i.e. they will filter restricted content). Here’s their media statements:

And a couple of posts from last year:

Any other articles worth checking out?

Included in the links above is a link about a Japanese filter for mobile phones. Is anyone aware of content filters for mobile phones in Australia?

13 common objections to the proposed internet filter

July 14, 2010 in Integrity & Safety

On Monday night attention on ABC1′s Q&A turned to the government’s proposed internet filter (there’s currently 33 posts on this topic on the ABC1 website). It wasn’t just on Q&A – it’s been discussed in various media quite a lot this week.

It’s hard to find many people with anything good to say about it (other than Minister Conroy and the Australian Christian Lobby). In fact, to say anything remotely supportive of a filter, in my experience, ends up branding you as being both:

  • stupid, and
  • in opposition to basic civil liberties

However, chatting with parents at the seminar I gave last week on protecting children online, and from research I’ve seen on the impact of porn on children’s brains, I’ve become increasingly concerned that more needs to be done. I’m not sure the proposed filter is the best way forward, but I know that we need to have this debate.

In an effort to understand the filter better, I’ve been reading and chatting to people, and I’ve tried to summarise the common objections to a filter. Here’s a classic example – a comment on PC World’s website:

“Internet filtering is censorship and the end of free speech! Would you trust anyone, especially the government, to decide what is fit for you to see or read? It will not stop porn and other nasties as the censors claim, this is just a red herring to try and justify controlling exchange of knowledge and networking! No Internet filter! No censorship! Leave the Internet alone! The last great form of communication relatively free from government interference and control.”

The objections raised in this comment are that a filter will be a) ineffective, b) an infringement on free speech, and c) a way for the government to control what we access.

In total, I’ve come up with a list of 13 objections. Can you think of others that I’ve left off this list?

  1. a clean feed is technically impossible.
  2. it is very expensive, and the money could better be spent elsewhere.
  3. the filter will accidentally block content that shouldn’t be blocked (as evidenced in the trial earlier in the year).
  4. the government could expand the filter in the future to restrict free speech.
  5. the answer is education, not filtering what we access online.
  6. it’s the responsibility of parents, not the government, to keep children safe.
  7. it slows the internet down.
  8. we’re adults, and we shouldn’t be told what we can and can’t look at online.
  9. home-based filters would be more effective.
  10. there’s far too much content to block effectively.
  11. the government’s proposed black-list of content is proposed to be kept secret.
  12. there are ways to get around a filter.
  13. most illegal content isn’t consumed on the internet, but via peer-to-peer networks, proxy servers etc that would not be affected by a filter.

I’d also be keen to get links to articles that discuss these various objections to the filter – please share them using the comments section below. I will most likely be writing about this in more detail for sydneyanglicans.net later in the week.

Thanks.

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