In the wake of all the email and Facebook hoopla at our house, I have gotten a lot of feedback (both online and offline). One person asked if I was embarrassed to admit that we, being self-proclaimed tech junkies, had a daughter who out-witted us (technically speaking). My answer is simple: I hope our mishap helps other parents learn to *really* pay attention to what their kids are doing online. If we can be duped, so can you!

Our 10-year-old daughter knew we monitored the email on the laptop, so she signed up for a new Gmail account using her iPod Touch over our wireless broadband access. (I must admit I was amazed at just how smart she was to accomplish all this! I see a bright future for her technologically, as long as she uses it for the right purposes.) As I speak to more and more parents about this, I am realizing how many kids trying these types of sneaky tactics… and how many are getting away with it!

Another girl who goes to school with my 5th grader frequently sends us email at 11:30pm… on school nights. When asked, she says she isn’t tired, so she plays on the computer… late at night… in her bedroom. I checked out her Facebook profile. She lied and said she was 16 to get the account. Her picture is cute. Her info says she’s “looking for men.” Her parents have no idea. They don’t have Facebook accounts. They don’t use the Internet much. They don’t realize what their child is doing online, or who she is talking to.

Do you?

I found a “Family Internet Contract” (courtesy of iMom.com) that certainly isn’t going to prevent kids from doing this stuff, but it could help parents have an informed conversation with their kids, hopefully before email and MySpace/Facebook accounts are obtained “on the sly.” Or if you’re like us, and this whole “growing up” thing sort of snuck up on you (i.e., our kids are already heavily online), this contract can be a great way to make sure we’re all on the same page.

So… now for part 2 of our ongoing “privacy” debate with a 10-year-old. Earlier today I wrote about my daughter’s discovering secret gmail account. Upon doing so, I blocked gmail on the laptop, but didn’t say anything else. The girls had taken the laptop upstairs (something we had allowed them to do provided the door stayed open), so I went and retrieved it, saying only that it would no longer be allowed upstairs. When pressed for answers, I told them we’d discuss it when their father got home (that’s always good for causing a few minutes of mental distress).

All day I could tell something was bugging my oldest daughter, but I didn’t discuss it any further with her. After dinner, she asked my husband what he needed to discuss with her. He said, “I think you know.” She asked, “Does it have the letters g and m in it?” He confirmed her suspicions. She then screamed, “You’re the meanest parents in the whole world” before throwing herself on her bed in tears.

And that’s where I found her about 20 minutes later (still sniffling). She asked me, “so you know all about the stuff I did?” I nodded. Then she said something I wasn’t expecting: “Both things?”

[Here's where I did some really fast thinking so I could act like a responsible parent even though I had no idea what "both things" were.]

I responded, “We log everything on that computer (which is true).” She questioned why it took me three days to talk to her about it. I reminded her that I don’t spend all day reviewing her computer usage, but that I perform spot-checks periodically (this morning being one of those times). Then she proposes: “So tell me what I did.”

I counter with: “No. God knows all our sins, but He still requires us to confess them to him before offering forgiveness. It’s the same here.” (Ohhhh… that was good! Don’t know where I pulled that one from…) It worked, because eventually she said, “Does the second thing start with an f?”

WHAT? My 10-year-old created a Facebook account behind my back?!?!

Inside I am flipping out, but outside I am cool as a cucumber (who knew those acting classes would come in handy for parenting?). I nodded and then told her how she had broken the law by signing up for a Facebook account at age 10. She said, “I didn’t read those statements, I just clicked Agree.” Nice.

[Sidebar: I search Facebook and found the account - she had already uploaded a photo, played Yoville, and gotten 12 friends!]

We then had a good heart-to-heart about peer pressure and picking good friends (friends who don’t tell you to create secret email and Facebook accounts, for example). She just wants “to be cool,” and I get that. I told her this is a good lesson to start learning young, because she’s going to be faced with a whole lot more dangerous suggestions from friends as she grows up. She still doesn’t understand why things like unsupervised email and Facebooking can be dangerous, but that’s OK. She is only 10. I don’t want her to imagine all the horrible things that could happen… at least not yet.

In the end, I guess we all learned something. For starters, she learned we really do monitor her computer usage (in case she was wondering how much she could get away with), and we learned that we really do need to monitor her computer usage (in case we forgot how quickly our kids are growing up). We also started a healthy conversation about friends that will probably continue for the next decade or so.

[Note to self: install keystroke monitor ASAP!]

About a year ago, my daughter (who was 9 at the time) started asking for her own email account. This, I suppose, comes from having parents who make a living using computers. In any case, after researching our options, we found lots of suggestions online for using free web-based services like Gmail to setup and monitor a child’s email account.

Ultimately, we decided to set her up with a Verizon account (we use Verizon for Internet access, and have multiple email accounts with our service), because we specifically wanted a desktop-based email solution. Why? Because it forces her to use Microsoft Outlook to check email (you can’t check a Gmail or Yahoo account through Outlook unless you pay an additional fee). Microsoft Outlook has some filtering tools that can be particularly helpful to parents hoping to restrict who is able to send their children messages. (Read more on how to set up Outlook to filter your child’s email.)

The filtering tools mean that I see a copy of all messages going through her account. This has been particularly helpful for me to find out what’s important to 10-year-olds. You know, stuff like whether school will be canceled because of snow, which teachers pick their noses, and which boy has a crush on which girl.

This has worked really well for almost a year. But, our now 10-year-old is a whole year smarter. She’s recently decided she “deserves privacy” in every facet of her life, including her email. Her father and I beg to disagree. We’ve told her that while she’s living in our house, we have a right to monitor any and all communication with the outside world. Lest you think this sounds a little like Big Brother… try reading the news headlines with regard to who’s trying to do what to our kids, then we’ll talk.

Anyway, today I did a spot-check on the email she’s received over the past few days and found a reference to another email account. Apparently, she emailed her friends on Saturday to tell them she had set up her own Gmail account, and that they should only write her at that account, for privacy sake. Ummmmm… have I mentioned she’s 10?!

So I quickly brought the laptop into my office and adjusted the parental controls for her account. I blocked mail.google.com (as well as mail.yahoo.com just in case she gets any bright ideas). Then I left the computer sitting out to wait and see what happens when she tries to access her precious new Gmail account.

To be continued…

Microsoft Outlook has some filtering techniques that can be particularly useful to parents trying to restrict who sends their children email. You can use a free email account from your Internet service provider, as the company probably provides its users with several. We use Verizon for Internet access, so I added a free sub-account for my daughter, giving her a personal email account.

Remember: Never use your child’s real name in her email address, and strongly caution her about never revealing personally identifiable information online.

After you’ve set up the email account in Outlook, you can set up some “rules” to let you monitor your child’s account, and also help prevent spam. First, you want to set up a rule to prevent any email that doesn’t come from a list of pre-approved senders from reaching your child. In Outlook Express, select Tools > Message Rules > Mail. When the Message Rules window appears, click the New… button, as shown below.

When the next dialog box appears, place a checkbox in the first option under “1. Select Conditions for the rule.” You want Outlook to start looking at emails to determine whether the From line contains certain email addresses. Now that you’ve made that selection, move down to #2 to specify what should happen to an email that isn’t from anyone on your pre-approved list. Scroll down in the list to locate the option labeled “Do not Download it from the server.” This will cause Outlook to leave any message from unknown senders out on the email servers (and not in your child’s inbox).

Finally, click the link labeled “contains people: in the third text box to identify who is allowed to send your child email. At this point, you can simply type in the email addresses of your child’s friends and family, or you can import them from the address book (if you’ve already set that up). After you’ve identified your approved sender list, don’t click OK yet. We need to make one more customization in this window first. Click the Options button to reveal the follow selections:

By default, Outlook thinks you want to only apply this rule if the message contains the addresses you just selected. But we want to change that. Select the second option titled “Message does not contain the people below” before clicking the OK button to exist the Rule Condition Options.

At this point, you have told Outlook to preview all email messages before downloading them to your child’s computer. Outlook looks at the From line to determine whether the sender is on your pre-approved list. If it is not, Outlook will leave the message on the server.

So what happens to the messages left on the server? That’s up to you, as the parent. I am also checking my daughter’s account, through an email reader on my computer. But I don’t have this message rule on my email program, so I see every single one of my daughter’s incoming email. If a message comes in that she does need to see (such as from a new friend who is not yet on her pre-approved list), I then go into that message rule on Outlook to update the list.

Note: When replying to email, most people leave the previously sent message under the reply. This is true for kids as well, and gives parents a chance to see the whole chain of email correspondence for each message.

What about messages your child is sending (as opposed to receiving)? By default, Outlook saves copies of the sent email in the Sent Items folder. You could simply log on to your child’s computer and review the sent messages periodically, but what if she deletes them? You can set up another Mail Rule to send you copies of that email, so you’ll see every email, even if it’s deleted.

None of this is fool-proof, because a computer-savvy child can edit his own approved senders list once he figures out what you’ve done, or simply delete your rules. However, in my opinion, a child who does that doesn’t deserve to have an email account at all. (Sorry kids!)

I am frequently asked how to achieve certain stylized effects with photographs. When I respond with my typical “I use Photoshop,” most people aren’t impressed. It’s not that they dislike Photoshop, but that they don’t have access to it (i.e., it’s expensive) and/or don’t know how to use it.

So when I came across Rollip, I figured it was worth sharing. Rollip is a tool that offers cool photo effects online, so you don’t have to purchase or learn how to use Photoshop. Instead, you simply select the desired effect and upload your photo. You are then given the option to download a web-quality version, or purchase a high-quality version ($2.99 for 15 photos).

I tried a couple of effects – vintage, line drawing, and so on – to see how it worked. For the average mom playing around with pictures of her kids, I think it would work quite well. Check it out at www.rollip.com. Happy filtering!