FACEBOOK Warning to Parents...

**KMAC_ATTACK** · 12-07-2010, 08:11 AM

For those of you that have teen age children or younger and allow them to have a facebook account - let me warn you of a new trend that has raised its ugly head into my household...

A service that Facebook users have been using is whats called Tinychat....its a fad that kids are able to link up with other friends and chat via webcams at no fee. There's one huge problem with them....

Their not secure....the thing is that when a user drops into the group their image is immediately cast as a box alongside the other users.

In this case, a perverted 40-50 year dropped into my kids forum (kids were around 11 years old) and proceeded to engage in lewd behavior in front of my daughter, other girls and a few boys that were all on there to talk....

FACEBOOK obviously has faced other upset parents as they requested the name of the user that displayed the lewd behavior and the forum id and they would track for potential charges....obviously my daughter didnt know the process when it was happening and now shes not going to be using the service....

Just a warning so that other parents children are not exposed to such idiotic behavior.

K

**Farnsworth** · 12-07-2010, 08:37 AM

stuff like tinychat has been around for a long time, people don't even have to participate to view. One of the reason's thats makes me never ever want to have daughters.

**Farnsworth** · 12-07-2010, 08:37 AM

And its not really a facebook issue, as if facebook shut it down they would just go directly to tinychat.com, its just an app.

**erikbj** · 12-07-2010, 08:41 AM

just tell your kids to stay off facebook and the internet. Tell them to pick up the phone and call their friends or get out of the house - just like we did when were kids.

**bos** · 12-07-2010, 08:44 AM

One thing you can do is use the opendns.com site and redirect your DNS. Its free and you can whitelist/blacklist any sites you dont want them going to. My kids arent old enough yet, but when they are, I plan on tightening this down. You probably dont have to block facebook, just block tinychat.com and it will keep them from using the app within facebook.

**3TrueFans** · 12-07-2010, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by erikbj

just tell your kids to stay off facebook and the internet. Tell them to pick up the phone and call their friends or get out of the house - just like we did when were kids.

Pipe down grandpa.

**1100011CS** · 12-07-2010, 08:54 AM

Originally Posted by bos

One thing you can do is use the opendns.com site and redirect your DNS. Its free and you can whitelist/blacklist any sites you dont want them going to. My kids arent old enough yet, but when they are, I plan on tightening this down. You probably dont have to block facebook, just block tinychat.com and it will keep them from using the app within facebook.

Good idea. If you don't want to filter out sites for your whole network you could do the same thing with the hosts file on individual machines. And if you have Windows 7, I think you can do it by user with an app they have (can't recall the name).

**trigger1** · 12-07-2010, 09:07 AM

Not quite the same as the OP situation, but an interesting article from the NY Times about youth, cyberbullying, and forged accounts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us...?_r=1&emc=eta1

Anyone who's been a parent, is a parent, will be parent, will make an incredible amount of decisions about what to allow and how. Do you let your 12 year old use Facebook and TinyChat use those services to chat and "communicate" with their friends even though the terms of service for both state that users under 13 years old are prohibited? How to monitor? Block sites? How to attempt to protect? How best to attempt to educate your children on the dangers and responsible use? Lots of tough decisions.

**cy4prez7** · 12-07-2010, 09:10 AM

Originally Posted by erikbj

just tell your kids to stay off facebook and the internet. Tell them to pick up the phone and call their friends or get out of the house - just like we did when were kids.

New era there buddy.

**bos** · 12-07-2010, 09:14 AM

Best thing you can do as a parent is educate yourself. Dont pull the "in my day" or "im too old for this stuff so I ill just shut it out" crap. Your education will protect your children.

**Palmer** · 12-07-2010, 09:14 AM

get them fat kids off the internets!

**Farnsworth** · 12-07-2010, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by trigger1

Not quite the same as the OP situation, but an interesting article from the NY Times about youth, cyberbullying, and forged accounts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us...?_r=1&emc=eta1

Anyone who's been a parent, is a parent, will be parent, will make an incredible amount of decisions about what to allow and how. Do you let your 12 year old use Facebook and TinyChat use those services to chat and "communicate" with their friends even though the terms of service for both state that users under 13 years old are prohibited? How to monitor? Block sites? How to attempt to protect? How best to attempt to educate your children on the dangers and responsible use? Lots of tough decisions.

Just read the whole article, not sure I could handle raising kids in this society (good thing I'm nowhere near that point), hopefully some of this stuff gets under control. 8th graders playing sexual true or dare with seniors online and rainbow parties, eesh.