Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Internet Safety.....


I have never had a family blog for a reason and have only shared a very few pictures of family on this blog (which won't happen again). I have heard many very creepy stories and know way too much from my husbands profession of what can happen out there. We like to live in our bubble and think nothing can happen to us but the truth is, the Internet is a blessing and a curse. Everything that we send over the Internet ; pictures or text can be there for anyone to view or keep. Pictures stay there forever, same with blogs. Children who use face book or my space post things that may potentially keep them from going to college or getting a job. Also, the Internet allows very disturbing images from coming into our homes; even when our little ones are playing innocent games.

My point is that we can live in this world but we need to protect ourselves.Blogs are a great way to journal but we need to do it safely. Limit what we put out there, go private and put web blockers up. I personally use K9 which is a free download to block whatever you want for your family. Don't think that it can't happen to you. Please take a moment to read this creepy story from a mom who found out what can happen. It makes your stomach turn. Enjoy your blogs but maybe going private is the best thing for us to do if we are posting personal info.




"I have SITE METER attached to my blog spot but unfortunately I have been really bad about checking it for unusual visiting sites this past year. To be honest, I have always been very trusting and thought that I could never be the one whom wackos actually target and stalk so I rarely have made efforts to check. Tonight I chose to click into it and directly on the first page I noticed an unusual website that had viewed my blog. Curiously, I clicked onto it to see what it was. The site contained dozens and dozens of images. I began looking closer at them and come to find out there were some VERY inappropriate pictures. I clicked out of the site immediately and sat there talking to Brett about my concerns. We both became VERY worried. The more I sat there, THE MORE SICK TO MY STOMACH I WAS. IF THIS PAGE HAD DIRECT AFFILIATION TO MY BLOG, THEN THAT MEANS THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THAT THEY HAVE A PICTURE OF MY KIDS OR FAMILY ON THAT PAGE. With out hesitation, I went right back to that page. I was so scared of what I was going to find. There were hundreds of pictures on that page and I looked through each one very quickly but efficiently when all of a sudden I FOUND A PICTURE OF MY SWEET little boy. Yes, a picture of my sweet child on the same page as pornographic AND child perverted pictures. I then returned BACK to my site meter to look for other sites in direct affiliation with my blog. I found a different website that had come to my page 5 TIMES THAT INCLUDED A PICTURE OF another one of my boys WITH HIS LITTLE BUNS SHOWING AS HE WAS SITTING ON THE TABLE DOING DISHES. I'm just sick right now. My sweet innocent children so exposed. I FEEL SO VIOLATED AND SCARED.
I immediately googled the website BING to find out more about what it is. I then went to WWW.VOICEFORTHECHILDREN.BLOGSPOT.COM to see if I could find anything. Here is an explanation of what this website is.

BING:
BING is a recent search engine launched by Microsoft. The major problem with Bing is that it has brought pornography directly into your home or office. Porn is no longer a few clicks away.

When you search on Bing, you no longer have to click to go to a different website to view porn. All you have to do is roll over the thumbnail image of the video on the video will begin to play snippets of the pornographic video.

Imagine the harmful effects if a child is searching on Bing and merely rolls over the image and instantly the child is watching a porn video.

This is completely unacceptable and irresponsible of Microsoft to launch a program such as this without a solution to block pornographic videos.

DO NOT USE BING AND ESPECIALLY DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN SEARCH ON BING!!


*Do yourselves a favor and add VOICEFORTHECHILDREN to your blog. My uncle, Jeremy Geigle, is President of Arizona Family Council and between him and a few other family members, they are SO diligent about keeping this blog up to date. They want nothing more than to educate all of us on how we can keep our families safe and protected from the pornographic world.

As ruthless as it is, I hope I DID scare a lot of you. We stay so sheltered and ignorant thinking it will never happen to us...but let me tell you people, CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IS EVERYWHERE. Let me remind everyone too that Phoenix now is the #1 kidnapping capital in America.


*If you have kids old enough to play games on the computer, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend that you download this web protection site to your computer. We have had it all year long, until our computer broke. We recently got our computer back and I forgot to re-download this protection, WHICH IS WHY I COULD EVEN ACCESS THAT BING WEBSITE WITH THOSE IMAGES.
I PROMISE you, having this K9 WEB PROTECTION is the BEST way as of right now, to protect your kids from seeing anything pornographic or inappropriate on the computer. Pornography is so available that even if your baby started slamming down on keys, a porn website could pop it.
Any porn sites, sites with questionable images, swim suit sites, facebook, youtube, and other social networking sites are ALL BLOCKED. It is VERY FILTERED.
HOWEVER, you will have an ACCESS password that will allow you (as the adult) to type in a password that will allow you to enter into a site you want available to you. You will have to type in the password every time you want to enter the site. (it's one extra step that is worth the 2 seconds).

I love knowing that I can walk out of the room now with my kids playing on the computer and I have NO concerns that something will pop up. "

I was totally creeped out when I read this and hope that it makes us all pause. I really want to emphasize that ALL of you should have a web blocker on your computer. Even if your children are only 5. We need to take all precautions to protect our children and ourselves from this crazy world. Take a moment. Please.

7 comments:

DK said...

Thank you, thank you... now I can quit feeling guilty for not letting my teenager have a facebook account just cause 'everyone else' has one! It's so scary the trust that people have in the internet!

Taryn said...

thanks for the info. How do I add a sitemeter to my blog?

Shari Goodman said...

If you google sitemeter it will walk you through it. I have one but it won't prevent you from having weirdo's it just lets you see what weirdo's are looking at your blog.

Melissa said...

Shari,
You seriously need to think about getting a Mac computer. It weeds out so much of that crap - not that we still don't need to be vigilant - thanks for the reminder.

Ging said...

Jayme Stoker sent this to me, and it literaly made me sick! My dauthers and nieces all have blogs and like you said, it is a wonderful way to journal and keep in touch with family and friends. Why does Satan always have to ruin a positive thing??? I forwarded you story to my family and friends that blog, and they are going private as well. Thank you so much. BTW....I want to order you cookbook. I work with Cheri Brown, and she has told me about your blog, and I have been @Jayme's when she has prepared some of your awesome dishes. I have a grendson that was recently diagnosed with different types of ADHE, Aspergers, autism, and the oppistional diffiant disorder. Are you still doing classes? Anyway, thanks so much for your helpful info.

Luke said...

One nice thing about Bing is they have really tried working alongside filtering companies to make blocking explicit websites easier. They've done more than most other search engines in this respect, but yes, its still not wise to give your children free and clear access to ANY search engine without some filtering.

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