Parent Alert: How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Just bought my nine year old great niecea Mac Air.., This is for mom and dad…

Good information if you're new at the topic. At the end of the book there are technical instructions how to setup your devices to make them safe. Very basic Droid and Apple settings. It's something you can google. The big problem is Google disables parental control when kids turn 13. (Didn't research about Apple.) Kids are free to open any account, view any websites, go to porn sites, join adult chat groups, etc. This book doesn't even mention what 3rd party apps available for a better parental control regardless what age. Better do your own research. However, this book is good at talking about behavior monitoring, what to say, what to look for, and guiding your child. We all know, not all kids, no matter how sweet and obedient they are, are 100% fool proof. Given the right circumstances, there's going to be some predators and bullies and dramas. Not to mention teen depression and porn addiction rooted from internet habbits. Oh my word... what parents have to deal with these days. Good luck parents!!

Wow! What an amazing and brilliantly written book. This is a parent handbook that every parent MUST have! Today’s parents are the first generation of parents raising kids in a digital world where social media and the internet are the way we live. With no experience ourselves as navigating this world as kids or advise from our own parents we are left at a loss for how to keep our kids (and ourselves) safe and the effects of many of our online behaviors. Parent Alert is jam packed of helpful resources. The book includes: conversation starters, step-by-step directions, tips, strategies, suggestions, prevention techniques, rules and to-dos. There are Q & A sections, texting acronyms and alarming statistics. Will, Nadia and Kaye have made this an easy read that covers so many topics on how to keep your family safe, how our family can be effected and how to seek help. This book spans all ages and stages. I can not stress enough our responsibility as parents, teachers and family members to be informed and not turn a blind eye. No matter what steps you’ve already taken to protect your loved ones or how much you believe they are safe and out of harms way, you have more to learn and more steps to take. This book is worth its weight in gold!!!!

Great ways for keep kids safe while on the computer.

I have a 9 year old who is online with multiplayer games, he has an e-mail address and generally wants to have more internet exposure so I got this in the hopes of getting some guidance. While this book did have tips that were useful, it multiplied my stress level by five fold because of all the stories and case files. Probably the most infuriating thing was "Will's case files" which basically tells you stories of the horrors that can happen to your teen (like gaming addiction) but doesn't tell you the solution. I would have loved it if below those case files, maybe a paragraph of "How Will Helped to Alleviate or Resolve the Issue." That would have been greatly appreciated.There were many things on there that I felt my child would not have an issue with - like buying things online. He doesn't have access to my credit cards nor my passwords and I don't intend to give those to him. Other things like the chapter about cosmetics, drugs, and legal highs seems to be tangential to internet safety.Like I said, this would be great for parents of older teens but for me, it provided more worry and stress than actual solutions.

Back in my childhood, the primary advice for keeping kids safe from the outside world basically boiled down to three tips that anyone over the age of 40 will recognize as the universal warnings from parents to children: never talk to strangers, never take anything from strangers and never ride with strangers. That was it. The one thing all these scenarios had in common was that they required the physical presence of a predator for kids to be at risk. Although those three rules still apply today, children are now exposed to far greater risks because the Internet has opened the doors of the world to them without ever leaving their home. Instead of worrying about some creep in a van driving up behind kids, we now have to worry about some creep at home or abroad attempting to trick kids into rendering themselves vulnerable. There is a line in the book that pretty much summarizes today's climate for child safety. It reads: "Our parents warned us not to speak to strangers, but it seems that virtually every app is telling our children the opposite". That is so true. And too many parents think the only real threat is from sexual predators but it reaches much farther than that. There are also thieves out there performing phishing and social engineering to trick kids into exposing themselves and/or their parents to financial fraud as well as cyberbullies. Cyberbullies aren't just kids from school and around the neighborhood. Someone could be cyber bullying a child from the other side of the world in one of the countless social media chat rooms or threads that are wildly popular with teens. Sadly, the bullying, whether it's from someone known or anonymous, too often ends tragically for the victim. There are some truly twisted and evil people out there. Most parents wonder where to begin protecting their kids with so many threats coming from so many different sources. There's just too much exposure readily available to bad people and/or content. That's where this book is invaluable. It lists the numerous online threats kids face today and covers a wide range of threat topics including social media, online chatting, porn, phishing, social engineering, cyber bullying and more. It also covers how to talk to your children about cyber safety and shares many other tips for interacting with your child to keep them safe online.Written by a security expert and two celebrity moms, the book contains a nice mix of viewpoints from both professional security and parenting perspectives. The material is presented in a manner that is easy to read and understand, even among any technically challenged parents out there. It's hard to police something your kids may know how to use and manipulate a whole lot better than you. However, there are other ways to detect inappropriate online behavior and signs that the behavior may be turning detrimental. This book shares ways to look for physical and other non-techie signs of inappropriate online behavior. I am an IT professional myself but as a father, even I found a ton of helpful useful information inside this book. Most parents think we know our kids and know all the little ways they try to sneak around parental rules, but there are countless bad guys out there willing to assist kids with getting around the protections we put in place. And even as an IT professional familiar with the mainstream ways to get in trouble, there are far more lesser known outlets for trouble that I am unaware of unless I bug my kids for intel when they go to school. Even if you think you have a strong grip on your child's online activities, you should still grab this book because it is almost guaranteed to enlighten you with at least one thing you weren't aware of. The book also covers material that is applicable to older teens and adults as well, such as avoiding cons and scams, fake apps, malware, bad online habits, safely shopping online, using strong passwords, identity theft, avoiding phishing attempts and much more. Valuable safety tips for kids and parents alike.

I can highly recommend this book as an essential resource to help parents deal with the risks posed by the ever increasing pervasiveness and complexity of online based communication and associated technologies.The authors have expertise on the issues involved. Especially Will Geddes, a world renowned security expert who can bring real knowledge and tangible solutions in terms of what can be done to mitigate risk posed by the online/technology driven interactions of children. Further this is delivered in a well organized and digestible format whether you are tech savvy or not.I am especially happy I purchased this book because it helped me to:1. Understand what technology and online activities have the potential to pose a threat—many of these were not obvious to me prior to reading the book.2. Practical advise on how to deal with the dangers as a parent.3. How to help children understand how they should and should not use connected technology.This is an invaluable reference that deserves a space on the bookshelf of any responsible parent.

This book should be renamed the Parents’ Smart Phone Safety Bible. I heard about it on the radio, bought a copy and it’s brilliant. Believing I knew all the dos and don’ts, three pages in I realised I was cyber clueless! Every page was an eye-opener. No parent should allow their child a smart device, unless they have read this book. What I really liked were the insights into the minds of the people who prey, not just on children, but also on adults, too. Not something we like to think about but most definitely what we need to know. After reading this book you'll have all the information you need to engage in those potentially awkward conversations we all should be having .... whether that is with teenagers, who think they really don’t need to hear it or younger children who maybe too nervous to ask for advice and help.

This is a terrific book - there's so much high quality, easy to digest info in it even for someone who is pretty tech savvy. So good and so useful, I have ordered two more copies to give to friends........it is the only book out there which provides a comprehensive reference guide to anyone who has kids in this day and age (and even to those who don't) - a major contribution to keeping them safe.

I regard myself as a switched on parent and this book has given me a huge insight into how much more we should be aware of.I love the way the book is written, packed with information and tips, a must buy!

"Parent Alert! How To Keep Your Kids Safe Online" has three joint authors of whom two are best known as presenters of the TV show 'Loose Women' and mums to teen or preteen offspring. The third is Will Geddes, a security professional who advises governments, showbiz personalities and organisations about their issues and policies. While his co-authors may be caring parents, they were, by self-admission, no better-informed prior to their involvement in this book than others to adequately protect their kids' Internet activities whether computer-based or via their phones. Monitoring both is vital to help ensure a child's complete safety.Whatever the ages of your children they may be extremely tech-savvy, possibly more so than any parent, but they are probably less street-wise than they think and therefore more susceptible to the risks. Chapter by Chapter, the book identifies and discusses specific problems, not necessarily technically, but includes raising the issues with offspring. It need not include every previously reported or identified concern but it certainly covers a great many. It highlights the need to fully monitor a child's on-line activities to an age-relevant degree and understanding the purpose of their activities is a good start-point; asking what they are doing and accepting the answer, unchecked, is insufficient.It is a book for all parents of children up to and including teenagers who use the Internet via phone or computer, or are about to. They will need to read it especially as the long summer break is near. Parents need be fully aware of their children's on-line activities, the sites and social media they use, and especially those identified as 'friends' who are not immediately known to you or who have made friendship requests. Some may be adults with ill-intentions; any 'unusual' requests, which are extremely common, made to a child should be noted and reported to authorities. Parents need to observe, help and advise using age-appropriate language without trying to scare. Several approaches are suggested. 'Child lock' software that can block access to sites or having a time-switch on the router may sometimes be necessary.Considering the relatively few years in which the Internet has existed, it is constantly growing and changing. The book is reasonably up-to-date as it addresses some of the recent concerns about on-line shopping (illegal drugs and weapons via the 'Dark Web') and also Amazon's Alexa devices although their previously undisclosed ability to listen-in to conversations and to sometimes broadcast them is questioned but not fully explored. Much of the advice is directly by Geddes and there are numerous side columns and panels that include comments from the two contributors about their experiences with their respective offspring.240 pages is an adequate number to ensure sufficiently thorough coverage. The book is well-written and not overly technical. It is well-printed on thick paper and is well-priced. It is published by Dorling Kindersley, once best-known for their 'coffee-table books' but now increasingly challenging the established computing publishers. Read the book once, then again more slowly and you will be better-informed for the effort. You may not need to read every chapter immediately, but that may change as a child gets older or is more adventurous on-line. It should cause thought and re-examination of existing attitudes to juvenile Internet access and that is intentional.