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Increasing numbers of Bethesda-area parents are using high-tech devices to monitor where their children are and
what they are doing, sometimes without their kids' knowledge
By Lisa Nevans Locke
As a mother, "Anita" had always
believed that she should let
her children make mistakes
and live with the consequences.
But when her 16-year-old daughter showed signs of
depression, the Rockville mother became
alarmed. She installed a keystroke logger
on the computer that would record everything
typed, and for about two weeks she
read her daughter's instant messages. She
learned that the teenager was planning
to run away.
"I was just looking for signs of trouble,"
says Anita, who, like most other
parents interviewed for this article, did
not want her real name used. "It was a
reminder for me that we needed to work
much harder at things, and be more diligent
in our supervision."
The family began therapy, the daughter
did not run away and Anita stopped
reading the IMs. Anita believes the spying
was worth it. "It felt so much more
serious and so much more horrible then
than [it does] when I look back now," she
says. "I still don't like it, but I think it was
the right thing to do in that situation."
Increasing numbers of parents are monitoring
their kids' activities, communications
and whereabouts—sometimes without
their children's knowledge. A generation
ago, parental snooping was decidedly low tech,
mostly limited to reading diaries, listening
in on telephone calls and searching
bedrooms. But parents and experts say the
widespread use of cell phones, IM and the
Internet makes it easier for kids to conduct
their lives in private.
Technology also makes it easier, in
some ways, for parents to keep tabs on
their kids. For as little as $30 to $50, parents
can purchase software that logs every
keystroke, including e-mails, Web searches
and passwords to Facebook and other
social networking sites. Stealth-monitoring
software such as PC Tattletale can
take a picture of the information on a
computer screen every few seconds and
store it in a hidden location. Parents can
play it back like a movie—all without the
child's knowledge. Cell phones come with
GPS devices that can pinpoint the location
of a telephone on a map. Similar
tracking devices are available for cars.
There are devices that can report if a car
is traveling above a preset speed or is on
the road after curfew. Car camera systems
can e-mail parents about sudden
braking and send them links to videos of
unsafe situations in the car.
Attitudes about monitoring and privacy
rights have changed as the use of GPS
technology has become more widespread,
says Cheryl Wieker, executive director of
the Parent Encouragement Program(PEP)
in Kensington. About five years ago, when
GPS locators first came on the market and
PEP leaders broached the subject with teens
and parents, "everyone in the room was
horrified by the idea" of tracking a teen
with a GPS, Wieker says. Now, parents are
used to it, and teens have warmed to it,
sometimes using the devices to prove to
their parents that they are responsible.
Wieker predicts that five years from now,
devices that report speed, location and
sudden braking will be considered standard
safety devices for teen drivers.
Monitoring devices can make it seem
so easy that parents sometimes think they
can let the monitor do the work. "If you
put [a monitoring device in a car] and
say, 'I did my part,' it's an invitation to
let [an active role in parenting] become
too distant," warns Rob Guttenberg, parent
education director for YMCA Youth
& Family Services in Bethesda. The monitor
is a tool, but it's up to parents to ask
the questions and discuss what they learn
with the child, Guttenberg says.
But some parenting experts warn that
although it is tempting to monitor teens
closely, parents need to give adolescents
room to make mistakes and solve their
own problems. "Parenting teens is different;
you move from being a 'parent
manager' to a 'parent consultant,'" says
Patti Cancellier, PEP's education coordinator.
"It is allowing [teens] to make
mistakes and live with the consequences
of those mistakes that will make them
more successful as adults." The exception
is when parents suspect dangerous behavior,
such as alcohol abuse or depression.
"It's a concern for people—how to keep
kids safe without cocooning them," says
Karen Smith of Bethesda, vice president
for programs at the Montgomery County
Council of PTAs. "Parents in this county
run the gamut from, 'I've got to keep
my child safe from everything at all costs,'
to 'Don't wrap the min bubble wrap; kids
learn from making mistakes.'"
Though some experts recommend that
parents monitor electronics, there's no
parental consensus on the issue. In a 2005
study by Cox Communications, the
National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children and NetSmartz, 49 percent of
parents surveyed said they have software
on their computers that monitors where
their teenagers go online and who they
interact with; 43 percent said they do not.
Many parents say they're uncomfortable
monitoring, spying or even asking
too many questions; they want to respect
their child's privacy. "I always say, 'I'm
going to trust you to make the right decision.
I have faith in you,'" says "Pam," a
teacher in Rockville whose mother spied
on her as a teen. "It's all about trust."
Some parents may "have a false sense
of the privacy rights of children," says
Montgomery County State's Attorney
John McCarthy, who has teamed with
Montgomery County Public Schools
(MCPS) and the Montgomery County
Police Department to bring cyber safety
issues into the MCPS curriculum and
to PTAs. "You are still the parent. We
have an obligation to protect our kids
because we, as adults, have superior
knowledge," says McCarthy, who lives in
Rockville and is a father of four.
Monitor and Tell
When it comes to the Internet, cell phones
and other technology, most experts agree
that parents should talk to their children
about the dangers of cyberspace and
install computer software to block objectionable
sites. Many parent educators,
tech experts and law enforcement officials
also recommend that parents monitor
children's activities on the Internet.
Some suggest requiring children to log
their passwords into a ledger kept by the
computer, or requiring them to "friend"
a parent as a condition of setting up a
page on MySpace or on other social networking
sites.
"I don't think surreptitious tools are
necessary," says Arnold Bell of the FBI's
Cyber Crime Section, who recently
addressed a group of Bethesda-area mothers
known as the Wednesday Morning
Group. "The best way to crack a password
is to have [the child] give it to you."
That's the policy a Chevy Chase mom
says she adopted when her 13-year-old
son opened a Facebook account last summer.
"Laura" required her son to give her
his password so she could log on as him
and got her own Facebook page, inviting
her son's friends to "friend" her so
that she could look at their pages. The
rules for her son's cell phone are similar—Laura must be free to listen to his
voice messages and read the text messages
he sends and receives. "It was 100
percent out there in the open [that] this
was the way it's going to work," says Laura,
adding that her son's friends don't
know she has access to everything he
types. "If you aren't clear and then you're
snooping, it feels like a betrayal."
Daniel Neal of North Chevy Chase
gets an e-mail at 4 p.m. every day telling
him where his 10-year-old daughter,
Eleanor, is—or at least where her cell
phone is. "I haven't put a chip in her
ear," jokes Neal, the founder and CEO
of Kajeet, a Bethesda company that markets
cell phones with parental controls.
But Neal says that knowing where the
phone is does not necessarily equal
knowing where the child is. "It's not a
panacea for tracking your child," Neal
says. "You don't want to have a false sense
of security." Still, his market research
found that the ability to locate the
phone-and, theoretically, the child, was
still what parents wanted most in a cell
phone for their children. The cell phones
include a tracking device that sends an
e-mail if the phone is near a preset location—meaning it is near grandma's
house, or near the home of a friend the
child is not permitted to visit. Parents
also can go to a Web site that has a log
of calls in and out, and what time the
calls took place.
Eleanor knows about the e-mails;
Kajeet phones get an automatic text message
when the GPS service is turned on,
and the phones get periodic reminders
every few months, Neal says. That's
because Kajeet executives hope parents
will discuss the technology with their
kids. "I think it's better to always have a
dialogue," he says. Still, ultimately it is
the parents who choose what controls
are activated and whether they discuss
them with children.
Don't Monitor, Talk
"Pam," the teacher in Rockville, still
remembers her mother spying on her as
a teen. That's why she has made a conscious
decision never to spy on her 13-year-old son. "When I was in high school,
my mom would actually follow me," Pam
says. "She'd pop up and drag me out [of
a party, the library or wherever Pam was
with her friends]. It was very embarrassing."
Pam would tell her mother that she
was going on a bike ride with friends-the truth, she says. Her mother must have
followed her stealthily, because she would
recite the route Pam had taken and remark
that the group had stopped at a 7-Eleven
for a soda during the ride. "The message
was always there: 'I don't believe you,'"
Pam says. So she started lying, because her
mother assumed she was lying anyway.
Her mother searched Pam's purse for cigarettes
frequently, and at age 18, Pam started smoking. "It was like making her wish
come true—she expects me to smoke, I'll
smoke," Pam says.
When her own son was 8, he started
telling her about things that had happened
at school, things she thought were
far-fetched. Once, he said his class went
for a walk in the neighborhood during
the school day. "You don't believe me,"
he'd say when Pam balked. That story,
and others, turned out to be true. Hearing
echoes of her mother, Pam vowed she
would be different. She knows her son
thinks she's gullible, but she believes she
has won his trust, and he has told her
things he won't tell his father-such as
the time a friend showed him pornography
on the Internet. Meanwhile, she
has tried to create a home where she doesn't
have to spy, taking measures such as placing
the computer in the family room.
Parents must be mindful, but are wise
to keep their cool, keep communicating
and send the message that they are confident
their kids know right from wrong,
says Kay Abrams, a Kensington clinical
psychologist who runs parenting workshops.
Parents who send the message that
they don't trust their kids, or who are
constantly demanding to read text messages
and the child's Facebook page, are
asking for trouble, she says. Teens may
get angry and rebel, she warns.
Others say parents who spy without
disclosing it risk damaging their relationship
with their teen at a time when
relations already are strained. "We recommend
to parents [that] they not do
any of this surreptitiously," says PEP's
Wieker. "What's the point of that?"
Wieker teaches a teen-driving safety
course in which parents discuss ways to
monitor their kids through technology.
For example, the "Teensurance" program
offers parents a discount of up to 15 percent
off their Safeco insurance rates when
they install a car monitoring device that
tracks speed and other things for a cost
of $14.99 per month. "If a teen knows
this is on the car, he can say to his peers,
'No, I'm not going to drive 85 mph
because my parents will find out and I'll
lose the car,'" Wieker says. "Helping the
teen overcome the effects of peer pressure-
that's what we see as a positive use
of monitoring devices."
Spy If Necessary, And Don't Tell
Honesty may sound like the best policy,
but sometimes it's not, some experts say.
If parents suspect drug or alcohol abuse,
depression, or sense a dramatic change
in their child, spying may be necessary,
they say. "If there's a red flag, yes, you
almost have to spy," says Abrams, the psychologist.
Parents who have spied on their kids
say they face a dilemma when they discover
that their children are drinking,
using drugs or engaging in other unacceptable
activities: They can't tell the child
what they know without admitting to
snooping and potentially damaging their
relationship with the teen. "Sarah," an
educator in Kensington who has secretly
read her children's Facebook pages for
years thanks to Firefox, which stores their
passwords on her computer, says she
learned that her daughter was drinking
occasionally during her senior year in
high school, and discovered that the girl
and her friends were getting the alcohol
by stealing it from parents or having older
siblings buy it.
Sarah says she never let on what she
knew, but used the information to ask
the right questions when her daughter
was going to a party: "Will there be an
adult there? Will there be alcohol?"
Because she has a good relationship with
her children, her daughter answered honestly.
She talked to her daughter about
ways to stay safe: Don't get in a car with
someone who has been drinking, and
don't drink and drive.
Sarah says she did not tell other parents
what she knew. She also does not
intend to ever tell her children that she
was on their personal accounts.
If you spy, be careful what you do with
the data, Abrams warns. Teens will use it
to try to make themselves the victims,
and say they'll never trust their parents
again. And parents may feel trapped and
helpless because they know they violated
the child's privacy. But parents who
have been discovered or have admitted
to spying because they have learned about
dangerous behavior should calmly "hold
up a mirror" and hold the teens accountable,
Abrams says. "Tell them, 'I loved it
when I could trust you, because I could
give you all those privileges. Now you've
made it really tough on yourself. We've
got to watch you. You have to earn our
trust back now.' Talk to the teen like a
good cop," Abrams says. "Keep yourself
from being overly dramatic, and be logical
about it."
Gregory Smith of North Potomac,
author of How to Protect Your Children
on the Internet: A Road Map for Parents
and Teachers, recommends that parents
who use stealth software not tell their
children. Kids who know they're being
watched will set up phony Facebook
accounts and give their parents access,
posting the "real" materials elsewhere,
says Smith, who is vice president and
chief information officer at the World
Wildlife Fund. The kids may set up multiple
e-mail accounts, install and hide
different browser software to bypass
parental controls and use proxy sites to
hide where they're going on the Internet,
Smith says. Stealth software can detect
all of that and more, he says. "At the end
of the day, stealth/spying technologies
are the only way to really see what's going
on," Smith says.
The father of a 14-year-old daughter and
an 11-year-old son, Smith does not have
stealth software on his home computer, but
he hasn't ruled it out for the future. His
kids know he may have the ability to see
anything they do, but they don't know how.
Never Again
Some parents who have spied on their
kids say they won't do it again. Spying
on your children simply is not worth it,
says "Cindy," a Silver Spring mom who
has spied on both of her sons at different
times but says it made her stressed
and sick to her stomach with guilt. When
the family moved a few years ago, her
older son became depressed. The boy,
then 13, stopped communicating with
his parents and stayed up late IM'ing his
old friends; Cindy suspected he was smoking
cigarettes and using drugs.
Over the objections of her husband,
who felt teens deserve privacy, Cindy
installed IamBigBrother software, a stealth
package that could not be detected. She
stayed up late into the night reading her
teen's IMs and e-mails. She had a hard
time remembering what she'd learned
online that she wasn't supposed to know,
and worked hard not to let things slip into
conversation. Her son was smoking cigarettes,
and his old friends urged him to
stop via e-mail, telling him it was stupid.
But because she feared his reaction if he
found out she was snooping, Cindy never
told her son what she knew. She stopped
using the spy software only after things
got worse and her son started cutting himself.
She got him into treatment, spent
more time with him, and he began to talk
to her, removing the need for spying.
Cindy used Net Nanny software to spy
on her second son when he was 13, fearing
that he was visiting pornographic Web
sites because he seemed obsessed with
sex. The software blocked the porn sites
and, unbeknownst to her son, let her read
his e-mails. She became afraid that her
son was having sex with a variety of girls
because of the things he'd say online-
exaggerations, she later found out.
But Cindy discovered that her son was
skipping school, and she eventually confronted
him. He was so furious about the that he didn't speak to her for a
week. "Once it's out there that you've
done it, they lose all trust in you. It's
very counterproductive," Cindy says.
"It's just devious, and I don't really think
it helps." Instead, parents need to talk
with their kids and build open, trusting
relationships, Cindy says. Once she
backed off and stopped hovering over
her younger son, he stopped rebelling
so forcefully and began talking with her
more, she says. Though it's easy to "fall
into the trap of thinking this [spying]
will solve the problem," parents need to
understand that kids will experiment,
and that in the end, your long-term relationship
with your child is most important,
Cindy says.
"Ellen," an educator in Chevy Chase,
only spied on her child once, the old fashioned
way: She listened in on a phone call between her 15-year-old son
and a friend. What she heard alarmed
her: "What time do we meet? How much
is it going to cost?"
"My heart fell to the floor," Ellen says,
recalling how she pictured her son setting
up a drug deal.
"I'll tell my mom I want to go see your
new car, and it'll be fine," her son said
into the phone. The boy came bounding
down the stairs to ask for a ride, and Ellen
immediately confronted him with what
she had heard. "He went crazy, "Ellen says.
"He was really, really angry." It turned
out that her son had planned to buy beer,
not drugs. Eventually, the two had a conversation
in which her son told her that
any time a group of more than 15
teenagers gets together, there will be
drinking. He said he could either lie to
her, or she could live with the truth and
trust him to drink responsibly. From then
on, she says, the two had an open, honest
relationship. "I think because it opened
that line of communication, I didn't need
to" spy again, Ellen says.
Bethesda resident Lisa Nevans Locke
has written for The Washington Times,
New York Daily News and Journal newspapers,
and is co-editor of Going Places
With Children in Washington, D.C.
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TOOLS FOR MONITORING KIDS
CELL PHONES
Kajeet cell phones - Parents can manage who a child can talk to and text, what times of
day the phone can be used, block calls or texts from any phone number or only allow calls
from specific numbers. A GPS phone locator can set automatic check-ins and e-mail parents
a phone's location. Plans start at $4.99 per month, plus 10 cents per minute; GPS locator is
an additional $9.99 per month. No contract is required.
Verizon cell phones -Verizon offers parental controls on their Wireless mobile phones.
These include usage controls that allow parents to limit when the child can use the phone,
how many messages he or she can send, and who they can send and receive calls from, starting
at $4.99 per month in addition to the cost of the contract; and a GPS locator starting at
an additional $9.99 per month.
Sprint cell phones-Sprint offers similar parental controls that let customers block text messages
and restrict incoming and outgoing calls to pre-approved phone book contacts. Free.
COMPUTER MONITORING
www.netsmartz411.org - Links to a list of the top 10 monitoring software products; site
sponsored by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
www.myspace.com/parentcare-Beta software that enables parents to determine if their
teen (under age 18) has a MySpace profile and to validate the age, user name and location
listed by the teen. Free.
COMPUTER MONITORING SOFTWARE
IamBigBrother software-Keystroke logger captures e-mails, chats and instant messages,
Web sites viewed, passwords and more. Runs in stealth mode, so is not detected by user. View
the captured activities from any computer by logging into a Web site. About $30.
PC Tattletale-Similar to other monitoring programs, its keystroke logger and screen capture
technology record passwords to MySpace and Facebook, e-mails and IMs, but also record
what appears on the screen every few seconds, creating a slide show that parents can play
back later. Parents can block specificWeb sites without the child's knowledge. Does not appear
in Windows start menu, desktop, task manager or program files folder to make it invisible to
children. About $50.
Spector Pro-In addition to keystroke logging and screen capture, this logs e-mail attachments,
downloads and file transfers.Will contact parents by e-mail or cell phone when activity
on the computer triggers specific keywords. About $100.
CARS
"Teensurance" program by Safeco Insurance -"Safety Beacon" GPS system notifies
parents if a car exceeds a speed preset by parents or when the car reaches a destination; lets
parents set "safe driving boundaries" and notifies parents if the car goes outside the preset
boundaries or is driven after curfew; shows parents the car's location, direction and speed on
a map. Parents can request a car's location from a phone or the Internet. About $15 per month
plus $29.99 for 100 notification credits (parents spend one credit each time they are notified
by the system).
DriveCam -Video recorder mounted inside the windshield. Camera is triggered by excessive g-forces caused by sudden braking, speeding and other dangerous driving behaviors. Videos are
analyzed, coaching tips are added and clips are posted to a secureWeb site visible to parents and
teens. Start-up package costs about $900 and includes camera kit, installation and one-year
subscription to services. After one year, continuation costs about $30 per month. |  |
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WHEN TECHNOLOGY ISN'T ENOUGH
Private detective Joe McCann of Progressive Security Consultants
in Bethesda says Bethesda-area parents regularly hire his firm to
investigate their kids. "You've heard of a mother's intuition?"
McCann asks. "The vast majority of the time parents suspect
something's amiss, they're right."
McCann says he has been hired to find runaways, confirm suspicions
of teenage drug use, check out whether a daughter's
boyfriend is stealing cars, even search pawn shops and eBay for
items their child may have pawned to get money for drugs.McCann
has run forensic reports on computers, probing for information and
Web searches about how to set up a methamphetamine lab or
grow marijuana in the woods. In one Montgomery County case, a
teenage girl was chatting with a stranger on the Internet who
claimed to be an older teenage boy. McCann's detectives-mainly
retired police officers and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
agents-traced the chats to a public library. There, they discovered
a homeless man 20 years older than the teen "chatting" away
online with her.
Montgomery County parents have hired McCann to watch their
houses while they're away, and if there is a party, to call the police
or break it up. He has searched Bethesda-area teenagers' rooms
for drugs and located them hidden in a lampshade and in the toilet
in an adjacent bathroom. He has tracked a runaway to Ocean
City by setting up surveillance on the child's best friend, then following
the friend to the missing teen.
Most of his child/teen business in the county involves background
checks on daughters' boyfriends, he says.When a boyfriend
showed up driving three different cars within a week, a family
hired McCann to find out whether the boyfriend was stealing cars.
McCann says he discovered that the boy worked at a car dealership/
repair shop and was driving customers' cars, unbeknownst
to the customers. Whenever McCann runs an ad mentioning
child/teen investigations, business spikes, he says, making him
believe there's a large potential market.
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