It seems that each generation is exposed to more mature or serious situations at earlier ages than the one before it. There are a lot more ways for kids to get in trouble online than just running afoul of the creepily mustachioed basement dweller you see on "that" episode of Special Victims Unit.

tl;dr: A child was banned from Xbox live and that caused me to investigate some things which, in turn, surfaced a lot of other stuff. Unless you're really watching closely, you almost certainly don't know what your kids are doing online. Kids are clever.

I know a child, not my own, who is 9 years old. Let's call him "Nine". He's a great kid, has excellent conduct scores in school (never once has he had to be disciplined in school). He's fairly shy and generally keeps to himself. He's really a great kid.

One thing he does like doing is playing on his Xbox 360. He has a neighbor friend who is 10 years old, who sometimes comes over and plays on the same console. We'll call him "Ten". This 10 year old "wants to be a hacker" when he grows up. He also has a 360 at his house. From the sounds of it, he's also poorly supervised when it comes to computer and gaming time.

Recently, Ten manually updated his Xbox gamer profile and changed his tenure and some of the avatar's appearance. At the same time, he helped Nine change his avatar's appearance. Now, understand that to do this, you have to go to some of the seedier corners of the Internet and use tools which download your gamer profile, update the file, and then re-upload it. The use of these tools violate the Xbox terms of service and are considered an offense worthy of a permanent ban.

Yep. Both kids were banned until 12/31/9999. 9999. Harsh, I know, especially if you are an otherwise good 9 year old. That said, as bad as I feel for Nine, I completely support it.

They got a rather vague email from the Policy & Enforcement Team telling them about the ban. Through the same channels as everyone else, I was able to ask support for some (slight) clarification as to what happened. That's how I found out they had modded the gamer profile. (BTW, take a moment and watch that linked video. It's really good)

As part of that ban, both kids completely forfeit their remaining Xbox gold balance. (As well as everything else associated with their gamer tag, the least of which are their Cheevos). For Nine, that means the $50 of birthday and Christmas money he saved up to get that 12 month subscription is now gone. Wasted. I'm not sure if he had downloaded content or games, but I believe that gets lost as well.

My 7 year old son uses the Xbox under my Live account. After seeing how the ban process works, you can bet that will stop once he starts playing Xbox by himself, especially now that my gamer tag reaches into my Windows 8 machines and my Windows Phone. There's a lot to loose if you break the rules.

Mom of Nine had no real idea what happened, so I helped her investigate. As part of this, I was able to see both Nine and Ten's gamer history using public sites on the Internet (this is easily discoverable online for accounts which don't keep it private). I saw some things in there that made me sit back and question what these kids are being allowed to play.

That got me to thinking about what games are appropriate and how much parents should watch what their children do. I also had a long talk with Mom-of-Nine about some of these topics. This post is a bunch of loosely related "stuff" that came up as part of this. I'll start with games, but then get into privacy and security.

Game Appropriateness and Ratings

In both children's gamer tags I found, among a number of other games, the following:

Both are rated M for mature, which technically means 17+. The problem is, many otherwise fun and arguably harmless games are rated M for mature, so the on-box rating has become an almost meaningless mark when it comes to evaluating games for pre-teen, tween, and teen kids.

The real issue is that the Mature rating is a large bucket under which a lot of stuff gets thrown. The Mature rating isn't alone in this. For example, I let my 7 year old son and 4 year old daughter together play the various LEGO games on the Xbox (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman) -- those fall into the 10+ category.

There are a number of sites online which do parental reviews of video games. Some of them have agendas and biases, and some get overrun by kids posting as adults, so you really just need to find a site which fits with your own values and which appears to have relevant reviews. My kids are not yet at an age where I've had to research using one of these sites, but they're out there. For example, here's the parents review for Halo 4 and here's the review for Grand Theft Auto IV

I'm not going to make a value judgment for you, nor do I want to start a discussion about what is appropriate for children as we all have our own rules. I'm also not trying to make a martyr out of  particular game here, or suggest games can corrupt or anything like that. Both games are considered excellent games overall. That said, most parents put more effort into selecting movies than in video games. (How many would let a 10 year old see Goodfellas? A Tarantino film? Showgirls? Yet many are fine with games of equivalent nature.)

• Halo is very violent (4 out of 5 points) and involves a lot of battles typically in a "shoot the guy over there" first person shooter style. The only sexual content is the scant cladding on one character (1 out of 5 points for sex). There's no foul language or drinking, drugs, or smoking.
• GTA IV is violent (5 out of 5 points), but also contains "adult" language (5 out of 5 points), drug references (as part of core gameplay - it got 5 out of 5 points here), calling police and then shooting them when they arrive, killing drug dealers, and a fair bit of sexual content (scored 4out of 5 points in that area), prostitution, lap dances, porn shops etc. The violence itself is at more of a "personal" level.

Again, both of them have the same rating. Depending upon what you find concerning, you may disallow both, or just one of them, or maybe you're fine with both (one parent of a 9yo on the reviews said GTA IV is fine for her son). Regardless, you can't tell that by looking at it on a store shelf; you need to read reviews of the game. Interestingly, the reviews generally agree that GTA IV is appropriate for 13+ and Halo 4 for 12+. Both of those are a far cry from 17+.

I'm of the camp which doesn't believe video games turn kids into killers, but I also don't think that means one should expose their kids to violence, sex, drugs, etc. before they are mature enough to understand what they're looking at, and make appropriate real-life decisions.

As parents, we need to understand the nature and content of a game before we purchase or allow the purchase of those games. More importantly, we need to discuss the themes of the games and get our children to think about what messages the games are sending them. We often do this for television, games are even more immersive.

Dangerous Activity

There are lots of places where you can get in trouble online. From viruses and malware to chatting with basement neckbeards, to posting inappropriate photos of themselves. Kids are naturally curious and also feel like they are impervious to harm. Combine this with perceived anonymity of the Internet, and you can get into all sorts of bad spots.

Dialogs

Teach your child not to click-through dialogs without reading them (if they are old enough) or having you read them. Unless you enjoy malware, extra toolbars, or other scary stuff on the machines, this is essential.

Chat and Email

If you've ever watched Law & Order, you know that chat can be a bad place for kids to hang out. They're also a place where kids can release private information in a way that is hard for you to track. Same goes with Facebook chat and even email. The younger the child, the more you need to control how these communication mechanisms are used. My 7 year old son has an email address, but only for sending email with me. It helps his typing and reading skills and it's fun. It has also helped him be smarter about how to read email and how to judge. Eventually he'll use it to email others (we'll start with a couple of his same aged friends), but we'll shepherd him through that.

Pictures and webcam/video

When I was young, taking and sharing a photograph required several steps:

• You had to decide that what you were taking a picture of was actually worth the film it would use
• You had to wait for the film to be developed (the quickest was typically an hour). A clerk *saw* the photos when they came off the line, and if you had something illegal, you could be reported.
• If you wanted to share the photo, you had to physically show the paper photo to someone.

Each of these was a possible inflection point which helped prevent impulse decisions. A politician couldn't simply make an impulse decision to unzip, snap, and tweet all within a matter of seconds. If you really wanted to expose yourself to someone, it was easier to just go see them in person.

In general, I tell people never to send to anyone else anything they wouldn't be comfortable having broadly shared. This is especially true of photos and video, especially *those* kinds of photos and video. There have been many stories of politicians sending photos of their junk to girls and assuming those would somehow be kept secret. That takes a special kind of stupid. Even more common are photos shared with boyfriends/girlfriends which become Internet fodder after a bad breakup. They meant well, and in the heat of the moment, it felt like a fun thing to do. However, it's rare to find someone who marries their high school sweetheart, so just assume that anything you share could become public in a couple months or a couple years. If you're uncomfortable with that, don't share it with anyone, not even that special someone.

If you share it with anyone, you can't guarantee its privacy. Especially during childhood, kids who are friends this week may be bitter enemies the next. That information you shared with them? Those pictures? Expect them to show up on facebook, or 4chan, or worse. Once something gets on the Internet, it's almost impossible to remove it. Search engines index too quickly and stuff goes viral faster than ever. The best way to keep things private is not to share them.

Online Privacy

I'm calling privacy out separately, even though much of this could easily fit under the heading of Dangerous Activity.

Many of us have heard that when you get a new expensive device (like a big screen TV), that you should take the box directly to the dump and not leave it on your curb. This is so potential thieves driving by your house don't get a heads up to the new things you have inside. This just seems like common sense … to an adult.

Many of us also know not to post information about these things online. Even if you think a thief couldn't figure out your address, it is surprisingly easy to do so. There are many address search sites available, for one. For another, many people post their addresses (or cities, or more) to social networking sites like Facebook, or mention them in twitter. Usually all it takes is a simple Google/Bing search to connect the dots.

Kids breaching your privacy

But maybe you're extremely careful. Maybe you don't have any of that information online. That's awesome. But now your kids are online - will they spill the beans on you? We worry about kids' privacy, but what about what they do with *your* private information?

Do your kids know not to:

• Mention the school they attend (this one is especially hard)
• Put their address or phone number on anything
• Talk about what their parents do for a living or how much they make
• Mention when their parents are or are not home
• Announce when the family is taking a vacation (this includes tweeting or facebooking while on vacation)
• Talk about that cool big ticket item the family just purchased
• Post photos of themselves online

"Hey, nobody is home" is a big one. For me, I generally won't tweet or facebook about a vacation until I return. Sure, that's not as fun as doing it live, but it's safer. Plus, if you're on vacation, get off the damn Internet and try to pay some attention to your family. :)

Social networks

Those things can be hard, because kids naturally love talking about stuff like that. The problem is, with services like Twitter, and increasingly Facebook, it's hard to control who does or does not see those things. The business models of most social networks require them to offer as little privacy as possible. One even came right out and said it. (paraphrased) "Privacy is for old people".

Think about it: Facebook needs you to share as much as possible. It also needs to make your information available to advertisers, and to the public web. If Facebook made everything private by default, they would wither and die. Just like credit card companies telling you your privacy is important to them (bull), know that social networks don't have your privacy as their top priority. Unfortunately, this makes it even harder to keep your kids safe, and to make sure they're keeping you safe in turn.

Each and every piece of information you post on line, no matter how small, should be evaluated:

• Could this information cause harm to anyone else if it got out?
• If the wrong people saw this, could it cause me harm?
• Am I sharing information that is private to someone else? Is it my secret to share?

But what's that, you say? Your child doesn't have a Facebook account? I wouldn't be so sure about that. Facebook may have a policy which requires you to be at least 13 years old to sign up, but it relies on the honesty of the child. It's completely unverifiable and unenforceable. I personally know a number of kids who are on there who are well under 13, and I've talked with parents who later found out their kids had facebook and twitter accounts. Every day, parents find out their kids have social network accounts, created without permission. Just like you would talk to your kids about sex with the assumption they're not going to ask your permission to mess around, you should talk to them about social networks and privacy proactively.

Their personal brand

I encourage people to create "real" accounts for their kids, as you don't want to have to start over at some designated age. That has the fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, effect of causing someone's personal brand to start at an early age.

I personally *do* want my things from ten or fifteen years ago showing up on the Internet. I have had a lot of neat projects in that time. But think of how many changes a kid goes through in the same amount of time.

Even today, I can search the usenet archive and find posts from when I was 19. Those were embarrassing, but not horrible. Back then, we didn't know this stuff would be around forever; the Internet was relatively new and just recently opened to the public. It's routine for employers to google/bing their prospective employees before bringing them in for an interview. Sure, you may think they'll take into account that they were ten years younger when they posts that obnoxious rant, but reality is, they probably won't even if you're lucky enough to have the material dated. You're dealing with real people reviewing this material, and what they see *will* color their opinion. Those racist/sexist/offensive/obnoxious comments at age 13, written on Facebook or Twitter? Yes, they will cause you problems in your job search at age 23, and 33, and probably even 43.

This can be an extremely difficult lesson to teach as a child or teen is probably not going to understand (or care about) what a professional profile should look like. As a parent, it'll be your responsibility to help them with this so they don't ruin their future chances at college.

You may think that the best route would be to then create a "temporary" profile. The problem is, when you go to transition them to the "real" profile, they'll have too much invested in the old one. Even if they are able to transition, they'll have to leave lots of pointers and breadcrumbs linking the two, effectively negating the effect of having a temporary profile to start with.

Illegal Activity

Of course, most of us are aware of the illegal activity that kids can participate on online. However, we're generally not aware of how easy it is to do so.

Pirating and illegal downloads

I'm not making a statement here on DMCA or copyrights. As an author, software developer, and employee of a very large software, devices, and services company, I do my best to respect copyrights. At the same time, I can see and understand some of the damaging effects of over-long and overly strict copyrights both for authors/artists, and for consumers.

Groups like the RIAA have really cracked down on illegal downloads of music and video. If caught, your child could cost you jail time and a significant amount of cash. It's in your own best interest to make sure your child knows not to download illegal software or music. Question anything your child gets "for free". Some things are legitimately for free, others are malware, and others are warez/pirated and could land you in a heap of trouble.

Regardless of your personal feelings on the DMCA and whether software/music/etc. should be free, understand that you or your kids breaking the law here can cost you dearly. You are responsible for what your children are doing and cannot claim ignorance. And yes, the RIAA has gone after individuals.

Hacking

The first movie I saw which really connected with me with regard to computers was WarGames. Even in that movie, hacking is very glamorous. In later movies, hackers always had really cool FUI with 3d models and other cool representations of the "codes" they were trying to crack. It looks like a lot of fun, until the feds come by and throw you in a van.

The reality is, hacking is typically either scary professional crime organizations, or kids getting in over their heads messing with stuff they never should, trying to be cool. The proliferation of hacking "kits" makes it easy for even young kids to hack stuff. Technically, the Xbox stunt which prompted this post is considered hacking. Jailbreaking your phone? That's a type of hacking. Stealing someone's facebook password? Yep.

Children should be taught to never try to get someone else's password, to never access stuff they don't have explicit permission to, and to always ask for your advice when it comes to gray areas. In general, if they need to download an additional program to access "features" not otherwise present in something, you should look closely at the source of that program and whether or not it might violate any agreements in place.

Bullying

Not too long ago, the idea of online dating was laughed at. But then it took off, and is now a huge industry. Similarly, the idea of online bullying used to be laughed at. (and if you call it "Cyber Bullying", I'll laugh at it. Please stop using the term "Cyber" unless you're talking about world-destroying robots.) Many parents still don't consider online bullying "real" bullying until their own child is a victim of it.

Many schools and organizations have very strict bullying policies in place. When I was younger, typically you'd get suspended for fighting in school. These days, bullying can land you and your child in deeper stuff, including the court system. Bullies no longer need to be the over-hormoned kid who was kept back twice; it can be the mousy girl in class, the nerd, the jock, anyone. Online bullying also leaves an even easier to follow trail than just beating someone up "behind the Kentucky Fried at 3:00" (that's where everything happened in my junior high), which makes these lawsuits even easier.

I don't want to sound like an after-school special here, but teaching your child about bullying, both to prevent them being a victim but also to prevent them from being a bully themselves, is an important part of the set of online tools you'll provide them. Children need to be taught never to share private information about others, and never to text/tweet/facebook/message anything they wouldn't say to someone in person. A good rule of thumb is "Don't be mean".

What you should do

Despite me filling this post with things you should do, I'm not here to tell parents what to do. Each parent has their own style for raising their kids, and that style is typically a very personal decision. As a concerned parent, and someone who stays up with technology and software, I just want to make sure this information is out there.

Please don't ban your kids from using these services. If you do, they'll just do it out of your sight and out of your control. That's how kids are. It's better to have them do it where you can monitor and guide them. In all honesty, I'd much rather my son (or daughter) stumble across porn on the computer at the kitchen table rather than over a friend's house when the parents are gone.

I think the worst thing you can do is shut down your kid's access to online services, or set up some sort of Net Nanny or other blocker. In the former, your kid will simply take their activities to places outside your sight (friends' houses, school, the phone, etc.). In the latter, the nanny software will simply be a challenge to the kid, and a false security for you. Most on-computer blocking software is complete crap, and also blocks legit content. Plus, kids will find a way to work around it. My son got a Nintendo DS at the age of 6. Within a few hours of me setting it, he brute force cracked the PIN which disabled connectivity and 3d. Seriously, he just sat there and tried number after number until it let him in. He was 6.

Instead, I encourage you to tell your kids the reasons behind the decisions to restrict certain activities. And then, depending on the child, you either need to actively monitor what they're doing, or you trust but verify. For my kids (ages 7 and 4), they are only allowed to use the computer in the public places in the house (the kitchen table), and we routinely check on what they're doing. More importantly, they know which places they are allowed to go to, and know to ask permission to use anything else. We're not so naïve as to think that will always work, but it's working well enough for now. I can only hope that by the time their curiosity gets the better of them, we've instilled enough knowledge and values to help make up the difference. Well… a little, anyway :)

What we should do as a community

In addition to the parental tasks, we should help the non-technical parents. One fun way to do this might be to create a package insert for new laptops. I recommend this in humor, but a serious interpretation of this could be really useful as general consumers are buying computers and phones for their kids without realizing what can be done with them.

If you're good with graphics arts, I suggest that we should create a universal Ikea-like diagram that is included with each new computer and phone. It should include:

• Don't let your kids post personal information
• Don't let them send nude photos
• Don't let them pirate stuff
• Don't bully or let others bully. Don't be mean. Don't lie about others or spread lies.
• Monitor webcam usage
• Do keep tabs on what your kids are doing
• Do teach your kids what they should and should not do on a computer
• Do assume your kids are clever enough to fool you

I think everyone would be able to understand that. :)