Rowan Trollope was concerned about his son, Perry. Like many parents, he wondered what his teenager was up to online – and was looking for a way to keep track of he was doing. But unlike most parents, the solution Mr. Trollope came up with helped initiate a whole new approach to online security.
He wrote and quietly installed a program onto Perry's computer, in order to monitor the teen's behaviour and stream a feed of the activity to his own computer's desktop.
“That allowed me to have a few conversations that I needed to have with him that otherwise would have never been had, never known and remained completely submerged,” said Mr. Trollope, senior vice-president of consumer products at security software maker Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif.
“That was an experience that told me that there's something wrong here – we're not doing a good job of helping parents with their kids.' ”
Mr. Trollope's experience hinted at the uphill battle against an array of risks to children online, which demands a new approach to safety, experts say.
Why is it that existing parental control software doesn't work? It isn't just that they don't support the new paradigms but it's also that they have, fundamentally, the wrong approach. — Rowan Trollope, senior vice-president of consumer products at Symantec Corp.
Although technology has recently helped police to make high-profile arrests of predators in child sexual abuse and pornography rings, the impact is limited, said Paul Gillespie, president and chief executive of the non-profit Kids' Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA) in Toronto.
“Law enforcement does make arrests but in the big picture, it's relatively ineffective,” he said. “The degree of sophistication that police develop simply reveals there's way more out there than anyone ever thought.”
Even so, he noted that better technology remains a key piece of the puzzle in law enforcement and at home. “I'm in favour of any product or tool that gives parents any flexibility to protect their children,” Mr. Gillespie said, but added that he believes the emphasis must be on prevention.
“We know from experience that educating children about risks from an early age works. We've seen it with antisocial behaviours like drugs, smoking, drinking and driving. … We need to educate parents and children.”
Education and opening a family dialogue is critical, Mr. Trollope believes. After realizing that tools to help families use the Internet safely were inadequate, he approached an engineering team working on child safety.
The Symantec software engineers had tried parental control software – but their children were getting around it. Part of the problem, they found, was that the conventional approach is rooted in a model that increasingly doesn't exist: One family computer with a child's account that parents check.
“Now, kids have their own computers,” Mr. Gillespie said. “The dynamics have changed.”
Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton is a hybrid of a website and software installed on children's computers that can be used to set rules, monitor activities live and deliver e-mail alerts of violations, including circumvention attempts.
When Symantec consulted child-development specialists, they found that – unsurprisingly – spying on children to control activities created an adversarial relationship, which hindered kids' understanding of parents' guidance efforts.
“It's not about control, it's about communication,” Mr. Trollope said. “Why is it that existing parental control software doesn't work? It isn't just that they don't support the new paradigms but it's also that they have, fundamentally, the wrong approach.”
And so, Armed with a new understanding, the Symantec team created OnlineFamily.Norton, a hybrid of a website and software installed on children's computers. The tool can be used to set rules, monitor activities live, and deliver e-mail alerts of violations, including circumvention attempts. It also tells kids that it is running – awareness that can help facilitate family discussions, Mr. Trollope said. The service is available for free until at least 2010.
