Safe Email for Kids

July 3, 2009 5:54 AM

I want a safe email for a ten year old.; yes, even one that I can see the outgoing messages as well as monitor the incoming ones. I know you can set up a gmail account with filters to do this and control what comes in. I just am not sure what is best in terms of getting to see what goes out. What does the hive mind suggest for how to handle this?
posted by cmh0150 to technology (32 comments total)

I'm not sure what you're looking for - do you want to be able to review all messages before they're sent out, or do you just want to be able to see the messages that have been sent? Practically every mail client in popular use right now offers a "sent" box.
posted by Phire at 6:08 AM on July 3

I want to be able to review all before they are sent
posted by cmh0150 at 6:19 AM on July 3

We set up a Yahoo account with our kid. Occasionally we'd check it (she knew we were doing this) to see if any crazy bad stalkers had found her or some such. Micromanaging what goes out is fundamentally wrong, IMO, as it denies the child some privacy and treats them as being unable to handle life without you. They have to know that the world can be a dangerous place and that they should take takes to avoid those dangers and that their actions can have consequences.

Being a parent means you help them up after they've fallen, not try to prevent them from ever falling.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:40 AM on July 3 [10 favorites]

I debated the micromanaging aspect but Brandon's post has caused me to wonder what to do.
But w/o getting into the details, this is a child whose life has been highly structured and is coming to our family with some diagnosed emotional issues. I thought that maybe we could graduate to uncensored email over time. Anyway, thanks for sharing.
posted by cmh0150 at 6:45 AM on July 3

A couple of years back I remember reading about a program which used complex filtering to check emails and instant messages for specific phrases - anything sexual, conversations about meeting offline, drugs references, that kind of thing. It emailed conversations containing those phrases to the child's parents, but otherwise allowed the child to use their email in privacy.

I remember it getting good reviews from the Lifehackeresque nerdy parent set, they saw it as a good middle ground between safety and respecting the child's autonomy. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was called. Anyone else remember it?
posted by embrangled at 7:00 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

Apple's mail.app can do this, but not sure if OS X is an option for you. Apple's blurb:

"When you configure Mail Parental Controls you allow only listed users to exchange email with the Managed Account. Just click the checkbox next to “Send permission emails to:” and then enter your email account in the field provided. Any message sent to, or from, the Managed account from an account that isn’t already approved will be forwarded to you."

In your case, you would not list any approved email addresses, which would cause all incoming and outgoing messages to be forwarded to your parental account for approval.
posted by webhund at 7:12 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

We use zoobah. Does what you are asking and we've been very pleased.
posted by pearlybob at 7:13 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

Another reason to consider apple as our computer brand but for the time being we only have windows computers... zoobah seems like what we want... thanks!
posted by cmh0150 at 7:20 AM on July 3

I have a 12 yo who has a good head on her shoulders. We set up an email account we could monitor. About a year ago I discovered that she'd opened her own gmail account. Nothing nefarious intended. But since she was the techy I showed her exactly how to delete a gmail account.

I talked to her then about the good, bad, and the ugly of the net. Thought that was taken care of until I walked into her room one day and she immediately closed the lid of the laptop. My parent radar suddenly turned on and I walked up and asked her what she was doing while I opened the lid. Turns out she'd opened another gmail account and was communicating with a "girl" who worked at Cirque du Soleil.

I had a more serious talk with her about trust --trust on both sides. I wanted her to trust us and I wanted her to know we wanted to trust her. And, of course, I talked about the "girl" from the circus and just who that might be.

My daughter is an intelligent person. But intelligence isn't the same as worldly experience. We're trying to balance the "dangers" out there with the positive aspects on the net. What's hard for parents is that we don't have our own childhoods to rely on. The world is a much different place than when we were children.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 7:24 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

The world is so very different now, most for the better but certainly unknown in all its dimensions. Thanks Taken - your 12 y/o sounds like what we may have to face with ours.
posted by cmh0150 at 7:32 AM on July 3

To offer a slightly different perspective, perhaps - I got my first email account when I was 11, a yahoo account to email a friend in a different country (the country we left to come to Canada). This was about ten years ago. I signed up for it at the library, because we didn't have reliable internet access at home at the time. I discovered forums (and neopets and MSN etc) the year after that, and made some online friends I'm still in contact with. My parents were never aware of any of this, as it was pretty normal for me to stop by the library or two after school by myself. I was an avid reader.

My younger sister, who is currently 9, has regular access to broadband internet at her school, and has her own Gmail account that she uses to email me and dad occasionally.

If you do end up putting a control on the outgoing mail and keeping an eye on the incoming mail, it may serve to give you peace of mind. But keep in mind that it may just be an illusion. For kids in the internet age, as Taken Outtacontext discovered, it's ridiculously easy to be connected. By the same token, it will be virtually impossible for you to control all aspects of their connectivity. The more you micromanage and control, the more you'll simply drive these things underground. You don't specify what these emotional issues are, but consider that it may be far more conducive to your purpose to encourage open communication between you and your child, rather than using technology to solve a human relations problem.
posted by Phire at 7:44 AM on July 3 [2 favorites]

Kids these days know how to open their own email account. I doubt there is going to be much you can do to stop it if she decides to do this.

The best thing you can do is let her know that you trust her and teach her how to be safe on the internet. Technological solutions are not applicable to social problems.
posted by theichibun at 7:44 AM on July 3

*Stop by the library for an hour or two
posted by Phire at 7:44 AM on July 3

I'm not that old - born in 1984 - but I was definitely at the beginning of the internet boon for kids. I had an AOL account as far back as I can remember (5th grade), and I was using a text-based service for a while before that. This was before most of the "OMG PEOPLE ARE GOING TO KIDNAP YOUR CHILDREN" phase, but I was basically unmonitored. I got my own computer when I turned 12, and I've always had a personal computer ever since then.

I see this as a few options - either use something like Zoobuh, and hope that she won't start a new e-mail account that's out from under your access, or try putting the computer in a public area. If you keep the computer out of her room, then you gain a level of observation, and just having it out in the open might make her think twice before she engages in some activity that you may not approve of.

As I side note, as a kid who did do some things that my parents probably wouldn't have been happy about while I was young and using the internet, I feel like I'm going to be hyper-sensitive to my future kids' net usage.
posted by SNWidget at 7:52 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

Just came here to say something similar to what Phire said. I had my own email account by the time I was 10 and would certainly have found a way to get one if my dad had not helped me set one up.
There were a few ground rules, such as not giving away my address or identifying information on the net, and otherwise I was free to explore as I wanted.
posted by peacheater at 7:57 AM on July 3

Gaggle will do what you want it to do. In a nutshell, you have an admin and users, and the admin can add a user's account to their mailbox and see everything.
posted by jmd82 at 8:05 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

This is why, when stumped, I Ask Meta filter - such an array of possibilities but always thought provoking.

Thanks Phire and Peacheater - very useful for me to consider.

So, now along with zoobuh, i will look at gaggle - whew!
posted by cmh0150 at 8:24 AM on July 3

I had an email address at my grandparents (grandfather worked for a computer company) when I was maybe 8? I knew how to make my own hotmail address, use IRC, etc, by the time I was 11. My family got a computer when I was that age and it was always in a public part of the house, viewable from the living room, and everyone in my family used it. I didn't have my own computer until college. Keeping the computer in an area where you can monitor its use is probably more effective/more important than monitoring the email. If the kid knows you're monitoring the email, they will just not use it for anything they don't want you to see. We spent a lot of unsupervised time on the computer in the summer because our parents were at work, but if you want to avoid that, password protect the computer so the kid can only use it when you're home to unlock it.
posted by ishotjr at 8:31 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]

That works if the kid doesn't know how to boot from a Linux live CD. Or if they kid doesn't figure out the password.
posted by theichibun at 8:45 AM on July 3 [2 favorites]

I had my own email account long before my parents did. It pays to be cautious, but at the same time, learn to let go at a certain point. Trust your parenting skills and the morals that you have instilled into your wee ones.

I strongly believe that you don't need to monitor your child's email.
posted by FusiveResonance at 9:01 AM on July 3

I'm surprised that there's someone in this thread that doesn't let their 12-year-old have a gmail account. Having access to the internet and a computer at that age was really important for me, especially since I was sort of socially awkward and unpopular, and having online friends to talk to really made things easier on me. Without chat rooms, message boards, email lists and my online friends, I would have basically been completely socially isolated and at the mercy of the vicious cliques in junior high.

I agree with some other people that monitoring a child's email and micromanaging internet usage is probably crossing a line, and is unnecessary. The greatest deterrents for kids getting into trouble online would be to keep the computer in a public space, and to make sure they're well-educated about what the internet is all about. By allowing educated kids full access to all of the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes awful things online, they'll learn a lot of valuable skills.
posted by booknerd at 9:32 AM on July 3

Yup, ditto the public space thing, that was how my parents handled it when I was a preteen. Focusing on the e-mail address will only address part of the issue, because the kid will set up a separate account sooner or later. Having the computer in public and establishing that you have the right to read over the kid's shoulder at any time should help the kid keep to the rules. And as the kid matures, the peeks can decrease in frequency (and/or become a "So what are you doing right now?" with a glance at the screen from a distance to catch any obvious lies) until your right to know what the kid's doing becomes a technicality, still a rule but no longer acted upon.
posted by EmilyClimbs at 9:56 AM on July 3

I was also born in 1984. My dad built computers so I was on them from like, age 5. Whenever AOL starting sending out those CDs, that's what I started getting online. The computer was in a public room, but my dad's computer-savviness stopped right before the internet, so my internet use was 100% unsupervised.

I was doing things in AOL chatrooms that I wouldn't even do now, and that I wouldn't want my children doing -- nothing terrible, just gross and inappropriate. However, it was just obvious to me that I should never give out my address or phone number or personal information to these people (obviously, I was lying about being older anyway). I didn't even share pictures.

BUT, this was before pictures were easily uploaded. Yes, I could have scanned and whatever, but it wasn't as easy as popping them in from a digital camera or uploading straight from my cell phone. At that time, the internet outside of AOL didn't exist to me or my friends. That kept a lot of doors closed.

And most importantly, my real identity was not really accessible online. I don't really know about AOL and yes, I'm sure someone could have gotten my personal information from my screenname (or my father's from his credit card account). But there was no information about me on the internet in 1992. Today, if someone wanted to find out about me online, they'd just find my Facebook account with 100s of photos, where I went to school, etc., or Google me and see everything there is to know about me, or even Google my screenname and find other services that might have more personal information (twitter, my amazon.com profile, etc).

Even though I did "grow up on the internet," the internet that I grew up with is very different from the internet your child is growing up with. It's like New York street safety in the 1940s vs today. I don't know any seven year olds who'd be allowed to just leave the house whenever they felt like it and play with whomever they chose wherever they wanted in NYC without supervision, like my father was allowed to. There's more danger, more access, more people, and more information today than there was when we were kids.

I can't make a judgment on whether you should monitor your child's internet use. I don't know what I'll do with my own children. But especially if this child was not brought up by you, you have no idea what he was taught about safety. If you do decide to monitor him, however, I'd say this: don't discuss every little thing with him. Let him have free, monitored, rein, and only step in and approach him if you see something that is or could turn actually dangerous. Really set out rules and guidelines and expectations, and get his input, too, so that it's not just a vague "we'll be watching."
posted by thebazilist at 10:59 AM on July 3 [3 favorites]

First rule of parenting: never pick a fight you haven't made adequate preparations to win.

As others have said, there are endless ways for tech savvy children to subvert parental attempts to limit what they can do online, and the only thing they need in order to make these work is privacy. So you don't give them privacy. You make sure the only computer your child has access to is in a public area, where its screen is always subject to being viewed by random passing eyeballs.

You need to make sure your computer can't be booted from anything other than its own internal hard disk. The moment your child can boot a live CD or live USB stick some time when they're in the house and you're not, you have no control any more.

To do that, you need to set your BIOS up so it won't boot from anything but the hard disk, turn off its boot menu option if it has one, and password protect its settings page. You also need to physically lock the case of the computer so that there's no access to the CMOS RAM reset jumper.

Set up separate user accounts: one for computer maintenance (this should be a password protected administrator account), one password protected limited account for each person who will be using the computer, and a guest account that's normally disabled. Only you should know the maintenance account's password. You can use the maintenance account to change your child's password any time you need to lock them out.

If you have wireless networking in your home, make sure it has WPA or WPA2 protection turned on, with a long random network key that is recorded in a file accessible only to your maintenance account. Make sure your neighbours' wireless access points are similarly secured. Now the borrowed iPhone or PSP can't be used for surreptitious bedroom Internet access.

You now have the ability to prevent your child from using your computer and/or internet connection at all, which means you can enforce the following rule: do the right things online, and show me you're doing the right things online, or else I will simply remove your unsupervised access privileges.

That's about as far as you should go with technological measures. The rest of it is working out with your child what the Right Things are, and actually doing enough random supervision to let you feel confident that those things are being done.

Reserving your technological armoury for last-resort use in conflicts, rather than making it a constant niggling nuisance that cries out to be worked around, will keep you firmly in the driver's seat.
posted by flabdablet at 11:35 AM on July 3 [2 favorites]

Do that and your kid will still find ways to use the internet. Be it at school or a library or a friend's house or somewhere else.
posted by theichibun at 12:08 PM on July 3 [1 favorite]

The world is so very different now, most for the better but certainly unknown in all its dimensions.

"Unknown" doesn't mean "worse." As someone who has been using interactive data services since the BBS era, I think the modern Internet is probably a lot nicer place for kids to hang out than its predecessors were. It's easier to be anonymous, the ratio of 'normal people' to cranks and weirdos has improved as the barriers to entry have decreased, and the amount of high-quality, useful information has increased vastly. If it seems more dangerous in some way, it's mostly because the media has finally figured out what it is, and turned the OMGFEAR dial up to 11.

Things have gotten better. They are getting better. If the Internet was half as dangerous to kids as the media likes to portray it, I and just about everyone I know would be dead, because we did everything that you're now not supposed to do, and we did it in an environment where it was a lot less likely that the person you're trolling is on the other side of the planet, conveniently out of physical-retribution range.

The consequences of allowing your kid unrestricted access to the Internet are far less severe than the consequences of creating an adversarial relationship where they feel like you're keeping something from them, or they feel you're challenging them to sneak one past you. And I don't really see how the sort of email service you're asking for — unless you do the monitoring clandestinely, which is creepy — wouldn't come across as a challenge to a young person with any degree of desire for autonomy.

It's not that what you're asking for can't be done: you could use Gaggle and then block all regular webmail services plus IMAP/POP/SMTP at your gateway/router, and it would probably work for a while depending on the technical prowess of the kid involved, I just don't see how it's going to accomplish anything good in the long run.

The best solution is to foster openness in your relationship, keep the computer in a public place and not in your kid's room or in the basement, and stay on top of what your kid(s) are doing online by actually talking to and asking them. I know that I would have really loved talking to my parents about the BBSes I was using and other things I was doing online when I was in middle and even in high school, but they never asked.

A technological solution like Gaggle or ZooBuh may seem at first glance to be the more elegant one, and in the very short term it might be, but unless your plan is only to use it for some very limited period I can't see it not creating an unproductively adversarial relationship where none need exist.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:53 PM on July 3 [5 favorites]

You're fighting a losing battle from the start. Micromanaging a kid's electronic devices will not help the relationship between the two of you. Even if you managed to do everything you ask in this post, I guarantee the kid will become friends with someone who doesn't have these burdens on them and will want to spend a lot of time with them instead of at home, further dulling any influence you have on them.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:01 PM on July 3

Do that and your kid will still find ways to use the internet. Be it at school or a library or a friend's house or somewhere else

This is perfectly true. There is absolutely no way that you can control everything your child does online. But seizing control of access to the computing resources in your own home, which should in general be the most convenient facilities available to your child, will cost you very little and give you far more leverage than you will get from finer-grained technological measures such as managed email accounts or web site whitelists and blacklists.

The real point of all this is that bolting nanny-style restrictions onto your home IT resources sets up a continuous training exercise in working around restrictions, and this does not serve your primary purpose of helping your child develop healthy online habits when using the Net unsupervised, as they will surely end up spending significant time doing. Only your personal involvement, supervision and guidance can do that.

The power to deny access entirely while your child is at home is a strategic nuclear weapon, not a tactical one. You should have it, and your child should know you have it. Then everybody knows where they stand, and the less often you exercise that power, the more useful it becomes.
posted by flabdablet at 7:25 PM on July 3 [1 favorite]

all is well; fantastic feedback from the hive mind.

what i did was to share with him a list i found: Ten Commandments for Kids Online - he thought they were fair.

i told him i was trying to decide whether to give him a gmail account or a special kids email - he said that for now, he would prefer the kids email.

thanks to all.. great feedback
posted by cmh0150 at 9:17 PM on July 3

Thought that was taken care of until I walked into her room one day and she immediately closed the lid of the laptop. My parent radar suddenly turned on

See what they did there?

In my house, that laptop would not have been able to get WiFi access. Instead, there would be a wired network outlet in the lounge room, and it would have been clearly understood that plugging anything longer than the authorised cable into that outlet would result in it being disconnected from the router (which is inside a locked cupboard) for two weeks. I would not even begin to consider buying a child a laptop until I'd made those arrangements.

And you know what? I'd never have had to disconnect that outlet.

We're trying to balance the "dangers" out there with the positive aspects on the net.

As I see it, there are precisely three genuine dangers out there on the net.

One is the pattern where a child develops an unjustifiable level of trust in a person met online, unknown to parents, and then arranges to meet that person physically, again unknown to parents - the nightmare paedophile scenario.

Another is where the child becomes involved in online stalking or bullying as victim, perpetrator or spectator.

The third is where the child takes everything they find out from any Internet source about any subject to be the gospel truth.

I don't see access to "unsuitable material" as a genuine danger, though I'll allow that many do. Kids have always sought out the gross, weird and disturbing when they thought their parents weren't looking. But kids, like the rest of us, pretty quickly learn that what's seen can't be unseen and they quickly learn to stop seeking out stuff that disturbs them. In any case, their reactions to disturbing stuff are always going to be much more strongly determined by the values you've been bringing them up to embrace than the ease of access to that stuff.

The way to deal with all of these things is not to try to insulate kids from them. That has never worked and will never work. The way to deal with these things is to keep an eye on your kids. Just like you did when they were three years old and getting used to the monkey bars in the back yard. Or, come to that, pestering you for permission to sleep over at Weird Uncle Ernie's (who, statistically speaking, has always been more likely to molest your kids than a random stranger would be).

What's hard for parents is that we don't have our own childhoods to rely on.

You must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss; a sigh is just a sigh - the fundamental things apply, as time goes by. Whatever parents do that still shows "I love you": on that, kids can rely.

The world is a much different place than when we were children.

And kids will always be a handful, as time goes by.
posted by flabdablet at 11:57 PM on July 3 [1 favorite]

In my house, that laptop would not have been able to get WiFi access. Instead, there would be a wired network outlet in the lounge room, and it would have been clearly understood that plugging anything longer than the authorised cable into that outlet would result in it being disconnected from the router (which is inside a locked cupboard) for two weeks. I would not even begin to consider buying a child a laptop until I'd made those arrangements.

flabdablet, I work in tech and while I know that one of the most recommended things a parent can do is to only have net access in a public place, I want this to be something I trust my children with. Not that I assume it just "happens" or is inherent. It's something we need to foster, develop, and stay on top of. It's worth the extra effort for me.

BTW, while gmail doesn't have any parental control I believe that US Federal law requires that no one under the age of 13 is allowed to sign up for an email account (COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). Of course, this is impossible to enforce so it's incumbent on us parents to monitor our children's online lives.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 5:38 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]

I want this to be something I trust my children with. Not that I assume it just "happens" or is inherent. It's something we need to foster, develop, and stay on top of. It's worth the extra effort for me.

And for me. Which is why the only reason I've ever used my own nuclear option is to pull the plug on a 16-year-old spending literally all day, every day, unbathed and stinking up the computer room playing Runescape or Kal at the expense of doing any homework or going outside once in a while. All of which had more to do with gaming addiction than anything involving trust.
posted by flabdablet at 7:10 AM on July 4