Services Monitor Children’s Activities Online - NYTimes.com
The new companies include SafetyWeb, based in Denver; SocialShield, of San Mateo, Calif.; and MyChild, a service of ReputationDefender, in Redwood City, Calif. These services scour the Web to create easily digestible reports for parents of everything a child is doing online.
The companies charge for subscriptions; the lowest costs $10 a month or $100 a year. For harried parents, the question is: Are they worth it?
Certainly not for people who are Web-savvy. The services gather data that can be freely collected with a bit of ardent Web searching.
But many parents are overworked and generally overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technological change and the continuing introduction of social Web sites. For these people, a simple Internet cheat sheet on their child — even at $100 a year — could be a useful tool.
Looks like companies are starting to offer paid for peace of mind for absentee parents. On the surface this may look like a good solution but there is more to it than just installing the software...
