Feature Story
New Book Explains How Parents
Can Create Risk of Cyber Crime

In less than a generation, the Internet has transformed American life—and created myriad opportunities for criminals, crackpots and cruel kids.

If you still think that the best way to protect your kids online is to keep your computer in the busiest room in your house, you need Internet Safety and Your Family. This concise book provides an overview of electronic bullying, cyber crime, identity theft and addictions, and helps you understand how to keep your family safer.

Just as Parenting Press offers introductions to child development, child guidance, emotional literacy and problem-solving, it is preparing parents to make choices regarding their family's Internet use. Internet Safety and Your Family is also designed to help schools meet the National Educational Technology Standards.

You'll find the basics—how to establish family rules for Internet use, emphasize the public and permanent nature of cyber space, respond to offensive sites your children see, create protective passwords and learn chatroom lingo. Written by a former investigative reporter, Internet Safety and Your Family also discusses how to control online information about your family, set browser controls, model appropriate computer use, identify phishing and spoofing, and report illicit contacts.

Real-life examples show how parents sometimes unknowingly create the risk of cyber crime and how we all can identify possible abusers of many kinds. You'll also learn about virtual worlds, social networking and why cheap cell phones keep kids safer.

Author Linda Carlson handles marketing communications for Parenting Press and other publishers. Her writing on a variety of topics sometimes requires cyber sleuthing, so she's familiar with how such strategies can be misused. She occasionally lurks in social networking sites, perusing what her children have posted.

###

You may use any of the material in the online media kits for book reviews and stories that mention the book and its author.