Cypersafety

I have been coining new words for English lately and the first is parafox.

If you go to Google and type parafox you will get to my blog spot and see why I coined it and it has of course outlasted its original intentions and the meaning.

Now this is used to spread the news of live Linux CDs.

The Cypersafety is next in the line if not already in the internet vocabulary.

I think the word Cyberbullying is already there and no wonder somebody else has used with the same intentions.

In that case he or she owns it.

I have being doing too much on Live CDs and I feel I must get back to the normal stream with more appeal since I am nearing the century of Linux Live CDs.

The recent incident of committing suicide of a young teenage girls In USA brings us to the reality and the cruelty with psychopathic tendencies and behaviour of the web users.

Web belongs to everybody and there is no control over it.

There is lot of pornography too, lot of luring and enticement are there.

I am not sure how we can deal with this problem.

This is happening in Sri-Lanka in most unlikely places and I do not want to mention them and open a can of worms.

The cybersafety to be established we need to understand the mechanics, insinuation and subtle ways the web designers, advertisers and search engine use the web to manipulate young visitor.

Even the words games, play and kids can be tagged to catch an unsuspecting mind.

The parents have a role.

Teachers have a role.

Owners of Cybercafes have a role.

Above all awareness and education have a role.

Lot of forensic work has to be done.

To begin this word has to be in the vocabulary and in circulation with parents and their mouths and the would be parents.

Recently I was seeing a mother buying a web camera for a child unsuspectingly.

The vender did not ask the young child for what purpose he was using and no warning was given to the mother how to use it.

For the time being parents should not give a child all the hardware to be installed in his closed room.

Like in a office the computer should be in a prominent, public and open place even at home not in a closet of its own.

That is the first line of defense.

The second line of defense is Linux with Child Protection Utilities and time slot allocation for kids.

I'll write few more tricks parents can adopt once the word cybersafety is firmly established in the internet.

This is where Linux can contribute immensely by deploying cybersafety utilities.

Linux can do that.

5th September, 2010