jason

Just what we all need. What happened to TALKING to your kids and SHARING online experiences?

In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. … Parents who don’t want the company to share their child’s information to businesses can check a box to opt out. But that option can be found only by visiting the company’s Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

No, we can just watch them from the office. I am totally supportive of technologies for vulnerable/special needs individuals, but not when we’re talking about invasive snooping. One more way to keep kids from growing up. Silly.