It's a universal concern: the ease with which our children encounter adult material on the Internet. Even with the use of strong filters, the junk seeps into our lives. It is often because the porn vendors use aggressive marketing techniques, linking their sites to normal search terms and causing us to accidentally arrive at their site. Also, it's a normal developmental curiosity for our teens to "check out" nude celebrity photos or videos and other forms of porn. There is substantial peer pressure, especially with photos of a famous person, such as Edison Chen in Hong Kong or Vanessa Hudgens in the US. Perhaps we even encourage it with our concern about porn.

I had the pleasure of speaking to the viewers of Sunrise, Australia's most watched morning news program, during my recent visit to Sydney. We covered topics ranging from the bot problem to drive-by downloads, even how to secure your home wi-fi connection.

Here's a link.

Why pay someone for a service you could do yourself? Each of us can come up with an explanation depending on the service in mind: housecleaning, tax preparation, manicures, even dog walking. There is a service out there for those lacking time, patience, skill or interest in taking care of the matter for themselves. We would certainly save money if we did these things ourselves. What if the service is to save us money in the first place?

That's the idea behind the many companies who offer credit protection or identity theft insurance programs. An estimated 1 in 5 of us will  eventually be a victim of id theft so I'm certain you are interested in learning more about these services.  Almost all the things they will do for you are things you could do yourself, if you knew how or were willing to take the time. Dan Tynan just took a look at these numerous services and came up with a great article explaining how each works and a chart of how each stacks up. You may be surprised. It wasn't the most famous or heavily advertised service that came out on top. 

Gaia Online, recently awarded an award from CNET's Webware for Best Social site, is also the online teen destination site where a Wisconsin teen met an adult woman looking for a real world tryst. We parents will need to add this site to our watchlist for our kids, just as we monitor the use of other social networking sites. It's a very cool site, with gaming areas, great graphics for creating a personalized avatar (or online representation of yourself) and a very busy community. In fact, the site claims they have the "world's most active online community with more than 1 billion forum posts to date."

Reading through a Morgan Stanley report (quite long but chock full of cool stats) I found a list of the fastest "rising" or growing search terms for both global users and US users. Here are the lists:

Global:

1. iphone; 2. badoo; 3. facebook; 4. dailymotion; 5. webkinz; 6. youtube; 7. ebuddy; 8.second life; 9. hi5; 10. club penguin

US:

1. iphone; 2. webkinz; 3. tmz; 4. transformers; 5. youtube; 6. club penguin; 7. myspace; 8. heroes; 9. facebook; 10. anna nicole smith

Whether we admit it or not, one of the most common activities people are doing online is viewing pornography. And even if this isn't the case in your home, your children will learn about porn from their peers, from online advertisements, from mistakes in typing web addresses or search terms or out of normal curiosity about their own sexual feelings.  I highly recommend you talk to your children about online porn and your expectations/rules for your kids in regard to it. It's out there and no amount of hiding will change that.

A new peer-reviewed study has been published to show what the impact of viewing online porn can mean to some children, especially boys. As you would expect, if a child's sex education comes from what they find online and particularly from pornography, kids get a warped view of what is normal or to be expected for their age. And this leads to earlier loss of virginity or heightened interest in particular forms of sexual behaviors, most likely copied from the Internet. Specifically, those who view online porn are sexually active before those who do not view online porn.

Marian@norton.com is my email address for any customer with a question. Very often, I get asked things like: How do I change the email address on my Norton account? The simple answer is to visit our online account system at www.mynortonaccount.com .

Today's question is: I use Norton Internet Security software to protect my computer but today I found spyware. How did it get there?

I attended the TechCrunch/PopSugar party in Hollywood last week and was introduced to a new genealogy site called Geni.com. I love the idea of moving my family tree work off my laptop (what if it crashes and I lose everything?) and to an online, collaborative site. And since it's online, it's not dependent upon a particular operating system the way my Family Tree Maker software is. So that means my father, who works on a Mac, can add to it. Or if I'm visiting a relative and they suddenly mention a new family detail, I can borrow their computer to add it to the file.

The latest phishing attack happening is a fake subpeona for a California court, targetting senior executives around the country. Thousands of potential victims, those blue suited muckety mucks, have received emails containing a very credible looking image of a subpoena, referencing a lawsuit and providing a weblink to get more information. Those who fail to engage the software between their ears will find that malicious spyware software has been loaded onto their computer when they visit the destination website. That spyware will then be used to monitor any online banking activity and forward the account and password to the phishers.

The fine people who work in law enforcement and especially those who strive to protect our children from pedophiles deserve our thanks and so much more. The men and women who work in the elite Internet Crimes against Children divisions (known as ICAC) have the sad task of having to review the actual photos and videos taken of child victims in their pursuit of those evil people who prey on innocent children.

Larry Magid has written a fascinating news story on how Google's technology is helping this important work become more efficient by using computers to find linkages between images from child pornography (a logo, a sign) and finding other images on the Internet to link the two. In this way, ICAC officers can speed up their ability to find the perpetrators and get them away from our children.

I really want to thank the engineers at Google who worked on this project. What a wonderful way for technology to really fix something terrible and broken in our world!