Social networking hasn’t been around for very long and yet there are some tried and true pieces of advice I give parents about it. "When your child is old enough for an account – which should be 13 years old by the terms of use agreement – you should be connected to their account by being a member of their network.” On some accounts, this terminology is called "friending.” For those few adults who have been sitting on the sidelines of social networking, their child’s participation should finally prompt them to get in there and join up. You don’t have to be an avid player and you don’t have to post what you’re doing but you should use the opportunity to talk to your child about how social networks work, what the risks and rewards are and to explore safety settings like privacy together.  But be prepared for your child's use of the social network to take some interesting twists and turns, some of which may be hidden entirely ... Read more »

Last week I went to Israel. I had a meeting with a government official to discuss internet safety education programs in the country. I also met with several key members of the technical media for interviews. As many questions as I answered, I probably asked more of them. There was so much to learn! As high tech and connected a country as Israel is, they are very much in the early stages of educating their public about keeping safe on the internet.

Very Young Children Have Cell Phones

To begin with, the way kids are handled seems a bit different. It’s quite normal for children, young children, to take public transportation to school. As a result, parents cope by giving children cell phones at much younger ages than would be normal in the US. It’s also a way of easing the nerves of parents when the possibility of terrorist attacks are added to the normal parenta ... Read more »

Symantec Maximum Repair (SMR) is a brand new security engine that drives our new Norton Power Eraser recovery tool. It combines aggressive heuristics and advanced removal capabilities to combat the newest and toughest threats. I thought I would share with you some of the background on why we developed this new engine.

Why the need?

The threat landscape has radically changed over the last few years and that has driven the need for new approaches to protection. Most notable are the following trends:

• A new micro distribution model for malicious threats. A couple of years ago, the norm was to see relatively few threat variants distributed to millions of users.  Today, hackers have moved to a micro-distribution model where million ... Read more »