The Latest Forum Discussion Topics:
Do You Ever Read Your Child's emails?
You are here because you are a concerned parent taking the proper steps to protect your teen(s) on and off the internet. As a parent, it is your job to protect your children. The consequences of not doing so are far too bad to even fool around in this arena. If you feel that you've already tried the below spying techniques to find and watch your child's MySpace activity with no success, you may need to use stealth strategies. As a parent concerned about their child's safety, you should by all means have the Parent's Knowledge Kit for Online Safety, and in that kit is a book for very unique stealth strategies to get into your kids MySpace page. More importantly, the Parent's Knowledge Kit for Online Safety gives you the knowledge you need so that you know what you are looking at and looking for!!!
What are your kids hiding from you?
In order to successfully spy on your kids MySpace activity, you should first attempt the low level monitoring. If you haven't already read the low level monitoring techniques, you can do so here. Note that all the major pages of SpyOnYourKids.Net are listed at the top and bottom of each page.
Assuming low level will not or did not work, lets get on to spying strategies. First you need to be familiar with how to setup a MySpace account. If you're not familiar and feel you need a little help, just read here.
Setup a MySpace account but do not use any information that will identify who you are. Disguise everything, even your real name. Always be thinking that your teen may be searching MySpace to see if you're out there!
Now you have the ability to easily search and browse your way around. The first step to take is to begin to search for your teen by name.
At the top of the main page you will see a menu bar like this:
Note that this menu will not look the same in every profile. Users often customize them to change the look and feel of their page. The link content itself will still be there, you may just have to look a little harder if you're on someone else's page.
Click on the third choice from the left, "search". Here is a description of each of your search choices:
Search MySpace Profiles: This is basically a keyword search like you use in search engines. It will search in MySpace profiles for the term(s) you enter. Contrary to a very popular book on how to use MySpace (where you pay for the same information you're reading here for free!), this field can be very useful for locating someone. I'll discuss below.
Find a Friend: Here you can search for someone's name, email address, or display name. If you're not familiar with the differences among display name, user name, and user ID#, you can read about them here.
Find Your Classmate: For searching by school, if the account holder decided to enter school information!
Start your quest with searching by your child's full name. Unless the name is unique, you'll probably get multiple returns. Browse through the names and see if you get lucky and come across your teen.
If you do find your teen, remember that the reason you are here is because you suspect they have the potential to hide things from you. They may setup a "perfect kid" profile with all the info that would make them easy to find. This "bluff" site is setup for you: the naive parent. Don't be naive, get the right knowledge and go into stealth mode!
If you had no luck with the real name, next it's time to try email addresses. Remember, email addresses are as easy to setup as MySpace accounts and you may not be familiar with all of your child's email addresses. One way to search for hidden emails is to go to Yahoo.com and click on "People Search". Fill out the form to search for your child and then choose to look for email addresses.
Remember there should always be a school address - if you don't know your child's then go to the schools web site and look for contact information. Find anyone's email and note the format used: firstname_lastname@school.edu or firstinitial_lastname@school.edu etc. - use this format to back into your child's potential address.
With as many email addresses you can find search the email field under "find a friend."
Next, try the school field. This will probably result in a lot of profiles. When you have a list of profiles, look for your teen as well as their real life friends! More than likely their friend's profile has a link to your teen and you may even see a photo of your teen on the friend's profile to bring you right to where you want to be!
OK, so name and email did not work? Next step: search for friends. Make a list of all the kids your teen pals around with and do the same searches mentioned above but for their names and/or email addresses (you already looked for them in school). Remember to try the school email method mentioned above since you probably don't normally correspond via email with your teen's friends.
If still no luck you need to dig a little deeper. Using the keyword search box at the top of the search page, start looking for nick names. Do your teen's friends call him or her by a nick name such as Big Al or just your last name? Try those terms in the keyword search toolbox.
If you haven't found your kid yet, but you are quite sure they have a MySpace profile, then it's time for more advanced techniques. Find them in the Parent's Knowledge Kit for Online Safety in the Stealth Operations book.
If you have found your kid, then it's time to determine what is going on in their secret MySpace life. Do you know the lingo? Do you have experience looking at these sometime convoluted pages? Want to see how bad it can be?
What if their profile is set to "private", allowing you to only see maybe one photo and little to no other content? Learn how to get around this in Stealth Operations: Strategies for Getting Into Your Child's MySpace Profile: Even if They Make it Private!
What are your kids hiding from you?
