A recent news story is as an acute reminder to parents to monitor all of their kids’ online networks—even secondary social networks, like Xbox LIVE. According to reports, four Iowa teens—two males and two females—ran away from their homes in what police say may have been a plotted escape made during conversations during Xbox LIVE gaming sessions. Read more…
It’s rare that money jingles in our pocket or gets hidden between the mattresses for a rainy day. The way you grew up—and the tangible presence of money—isn’t the same experience for your 21st century cyber kid. As digital natives, our kids have grown up with an entirely different view of money: Money is plastic, Read more…
If you can hear your kids hysterically laughing in another room, chances are they—and their friends—are watching videos on YouTube. The numbers are staggering: Over 4 billion YouTube videos are viewed a day, which is about “500 years of YouTube video” each day, according to YouTube. What’s the big deal? Well, everything if you are Read more…
Webcams have always been an area of concern for parents with online kids. Webcams can affect the safety and privacy of your children, but a website called Stickam poses an even greater risk. There are plenty of webcam sharing websites such as TinyChat and Chatroulette, but Sitckam is a little different. Chatroulette and Tinychat offers Read more…
We all have our favorite apps for all the things we do. I use Shazam when I don’t know what song is playing, Maps when I’m lost, FlightRadar24 when I’m curious about the plane flying over my head. These apps are there for my satisfaction; they meet some need. Each of us have different needs […]
In a fantasy world, children (of all ages) would tell their parents everything. “I am not really sick today – I really just want to catch up on some TV!” “Erica isn’t just my study mate – she is my girlfriend and we have been together for 6 months!’ “I know I am only 12 Read more…
Last year McAfee undertook some quite revealing research into the online behaviour of Aussie teens. Entitled ‘The Secret Life of Teens ‘ this research report taught us that 95% of our teens are accessing Facebook daily, 31% have broken the law through piracy and a shocking 6% have met up with a stranger they met Read more…
When 2011 ago, we at AVAST released our mobile device theft protection tool, avast! Anti-Theft, we wanted to change the way mobile devices are being protected from being stolen or abused. We did not know if people would like it, we did not know how well avast! Anti-Theft would perform in actually protecting mobile device […]
One year ago, Avast launched avast! Free Antivirus for Mac, and celebrated with our first photo contest. The results were outstanding – we received 50,000 photos with “APPLE” as the topic, and our Facebook page became the 5th fastest growing page worldwide during the first week of the competition! Your enthusiatic reponse told us that: You are […]
Question of the week: Since I have been using avast! I have been conscious of staying secure online. Does it matter which search engine I use? Is one safer than the other? Thanks for using avast! to protect your computer. Yours is a great question, but maybe not one that people consider when thinking about the […]