Family PC security = kid online safety

A heads-up for parents is buried in this post by the Washington Post's Brian Krebs in his PC security blog: "I remain awestruck by the juxtaposition of those two offerings," writes Brian, referring to system spam on his friend's infected PC that was selling drugs and kids' games in the same sleazy ad. "Somewhere out there, a diabolical marketing machine is reaching through cyberspace offering wide-eyed kids all kinds of goodies, including their very own custom-made smileyfaces or 'emoticons,' for use with AOL's chat program, AND their choice of highly addictive narcotics and sexual-performance enhancement drugs, with a selection of adult Web sites to boot!" It alerts us parents to the fact that having anti-virus and -spyware software installed isn't just about PC security, it's more and more about online kids' well-being. The line between online safety and PC security is blurring, if not dissolving. And we can enlist our tech-literate kids to join in a family mission: to be ever alert about the latest PC protections and about not downloading junk - no matter how great the games, software, emoticons, sweepstakes, polls, and other "cool stuff" sound to family PC users of all ages. BTW, Brian spent about 7 hours cleaning up his friend's PC so it would function again, and he names/links to a number of software products (some free) that helped with the process; his piece is both meaty and fun to read.