Harlan Coben The Undercover Parent

Educate your children - Be clear about the kind of personal information your children should not divulge over the Internet, including their names, addresses, and phone numbers. Teach your children what to do if a stranger approaches them online. Monitoring software will allow you to monitor, chats, emails, website visits, and internet searches so you can keep informed silently. Specifically, tell children to cut off communication with any person they don't know and to notify you

While there are pros and cons of spyware, I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Kids don’t always make the best decisions and especially not online, where they feel safest. If you don’t monitor your child it could end badly. It’s better to be safe then

The title of the essay is The Undercover Parents, which was written by Harlan Coben. The essay was published on the 16th of March, 2008. In the essay, Coben presents his main ideas and thoughts regarding the use of spyware by parents to monitor children. He says that installing a spyware on the computer used by children, especially those in the teenage years, can help parents track what actually their children view on computers. In the essay, the author says that while it is quite hard to follow up on children while they are away from home and this causes parents to be so worried, installing spyware on the computers in the house really helps. Coben says that the program allows parents to keep track of the children

In “The Undercover Parent” Harlan Coben thinks that parents should use spyware to keep tabs on what their kids do on the internet. According to Coben, there are two reasons to put spyware on your child’s computer. One, parents need to protect their kids from cyberbullying and secondly, everyone already can see what your children do on the internet. Coben also says that children will find other ways to avoid the spyware such as using cellphones; but, Coben says, cell phones are better than computers. Coben deems that parents should tell their kids that they have installed a spyware in the computer. Coben makes some great arguments, but I do not agree with him.

In the article, Coben states “You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports-weekly, daily, whatever-showing you everything your child is doing on the machine… Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won't even consider it.” Of course it's scary. If I was a parent, I would feel disappointed in myself just for reading this article. I'm not convinced “spyware” is a “good idea” when you advertise it like that, and I wouldn't if I was a parent either. If you feel your child isn't communicating with you, I do not think you should turn to spyware from reading that statement. If I were a parent, I would just have a talk with my child; let them know I'm there for them no matter what, and they can tell me anything. I don't believe “everything” your child does on the machine concerns you.

Spyware: How and Should You Use It? Harlen Coben wrote the editorial piece ‘Uncover Parent’ (March 16, 2008) and suggests that parents using spyware to monitor their child’s online activity is what should be done. I agree and disagree with his claims. Firstly, Coben, writer of ‘Undercover Parent’, argues that parents should be protective but not nosy. I fully agree with Coben.

A lot of kids met someone online and decides to meet them somewhere, which is dangerous. In my own experience, I’ve been calling and chatting strangers online. I’ve been making a lot of Internet friends online even though, I know in myself that it’s dangerous. There have been a lot of reports about strangers killing kids or some victim that they have been deceived or have deceived online. Spyware is one of the ways prevent the killing incidents and it is also a way to prevent our children seeing or clicking through the harmful sites. A kid researching might accidentally click on a site that has a lot of malicious pictures, adult content, and some other stuff that the kid shouldn’t see. In paragraph 8, Coben said, ¨First, we’ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile or the girl who was cyber bullied to the point where she committed suicide.¨ I agree on this part because I’ve been cyber bullied once. Some guy posted bad things about me on Facebook and I knew that everyone could see it. Luckily, my friends didn’t believe it and everyone reported him. A lot of people are experiencing or have experienced cyber bullying and I know that there’s a time in their life when they want to commit suicide because of

With the spyware, you have unlocked your child’s private world. Coben talks about this, about how this would seem like a breech of privacy--especially to the child. The computer is now the “key-locked diary of the past.” But it isn’t, there is a difference between writing your thoughts down on something you’d only see and posting your thoughts on the internet. Coben states such, along with

Spyware, it’s debatable! People are either for or against spyware, but the spyware in question is spyware used to monitor your children on the internet. Harlen Coben, a writer for the New York Times, has some pretty good reasoning on why people should be pro-spyware in his online article, “The Undercover Parent.” I do agree with Coben on his views on how spyware can help keep your children safe and protect them from the dangers of the internet.

I agree with Coben’s claim that spyware, although seen by many as an invasion of privacy, may be way the best way to protect your child from things outside your sphere control . It offers you an extra set of eyes that have the ability to record everything your child does on the Internet. Coben claims that if more people learned to accept the fact that spyware has good uses to then

Parents shouldn’t put spyware on their kids electronics because if they do then that might tarnish the relationship between the two, in the process. According to “The Conversation” “If a parent does not tell the child they are being monitored, and the child finds out, this is likely to be experienced as a breach of

”Now after doing a fair amount of research I get it”.(Coben 1) .I wouldn't want my child to talk to a stranger that could be a pedophile. So I would use spyware. “Second, everything your child types can already be seen by the world - teachers, potential employers, friends, neighbors, future dates.Shouldn't he/she learn now that the internet is not a haven of privacy (Coben 1).

Harlan Coben concludes how adolescents should have adult supervision, no matter what do to them being troubled whether, they’re chatting with a friend or simply on the Internet. Coben states how adolescents are constantly in danger on social media because no one is for sure how much danger exactly is out in the endless cyber world. He explains how there are certain individuals out in the world wide web. Some of those individuals could be sexual assaulters, sextual preditors, kidnappers, people with criminal records, and so on. As you can assume Coben surely wants the best for the next upcoming generation.

In Coben’s article he explains how having spyware on your child's device is not just a good idea but not doing it borders on negligence. While this is a good idea, Coben takes it into extremist terms. Not watching your child is not neglect, its trust, trust needs to be earned but how can it be earned if not chance to earn it is given? You should know what's going on in your child's life, but not every detail, that borders on an invasion of privacy.

As a parent it is impossible to monitor what your children do on the PC 100% of the time. With the dangers of online predators growing you should take precautions now to find out if there is a problem before it's too late.