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At first I was somewhat concerned, as the last thing a company like ours needs is Microsoft stepping in and crushing us with a competing product. I then did some research to satisfy my concerns and am actually very excited with what Microsoft is advertising for parental controls!

Basically, their parental controls solution that comes with Vista addresses the following areas: website filtering, content blocking, time limitations, games, and the view of web history. All very good areas, however these filters definitely give the parents enough awareness into what their children are doing online!

I am of the opinion (and let’s not forget that I am partial to imView for obvious reasons) that parents should definitely utilize parental controls that come with their operating systems because of the great features. In particular, I am a fan of setting time limits and the blocking of certain applications. However, parents should be most concerned with what is going on with regards to instant messaging (and not just MSN) and search activity.

With a product such as imView working in conjunction with Vista parental controls parents now have the ability to basically capture all the activity on their children’s computer. Additionally, and not that I want to say anything negative about Microsoft, their parental controls DO NOT offer parents the ability the view the data remotely. With all of busy schedules it is not always convenient to go to the actual pc you are monitoring. We have and will continue to create web-based solutions for our busy parents so they can get the level of awareness they require without having to physically be at the pc they are monitoring.

If you have questions regarding this posting, please feel free to contact me directly at Michael@imview.net and if you are interested in exploring a more advanced level of parental controls please visit: www.imview.com

Here is the link to the recent press release:

http://www.prlog.org/10137701.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khyx6wlItNw

For example, here is a link to a recent news story out of Virginia where local police are committed to making parents aware of the true dangers that exist on-line and at the same time explain to them how important it is to “know their world”…and while government agencies don’t endorse commercial products, I can’t help but think these fine officers wouldn’t love the assistance imView provides parents.

 http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=94746&paper=62&cat=104

But our efforts don’t stop there. Getting a great tool like imView in the hands of parents is job one, but we also feel it is important to give these other committed groups the tools they need to help protect your children. That is why imView has partnered with the national predator database and created a imView predator mapping tool that local municipalities, law enforcement, and schools can use (or even place on their own site) to help provide awareness of the location of all registered sex offenders in their area. You can find this powerful resource here: http://www.imview.net/predator-map.htm

Star Gazette , NY

In a perfect world, social Web sites would police the people who join them and bar sexual predators from preying on other Internet users, especially kids. However, that’s a matter of conscience for each site to act upon, and because morals are hard to enforce on Web site owners, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is trying to do the next best thing.

His support for legislation to ban sexual predators from using sites such as the wildly popular MySpace and Facebook is a critical step toward putting the ultimate responsibility for Internet use on the users themselves. The proposal would make New York the first state in the nation to ban sexual predators from Internet social sites, and it also would expand New York’s sex offender registry to include Internet information such as screen names and e-mail addresses.

The bill already is well on its way to approval, having unanimously passed the Senate on Feb. 12. Cuomo, a Democrat, now needs the Assembly, controlled by his own party, to go along with the measure. The Assembly, which can be notoriously slow in deliberating bills approved by the Republican-dominated Senate, should give this proposal a speedy OK so Gov. Spitzer can sign it into law quickly.

Cuomo deserves credit for pursuing this measure. It’s really the next and most forceful step in his attempt to make social Web sites a safer place for kids to frequent the Internet. Nearly one year ago, Cuomo recruited other state attorney generals to work with him and with MySpace to get the social networking site to provide law enforcement with the identities of registered sex offenders who MySpace had detected and removed from its site.

This past fall, Cuomo pressured Facebook to work with his office on a new method of protecting its users from sexually predatory users. The agreement with Facebook also forced the social networking site to shield members from obscene material and harassment, a move that came after investigators posed online as young teens. The solicitations that followed were enough to convince Facebook to cooperate.

As a result, Facebook and MySpace have helped lead the way in bringing about a degree of self-reform in the social network industry, but that’s only part of the job. The legislation Cuomo is pushing, called the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act — nicknamed e-STOP — puts the onus on users to obey the law, not use the Internet to sexually exploit children and, if they are registered sex offenders, to include Internet information with the state.

However, the law can only go so far, and parents and kids themselves have a responsibility to protect themselves on the Internet by not sharing personal information with strangers that could lead to them tracking down where a child might live. Kids also must use privacy settings to block unauthorized use of their accounts, and they should report all suspicious online behavior or messages they see, either to an adult or authorities.

Sitting at a computer keyboard may seem rather harmless, but with the wrong keystrokes, a child can make herself or himself a target for others. Cuomo’s law doesn’t remove all the risk of that happening, but it can certainly reduce it.

Arkansas: A 2007 law added cyberbullying to school anti-bullying policies and included provisions for school officials to take action against some off-campus activities. The law applies to electronic acts whether or not they originate on school property “if the electronic act is directed specifically at students or school personnel and is maliciously intended for the purpose of disrupting school, and has a high likelihood of succeeding in that purpose.”

Delaware: The School Bullying Prevention Act passed in 2007 allows school administrators to take action against “technology-related” bullying that takes place off school grounds “provided there is a sufficient school nexus.”

Idaho: A law passed in 2006 allows school officials to temporarily suspend students for disrupting school by bullying or harassing other students, including by using telephones or computers.

Iowa: 2007 law includes references to electronic communication and requires schools to create policies prohibiting harassment and bullying “in schools, on school property or at any school function or school-sponsored activity.”

Minnesota: A 2007 bill requires schools to create written policies “prohibiting intimidation and bullying of any student,” including the use of the Internet.

New Jersey: A 2007 bill added electronic communication to the definition of bullying in school policies. While the law refers to bullying in schools, new state guidelines say school administrators “may impose consequences for acts of harassment, intimidation or bullying that occur off school grounds, such as cyberbullying,” but only when those acts substantially disrupt school.

Oregon: State officials added cyberbullying in 2007 to a law that called for school districts to develop anti-bullying policies, establish procedures to report such behavior, and provide an outline of consequences. The law defines bullying as any act that “substantially interferes” with a student’s education and takes place “on or immediately adjacent to school grounds” or at school-sponsored activities.

South Carolina: The Safe School Climate Act, passed in 2006, required school districts to adopt policies to “prohibit harassment, intimidation or bullying at school.” Electronic communication was included in the definition of bullying.

Washington: A 2007 bill added electronic harassment to school district harassment prevention policies. It calls on school administrators to develop policies prohibiting bulling “via electronic means” but restricts the scope of the policy to actions that take place “while on school grounds and during the school day.”

States considering cyberbullying bills:

Maryland: State Del. Craig Rice proposed a bill to require schools to develop policies prohibiting bullying and cyberbullying after hearing from a high school student who said classmates harassed her after she came out as gay. The bill has a treatment component.

Missouri: Following the suicide of a 13-year-old-girl allegedly the victim of an Internet hoax, Gov. Matt Blunt created an Internet Harassment Task Force. In January, it proposed a law that would make it a crime to harass someone using an electronic device— from a class A misdemeanor to a class D felony. The task force also called for state education officials to consider computer ethics and etiquette classes and suggested legislation adding harassment as a mandatory reportable offense under current education statutes.

New York: At least two proposed laws deal with cyberbullying in the schools. They would amend education law by including electronic communication in the definition of harassment, creating procedures to investigate harassment, and establishing a statewide registry for bullying, cyberbullying and hazing complaints.

Rhode Island: State Sen. John Tassoni Jr. is sponsoring a bill that would add cyberbullying to school anti-harassment policies. It calls for repeat violators to be sent to family court, which would determine whether the offending student is to be considered delinquent. The bill does not include off-campus bullying.

Vermont: A bill has been proposed that would expand an existing anti-bullying law by allowing school officials to punish some off-campus bullying, including cyberbullying. School officials would be allowed to take action “if the acts have a direct or negative impact on a student’s academic performance or access to school services.” The bill also would make bullying and cyberbullying a crime punishable by a fine of up to $500.

Corporations were the first inspiration for Jerry Salvi’s and Michael DenBlaker’s online tracking technology.

Kids, however, soon became the focus of a broader vision.

The brothers-in-law and co-founders of uVee Technologies LLC initially set out to create a product that would allow companies to archive and retrieve employees’ e-mails, an important technological feature in the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which was passed after several corporate accounting scandals.

However, Salvi said they soon realized that a far larger group of individuals was clamoring for such technology.

“In social circles, we kept hearing that parents didn’t know what their kids were doing online,” Salvi said. “We also kept hearing more and more stories about kids getting contacted by online predators.”

The two men saw the growing need in their own lives — between them, they have five children under the age of 13, and they were concerned about dangers proliferating in the online world.

In December, the company introduced its imView™ application and a new parent-targeted slogan: “Know Their World.”

Salvi, 40, who worked for a decade at MCI Inc., and DenBlaker, 38, who has a background in information technology consulting, inked a partnership last week with the National Predator Database, a private group that gathers information on registered sex offenders around the country. As part of the accord, an imView™ link sits prominently on the database Web site.

They also recently received an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police of New Jersey.

Subscribers to the imView™ service access an online portal page, where they can keep track of their children’s Instant Messaging, e-mails, Web surfing and social chats.

Parents can build profiles for their young Web surfers based on content they deem appropriate, or set “alert” words, where they would be notified if any of the words appeared in their typed exchanges.

But the primary aim, the co-founders say, is to thwart online predators. An October report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that “32 percent of online teens have been contacted by someone with no connection to them or any of their friends” and 7 percent said they had felt scared or uncomfortable as a result of such contacts.

In focus groups the company commissioned, about half the parents said they would tell their kids about the monitoring. The other half said that might interfere with getting a true picture of their kids’ online comings and goings.

ImView has plenty of competitors, although Salvi and DenBlaker say most rely on software rather than their product’s Web-based tracking. Their $5.99-a-month service allows parents to keep track of communications on computers remotely.

“We priced it so that anyone who can afford a laptop and an Internet connection can also afford this,” Salvi said.

The partners initially used their own capital to start up, in part to hire developers working in the U.S. and overseas. They later attracted several “high-net-worth individuals” and one institutional investor to fund further development. Total initial costs exceeded $200,000, DenBlaker said.

Maintaining a frugal mind-set has been one of their priorities. For example, DenBlaker painted the partners’ Main Street office space and the men bought their furniture on craigslist.com. They even hooked up their own phone system.

Not all their advertising efforts have hit the mark. For instance, a brief experimentation with direct mailings flopped, they said.

“You need to carefully test these marketing strategies,” DenBlaker said. “Things you think are going to bring high-value returns often don’t.”

A more promising plan, they suspect, is a continued emphasis on corporate partnerships and campaigns such as paid-search advertising.

“The goal,” Salvi says, “is to make imView™ the Band Aid [of online tracking tools], the brand every parent knows to go to.

By Liz White

“It sounds kind of snoopish.” That’s one eighth grader’s reaction to imView™, a Web-based way for parents to get a virtual look over the shoulder of their online teens and preteens. imView™ CEO Jerry Salvi acknowledges, the “Kids in this area are for the most part good kids, they want to do the right thing.”

As Salvi and imView™ co-founder and president Michael DenBlaker explain their new venture, it’s is about security, not privacy. Based in Glen Rock, im – as in “instant messaging” — View aims to blunt the prevalence of online predators, scam artists and anyone else whom kids might unwittingly invite in.

Salvi figures that about 70 percent of Bergen teens and preteens have their own computer, and most of those computers, he says, don’t have any sort of filter. He cites national statistics that suggest one in five kids encounter a predator online. And DenBlaker states the obvious concern:

“If it’s homework time, with parents coming in from work and getting dinner going, they can’t physically monitor every moment their kids spend online.”

After all, he warns, “A lot can happen in ten or 15 minutes.”

Salvi and DenBlaker, both Bergen natives, created imView™ so that parents could consistently monitor a specific computer for a monthly or yearly fee.

Parents register right online, and keep up with their kids’ instant messaging, e-mailing and Internet traffic — from any computer, whether it’s a workplace desktop or a Blackberry on the train ride home. Some parents may choose to tell their kids they have an imView™ of their online world; others may not.

Fathers themselves, with five kids between them ranging in age from three to 13 years old, Salvi and DenBlaker are both business partners and brothers-in-law. Their personal motivation in launching imView™? To safeguard their own children. Their professional passion? To take their company global. And they’re on their way. “We’ve contacted virtually every municipality and police department in the (201) area,” says DenBlaker, “and it’s getting a very favorable response.”

“Our grassroots is (201),” Salvi adds, “That’s where we’re from. We’re starting in our own back yard with an eye toward concentric growth.”

• monitor instant messaging and chat
• view received and sent emails
• see web addresses and pages visited
• customize settings and filters

www.imview.net offers a straight forward and simple dashboard that makes accessing information easy.  imView’s mission is to provide parent’s with a tool that is easy, inexpensive and robust in its monitoring capabilities.