• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 7, 2010

The social media boom has paved the way for a veritable gold rush of businesses providing social media security services to parents worried their children might be targeted by predators (or do something really stupid, all by themselves) on online social networks. For example this week brought news that SocialShield, a service which launched in June and lets parents monitor kids' social networks use, raised $10 million in its first round of venture capital financing.

The subscription service, costing $5-$10 per month, promises to alert parents to cyberbullying and also flags comments hinting at suicide, drug use, or sexual activity. Services like SocialShield sound like they could be helpful in some instances, but once again I'm forced to wonder whether they give parents a false sense of security. In short, I just don't think parents can realistically expect to be able to monitor all their children's online social activity -- or even a significant proportion of this activity.

Like a number of other online security services, SocialShield uses a child's email address to discover all the social profiles he or she has created using that address (or addresses). Parents provide the email addresses and then SocialShield sends an email to the child asking for permission to monitor his or her social network profiles. In other words, the child has to opt-in for the service to work, presumably after a conversation with his or her parents in which they explain that it's for your own good, etc.

I'm not clear whether this opt-in email to the child specifically lists every social network profile it will monitor, or how much detail is provided about the kind of monitoring that will take place. And of course, the child could always reject the request, possibly resulting in familial discord and parental chewings out. But setting these issues aside, there are some obvious limits to this approach.

On one hand, it seems like it could be quite effective at screening individuals who approach the child online for potentially shady purposes, by scanning their profiles and messages for inappropriate content or tracking their online interactions with the child for suspicious patterns. In fact, this was apparently the inspiration: according to the site, one of the co-founders identified the need for the service when a friend's daughter "was hounded by more than 80 adult men on facebook when her dad put up vacation photos of his family, one with them all in bathing suits."

But this is assuming you're looking at the right profile. Because if you're also trying to catch illicit or dangerous behavior on the part of the child -- like drug use or sexual activity -- it's only reasonable to consider the possibility that you're being duped.

After all, the whole system depends on the parent entering the right email addresses for the child. A kid doesn't have to be a genius (or even a boy genius) to realize that he can create a new email address using a made-up name, age, and location, then use this email to create a separate profile safe from prying parental eyes. To ensure counter-parental-security, he could avoid logging in from any of the family's home computers, including his own; a friend's laptop or smartphone will do. And this, in turn, would once again expose them to online predators -- now via a profile where their interactions would go unmonitored. Or perhaps I'm being paranoid? I'd be interested to hear what parents, online security mavens, and others think about this.