Selling your children

Ok, perhaps "selling your children" is a bit harsh. However, there are commercial parental control software companies that sell your children's private conversations to their "trusted partners" It was reported by the AP today that one company in particular is gathering data from children's private online conversations and selling it for marketing purposes.

This is all part of the standard software agreement. When parents install the software and press "I accept," they agree to allow their children's online conversations to be sold to the highest bidder.

The software is developed by EchoMetrix Inc. based in Syosset, N.Y. They make several products including Sentry, Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (there is a product called SentryPC which has no affiliation with EchoMetrix) If you are using any of these products, there is a form online from which you can opt out of the data mining. The opt-out link is available through the program's control panel.

According to the Sentry press release on the subject,

[Our Software] is a proprietary software engine that reads digital content from multiple sources across the web, including: instant messages ("IM"), blogs, social environment communities, forums, and chat rooms.
...delivers the unsolicited raw conversations in real time...
...unmatched ability to get inside privileged IM chats...
...access to unfiltered and unbiased teen digital conversations...

More information can be found in the Associated Press article