WOULD YOU LEAVE A NOTE ON YOUR FRONT DOOR SAYING, "HI, WERE NOT HOME NOW, AND WON'T BE BACK FOR HOURS"?

[ed.- Of course well, hopefully not]

Most parents know how dangerous the Internet can be, and if they have children, they usually try to get this across to their child whenever they become of "PC AGE". Maybe a few years go by, and the child is a teenager now, so parents - It's time for a refresher course! [ed. or, as the "Thing" from the Fantastic Four might shout: "It's clobbering time"]

I didn't research any hard facts or actual data, but I would make and educated guess that at least 75% of teenagers who use a cellphone, use a smart phone with features offered by Android and iPhone, with "APPS" like.........."FACEBOOK".

And I've read, and heard about my many horror stories regarding their need to inform their friends what they are doing at a particular time, where they are doing it, and if it's a Movie, you can pretty well figure out how long that will last, and when they get home they find out they were pretty well cleaned out.

Posts like:

• We're just going in to the theatre to see Spiderman
• Alice and I just sat down at Texas Land and Cattle for Steak Dinner off the Southwest Freeway.
• Hi everyone! We just wanted to let you know that our cruise is going great and we'll fill you in with the facts when we get back next week!
• Grrrr. I'm stuck at work for at least another two hours, maybe more. I'll be lucky to get home by midnight. Grrrr.

Notice a pattern? IF this news is only going to friends (that don't blab to less-than-honest-friends), you might be okay. But with the number of accounts being hacked into, it's very possible you've just told a completely dishonest stranger that it's a great time to go to your apartment or home and clean it out.

Five years ago I would have put the odds of this happening as "Astronomical". Today, I'm not so sure - and neither should you. It's really a good time to sit down with your teenager (or in some cases, husband, or wife) and re-enforce how lax security is, and they should be less willing to give this information out. You could suggest they wait a day and then tell their friends that they were out last night pretty late but had a good time. This has been my public service announcement for the week.

[VIEWING CHART]

I'd like to thank all of you out there who have actually taken the time to read this Blog, and hopefully you have received a little extra information to keep you ahead of the hackers curve. The chart above is a graph which shows when I had the most viewers, I while I don't recall the exact number, between July 27th and Today, this Blog has had over 2500 views. Thank you - Very Much!

'Nuff Said

Brian