Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A First for Me

I just received an entirely inappropriate sms forward from someone whom I do not know. It was sent out from someone named Tabby in the Springfield, MO, area to some of her girlfriends. It was one of those sappy silly forwards that will bring good luck or other some such nonsense if you send it out to 9 other people in the next 9 minutes. What was different about this one was that it had a picture of a naked man attached to it!

I texted the person and asked them who they were and why they had sent me such an inappropriate picture. The simply texted back "I'm Tabby; sorry".

Most likely, it is some teenage girl trying to be cute or popular with her friends. (No, I'm not going to repost the picture here; this is a G-rated blog).

I am concerned, however, that anyone would send anything like this to anyone else. I guess kids can get away with it because it is private and not seen by parents. I know kids know how to delete their in and outboxes, even if their parents regularly check the phones.

We have a standing policy at my house, that as long as I'm paying for the cell phone use, I have the right to read incoming and outgoing sms messages. In fact, when my daughter got a marginally inappropriate text from someone, she brought me her phone to show me. I took care of it by texting the kid from my phone.

In this age of sms and email, we must take extra care to watch out for our kids; the world has them in it's site and wants them for itself.

3 comments:

Monk-in-Training said...

check their phones while they are asleep, I do my teenagers.

Rick Boyne said...

Well, random inspection is a "term of service" with my kids' phones!

Anonymous said...

I not only check it while they are sleeping - sometimes while Audrey's in the middle of texting, I just reach over and say "let me see", take the phone and look through the last few texts. I have always told her she should only text what she would say to the other person with me in the room. She knows this & follows this guideline. - Sally