Club Penguin Safety

Any time your child is online, you have to be concerned and watchful, even on Websites just for kids.

Club Penguin is an online virtual world that is growing in popularity with kids from about 8 to 14. This Web site is now owned by Disney and they take effort to keep it a save place for kids. How well do they do?

Not counting the consumerism, Club Penguin appears to be a safe environment for children for several reasons:

• There is absolutely no advertising on the site. (On the other hand, this is how they justify charging $6 a month to support the site.)

• There is nothing to download on your computer.
• Club Penguin is rigorous about applying their policies and are quick to ban offending penguins.

• The site is heavily monitored.
  • Club Penguin hires monitors to watch the activity in all areas. That what the the gold shield with an "M" in the upper right corner of the screen means. If anything gets out of hand, they'll step in and stop it. You can also report abuse to them.
  • Your children are encouraged to be watchdogs. Penguins that have been members for 45 days are invited to be Secret Agents. Their 'duties 'include, among other things, reporting bad penguins or any inappropriate activit to Club Penguin

• The Club Penguins servers have monitoring software that searches through all the chat for any inappropriate words, inappropriate information (like phone numbers, schools, addresses), or inappropriate conversation, even the text shortcuts that kids use. Messages are prevented from being displayed (for instance, it is supposed to recognize phone numbers right away) and a warning is sent or the offending penguin is banned.

Club Penguin is rated high for safety among watchdog groups like the Better Business Bureau - Kid's Privacy Seal of Approval and NetSmartz, but you always have to take this with a grain of salt and still monitor your child's Web activity yourself.

1. Play Club Penguin with them.
2. Play Club Penguin by yourself every now and then.
3. Make sure to use your email address when signing up. Do not create an email address for your child just for Club Penguin or if they already have an address, do not use theirs for signing up.
4. Limit their time in the Club. For instance, allow 30 minutes on odd days and an hour on even.

5. Select the member option of Ultimate Safe Chat. This way, your child can chat with other players only by selecting a phrase from a list of stock phrases (Hi, Good game, I'll be back). And they can only see messages from other Ultimate Safe Chat messages.
   • to set chatting capabilities, go to the Club Penguin homepage, click Membership, scroll to the bottom and select Edit Membership.
6. Teach your children how to keep their guard up
   1. never give out personal information such as real name, age, location, phone number or school.

   2. tell a parent and moderator about anything weird or uncomfortable or if someone asks you for personal information.
7. Let your child be a Secret Agent. Secret Agents are penguins that have played for at least 30 days with no offensive activity. Secret Agents are also asked to help keep Club Penguin safe and report anyone who is being disruptive or using offensive language.

In addition to these safety efforts, Club Penguin also tries to discourage excessive use. New features come out weekly, rather than daily, and the site doesn't punish users for not visiting frequently, as some competing sites do. The rumor is that Club Penguin creators plan to release a feature in June that will let parents limit how much time kids spend on the site.