You are a monster!

You might want to have a remedial lesson in internet safety/privacy with your daughter. The fact that the younger one was able to access her email and password tells me that she isn't paying nearly as close attention to internet safety/rules you as you think she is.

If the younger didn't have access to the password then the older one must have left her email account logged in and open while she wasn't at the PC. That's another opportunity to reinforce the safety/privacy rules.

If the younger one did access the password, the older one needs to learn that it is important to periodically change her passwords.


As to the whys, is it possible that the younger one is a bit jealous of the friend's time spent with the older one and was trying to create a rift between them so she'd spend more time with the younger one?

I agree with Nick.

At the very least, just look at the list of names she's conversing with to make sure you know who they all are.

My daughter (14) has a facebook account and I do monitor it closely. She's
really just yapping away with her girlfriends, but once in a while there is someone in her friend list she doesn't really know. It's a friends suggestion
or other recommendation and when pressed further, the friend doesn't really
know either. So these people get deleted right away, but I have to be the one
checking it in the first place.

I also monitor emails - if they're from someone she doesn't know, we read
it together. One time I wasn't home she got a somewhat suggestive spam mail
and she wrote back "don't write back to me you pervert!"

My 15-1/2 year old son has a Tablet PC with internet access (his highschool requires this for all students.) When he wanted to open a Facebook account, I told him he could, but I had to be one of his "friends." What he says to individual "friends" on the private chat feature is his own business, but what he posts to his wall is public information. As long as he is under 18, I will continue to monitor how he presents himself in public. He may not like it, but that's tough. It's a matter of good parenting to me.

He's posted objectionable stuff a couple of times, and I've promptly made him remove it. It is truly amazing what teenagers think is harmless!

One other note: the school where I teach middle and high school students started a new Facebook policy this year that forbids teachers and students from being Facebook "friends." They believe it blurs the line between faculty and students, among other things. They did, however, exempt my "friend" status with my own son since that is a private parenting matter. So I still see what his friends post on his wall, and I'm telling you...it can be very enlightening.

What I think you should do girls and ladies is knock off all this technical wizardry and get back to what you're good at which is cooking and sewing and darning socks and bottling fruit, making jam and baking cakes.

If you're any good at fetching slippers, stoking the fire and leaving a neatly folded and unread newspaper on the coffee table by your husband's armchair that's a bonus.

Whoa! Where is THIS woman???

In England. Hundreds of thousands of them too.

And you can't afford to support any of them, nor will they have you.

By the way, you're confusing your dog with women again (I know it's been a long time). It's the dog that brings the slippers, woman just wear them. Here are some visuals to help you remember :

The weary provocateur sits by the cold fireplace with ice cold feet and no newspaper since it'll soon be 2010.

What does a model in a posed pic prove GW?

I do monitor it by looking to see who sends her stuff, but not the content.

No - there is no face book account.

I agree - we did go over this before with her webkinz password. She had given her "friend" her password for webkinz - this friend then went and changed her password on my daughter. She learned a lesson then - especially since this girl was the only one she ever had issues with in school (fortunately this girl no longer attends her school).

It may well warrant having continuing conversations about sharing passwords and accounts even with her sister. Her sister no longer is allowed to send anything without mommy or daddy viewing first - both mommy and daddy agree she is too young to have her own email address and she is now (not that we allowed it before - just didn't realize we would need these rules) only allowed to send from our (mommy and daddy's) email address.

I don't think younger one was trying to create a riff. I could tell just by her reaction when I told her about the email. She even said I should have said from "little booger" (actual name) so she would have known it was from me.

All is fine and resolved between all the kids.

That is what I do. I look at the list of names that show up that she has received emails from and who you has sent and I look at her inbox.

I do that too, check her email and only read the dubious ones (with her present).

I had to laugh, as my daughter also did give her password to friends from one of the kiddy sites she used when she was younger. I guess they all do until things
happen. That's how they learn to keep some things private.

That seems to be best between giving free rein - where she could get into some sort of danger and to allow her privacy among conversations with her friends.

To me, I don't see too much of a differences between kids sending notes to each other and sending emails - other than the danger of forwarding these notes - I also had that talk about how whatever she writes could be seen by millions of people if the email gets forwarded (and gave her some examples of this).

Yes Linkat, teaching them by example is the best way. I also had my daughter
delete things on facebook where she at first was upset but later on agreed that
it was the right thing to do (deleting it). Kids don't have all the courtesy filters yet, they're impulsive and just blurt out what they think, so we the parents
have to act as filter until they learn.

You can never be too careful.

What if she has a friend who forwards an e-mail she sends to another friend..someone else could then get her e-mail address and send her content which may not be appropriate....

I get a lot of spam because my mother forwards on e-mails to family and sundry...argh! I hate that and have been bombarded by pfishing scams left and right. >.< I had to reprimand my own mother for sharing my e-mail address.

Yes, you can.