Clipstar Protects The Young

By Digital Trends Staff Published October 25, 2009

Clipstar Protects The Young Clipstar, the social video site currently in beta, is using an Anti-Grooming Engine from Crisp Thinking to stop thegrooming of young people by pedophiles. The Anti-Grooming Engine analyzes chat to discover potential dangers of grooming and bullying in both content and context. “Crisp can beconfigured to monitor many thousands of interactions simultaneously. It watches out for suspicious behaviour and conversation patterns, assesses and ranks risks and alerts a moderator or a parentwhenever the threat level rises and an under-18 may be in danger. The system is flexible, scalable and uncannily accurate in pinpointing grooming risks. In urgent cases, families can be alerted bytext messages and emails and the social network site can put an immediate block on the offending adult’s account,” Crisp Thinking explained on its site.

Digital Trends Staff

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Deals

Kidde’s Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Smart Alarm offers connected protection for less

Woman connecting to Kidde Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Wi-Fi Alarm with smart features on phone.

Keeping your family safe is a daunting task. There are dangers outside the home, and dangers that can occur inside the home, too. Fires, hazardous chemicals, carbon monoxide leaks, are just a few examples, but they can also be tough to monitor. When you leave your kids home alone, or furry little Fifi, you want to make absolutely sure they're safe.

While it's impossible to know everything that's going on, smart home technology, or rather a smart detection system, can help you keep an eye on at least some of that, regardless of whether you're at home or away. Kidde is introducing an excellent solution, called the Kidde Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Wi-Fi Alarm with Smart Features. More importantly, it's internet-ready and connects to your local Wi-Fi, something your average smoke or CO alarm cannot do. Once installed, you can receive alerts through a mobile app on your smartphone if there is a smoke or CO event, but you can also interact with it remotely from anywhere within your home. When your kids burn the grilled cheese or macaroni, and the alarm goes off, you can check to make sure everything's okay, and if it's not, you can kick it into high gear and call in every emergency service known to humankind.

Smart Home

How to protect your home security camera from hackers

Google Nest Indoor Security Camera

You've probably seen the stories in the news about trouble with do-it-yourself Wi-Fi home security cameras. There are home camera “invasions,” where user video is stolen from private cameras and posted to the internet, or straight-up hacking where an unknown person can access your camera and the microphone attached to it, and speak to you, threaten your children, or otherwise harass you from afar.

While these instances are rare, they do exploit certain vulnerabilities in wireless home surveillance cameras, so it's important to know how it happens, how you can tell if your camera's been hacked already, and how to secure your home network and evaluate whether your cameras are at risk and fix them.
How do hackers get into your cameras?
Why hackers hack security cameras is a whole separate question, but there are two common ways hackers can access wireless network information.
Local Wi-Fi network hacking
The first involves the hacker being within the range of your Wi-Fi. The hacker either guesses your Wi-Fi password or creates a duplicate or spoof network that looks like your Wi-Fi network. Next, they suppress the real network so that you sign in to their network instead. Once they have your password, they log in to your actual Wi-Fi network, and that's where the trouble begins.
Remote hack attack
While these local attacks are possible, they’re much less likely than a remote attack. Remote attacks occur when hackers gain your actual password info. How do they get your password? Sometimes if people use weak passwords like 11111, password, or 123456, hackers can simply try a bunch of the most common and default passwords until they hit on the right one.

Smart Home

How a smart thermostat can protect your home from brownouts

walmart drops prices on google home hub with nest thermostat and security camera learning

Summer's here, and for some parts of the country, it's going to be challenging to escape the extreme temperatures. Air conditioning is a must-have for those mid-July heatwaves, even more so for those with respiratory troubles and other health conditions. The trouble with summer and air conditioning, though, is that everyone on your street or in your apartment building has the same idea as you: They want to be cold, and they want to stay cold. When there's too much strain on your local power grid, there's a chance a brownout may occur. This is a temporary lag in electrical power that can affect your home for a few minutes or up to several hours.

Thankfully, today’s homes are significantly smarter and more efficient when it comes to combating high energy demands from appliances and HVAC systems. Take, for instance, the beauty and wonder of smart thermostats, which monitor and regulate the temperature of your home. They’re far more efficient because they’ll kick off your air conditioning system when you’re not home, or simply operate it at a lower capacity to maintain a specific temperature. They learn your habits over time to reduce power consumption, saving you money in the long run.