The Flagler County Sheriff's Office is offering computer software to parents to help them monitor what happens on social networking sites in hopes of preventing cyber-bullying. Two Flagler County middle school students were recently reported to be harassing a fellow student through Facebook and MySpace, said sheriff's spokeswoman Debra Johnson. Sheriff Donald Fleming is offering parents another tool to protect their children.

"The Internet is a valuable tool, but it can be a weapon when used by the wrong people," Fleming said in a prepared release. "Parents face challenges every day trying to protect their children from dangers and the Internet has surfaced as another danger area.

His office is distributing copies of "ComputerCOP," a parental Internet monitoring software that enables parents with little or no computer skills to quickly see what their children have been doing online, including what MySpace or FaceBook photos they have posted and if they have been chatting or e-mailing inappropriate content about themselves or others.

ComputerCOP will also show parents any websites that their child has visited that have been flagged as containing one or more of the 2,000 keywords or phrases for which the program searches, Johnson said. The keywords searched are of a pornographic, drug-related or violent or hateful nature or could be a word or phrases a pedophile might use to solicit a child online.

"Unfortunately, the computer has become a popular medium that children use to harass and bully one another," Fleming said. The software is available to Flagler County residents at the Sheriff's Operations Center in Bunnell, the Robert E. McCarthy substation in Palm Coast and through the sheriff's school resource deputies, Johnson said.