Linda Criddle - Look Both Ways | Consulting
Linda Criddle is a tireless advocate for consumers. Her passion and talent for teaching Internet safety principles has benefited youth, parents, and educators. She is author of the award-winning consumer-oriented book, Look Both Ways: Help protect your family on the Internet, and gives consumers the same straightforward, accessible online safety information on her Web site, Look-both-ways.com.
Internet safety expert and author Linda Criddle has her own consulting company LOOKBOTHWAYS Online Safety Consulting LLC. Before establishing her company, Criddle spent 13 years at Microsoft where she was a pioneer in online safety. She was a valuable asset to the MSN division and more broadly to the entire company because of her deep understanding of online predatory behavior and her ability to create practical technical and policy-based solutions. The depth and breadth of Linda’s online safety expertise is reflected in her direct participation in the creation and filing of numerous patents on behalf of Microsoft in the areas of emerging technologies and online safety.
Linda has collaborated with several international law enforcement agencies, helping with investigations into the online activities of child predators. She has worked with many government organizations in the U.S. and around the world to prepare online safety regulations and legislation. In Washington state, for example, Linda chairs the Education Committee for the State Attorney General's Youth Internet Safety Taskforce, and she advises several other attorneys general around the U.S. on Internet safety matters. In addition, Linda has offered online safety training and design expertise to executives and product teams across the technology industry. She is at work on a second book that aims to teach the industry how to build safer software and services. LOOKBOTHWAYS also provides product design, safety reviews, and other consulting services to leading technology companies.
For Washington State University, Criddle wrote "Internet Safety for Educators," a distance learning course that she began teaching in July 2007. Utah State University also offers her course. For schools across the U.S., Criddle is currently building a fully integrated K-12 curriculum.
Linda is an active single mother of four who grew up in California and then lived and worked in Kristiansand, Norway, for 15 years. In Norway, she was involved in city politics and a member of the Kristiansand City Council. There, she began her advocacy for women and children’s rights, using both her political position and her journalist background to raise awareness and call for the funding of abuse hotlines and crisis shelters. This work inspired her research into predatory behavior, methods, and mindsets, an interest she has pursued for more than 25 years.
Twenty percent of the author's proceeds from Look Both Ways: Help protect your family on the Internet goes to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.