April 25, 2006
Buckle In For Safety On The Web
Larry Magid's Tips For Parents, Kids On Privacy & Safety Online
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Kids using social networking sites should be reminded that anyone including college admission officers, future boyfriends and girlfriends, and future employers might be able to see what they post. (CBS/AP)
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Interactive Protecting Children Online What to say to your child about Web porn and online predators, and how to look for signs of porn on your PC. Plus: warning signs that an adult may be communicating with your child.
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Interactive Cyber Crime Find out about viruses, worms, and other ways people can attack both you and your computer online.
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Special Report PC Answer Tips and tricks from Larry Magid on PCs, software, gadgets and more.
There is a free version that will monitor one profile and "crawl" (look for updates) twice a day. There is also a $6 a month version which monitors up to five profiles, updated every six hours.
The service makes it very easy to find a person if that person is registered under their own name.
MySpace Tightens Up
Earlier this month MySpace hired, Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam as its Chief Security Officer to help protect kids. The site's parent company, News Corporation, has also teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to promote Internet safety messages on MySpace and its other media outlets.
MySpace is also working with Internet safety organizations including Tech Parenting Group. (Disclosure: I am an unpaid member of board of directors of both the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Tech Parenting Group and I may in the future receive compensation for safety education work funded in part by MySpace).
Anne Collier of NetFamilyNews.org and I recently toured MySpace's headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif., to get a firsthand look at safety procedures. As of last month, the company said it had 105 customer care employees - a third of its workforce - looking at sites, photos, videos and other media to find material that is inappropriate, illegal or dangerous and to ferret out users who are under 14 – the minimum age for posting a profile on MySpace.
Those 105 people are policing a site with a reported 70 million users with an additional 250,000 new users coming on daily. About 13 million MySpace users are between 14 and 18. Clearly there are also users who are under 14 who lie about their age. While MySpace has no system to verify age, we're told that staff members often find tell-tale signs that members are underage and delete their profiles.
The service encourages users to post photos. Nudity is not allowed but it is not unheard of for teens to post pictures that are, shall we say, "suggestive."
So What's A Parent To Do?
As parents, we want to protect our children and, of course, do everything possible to keep them safe. But ultimately, the only person who can really keep a child safe is the child. We can't watch them 24 hours a day, especially when they're teenagers - the age group that typically gets into trouble with social networking sites.
While there are filters that can block MySpace or other sites from your home computer, teens can often find a way around them.
Filters preventing children from accessing MySpace on their home computers are unlikely to solve the problem, because there are plenty of other social networking sites - including some with fewer protections than available at MySpace. Social networking isn't going away and – despite the dangers – there are many positive things about it.
It may also be a good idea to explore other social networking sites with different safety or privacy options. I haven't tested all of these sites but other popular social networking sites include LiveJournal.com, Hi5.com, MyYearBook.com, Tagged.com (open only to teens) and Xanga.
IndustriousKid.com is a soon-to-be-launched social networking site for kids between 8 and 14, which will have parental controls.
Other sites to be aware of in the social networking universe: Friendster, which is only for adults, and Facebook, which is open only to college and high school students.
More Online Safety Resources
The best protection for children is to make sure they understand some basic rules of the road. At BlogSafety.com – a web site operated by myself and Anne Collier of NetFamilyNews.org – we have a checklist of safety tips posted on our
They include protecting your anonymity, trying to limit who can see your page, avoiding in-person meetings, check comments that others post on your page and being very careful before posting photos.
Kids should be reminded that there can be consequences for their actions and that anyone including college admission officers, future employers and future boyfriends and girlfriends might be able to see what they post - even if they think they've deleted it.
At the end of the day, your best tactic is to talk with your kids. They may not seem like they're listening, but talk with them anyway. Some of it will sink in.
For more help, please click on BlogSafety.com's Social Networking Tips for Parents, and feel free to use the site's forum to ask questions of experts. Other useful educational sites include GetNetWise.org, NetSmartz.org and SafeKids.com.
A syndicated technology columnist for nearly two decades, Larry Magid serves as on air Technology Analyst for CBS Radio News. His technology reports can be heard several times a week on the CBS Radio Network. Magid is the author of several books including "The Little PC Book."
By Larry Magid ©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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