Buckle In For Safety On The Web

Over the last several months, MySpace has been pummeled in the media and criticized by elected officials and law enforcement for maintaining a social networking web site that makes it far too easy for predators to find young victims

Recently, the site has been taking steps to enhance user safety but there are also things that users and parents can do to protect privacy and enhance online safety.

Privacy Features

The best way to protect your privacy on MySpace or any other service is to avoid posting any personally identifiable information.

MySpace does have some privacy features that vary depending on the stated age of the user. Users under age 16 can make their profile private, which means that the full profile can only be seen by "friends" who they approve. Another option is to specify that the profile be made available only to MySpace members under 18, but there is no way to know for sure the real age of any member.

Having a private profile doesn't make you invisible. Users can still search for children under age 16 by name or e-mail address and see their picture, a headline on their site, their gender, their sexual orientation, age, location, when they were last on and when they last updated their profile.

The option of making a profile private, meanwhile, is only for users under 16. Older members can't do that. All users are asked to state their date of birth when they join and that can be changed at any time by logging in, going to your home page, clicking Edit Profile, going to the Basic Info tab and clicking Edit.

Still, there are some optional privacy features available to older users. For example, all users have the option of requiring a last name or e-mail address to get requests to be added as a friend (that makes it harder for strangers to pester you with unwanted messages).

You can also require that you approve other people's comments before they're posted to the page, so someone can't add a comment without your permission. You can choose to hide, rather than announce, the fact that you're online. Unless you select the "hide" option, anyone can know when you're at the computer.

Other privacy options include preventing others from forwarding links to pictures on your site and controlling who can comment on your blog or who can see certain postings on your blog. In MySpace, a blog is an area accessible from your profile (main page) where you can engage in a discussion with other members.

Privacy settings are set by signing into MySpace, going to your home page, clicking Account Settings and then the "change settings" link next to Privacy Settings.

You can stop specific users from posting a message or communicating with you but there is no way to block specific users from viewing your profile or searching for your profile in the search engine. You can, however, edit your profile to change or remove information that you don't want to share with the public.

A user can request that his or her account be cancelled by clicking "cancel account" from the Account Settings menu, but if parents wish to cancel their child's account, the help system tells them to "work with your child to remove the account." You must be logged in as your child, so if you don't know your child's username and password, you can't get in.

When using the blog feature, there is a privacy option for each item. By default, all items are public but you can also select Diary (only you can see it), Friends (only accessible to people you've let in as friends), or Preferred List (a specific list of people you authorize to see this posting).

And here's something else to remember: any privacy settings a user chooses for a blog will not be carried over into the user's main profile page – for users over age 16, that page is always public.

Users should be careful about responding to messages they receive through MySpace or via email. In some cases, you may get a message that may appear to come from MySpace inviting you to join a group, take a survey or post comments on a page.

Don't respond unless you know the person or group. Users should also be very careful about accepting new "friends" unless they know them from the real world.

Beware of Surveys

MySpace encourages users to complete a profile questionnaire that asks about interests and favorite music, movies and TV shows as well as their religion, habits (smoking, drinking), educational level, income level, marital status, sexual preference, and whether you want or have kids.

You don't have to fill out this information but many users do. One reason, observes Kevin Farnham - author of the upcoming book "MySpace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens and Parents" - is that teens and other students are accustomed to being presented with forms that they just fill out.

Farnham advises users to be careful of the default settings. "By default, MySpace displays a great of information which, in some cases, you can turn off." The service also encourages students to post the name of their school and year of graduation - which others can use to help locate user profiles.

There are also some very popular third party surveys that kids can fill out and post to their pages. Some of these ask a lot of personal questions about likes, dislikes, personal feelings, drug use and sexual practices.

Answers to such questions, if viewed by a would-be predator, could be used to exploit potential victims.

Monitoring Your Child's Site

The ideal way to monitor your child's site is to visit it often to look around. If your child is under 16 and has a private profile, have him or her add you as a friend so you can view it. If your child is over 16, ask for the web address of his or her site.

Even if your child doesn't provide you with that information, you might still be able to find it.

If your child has a public profile you – or anyone – can find their MySpace site provided you know what to look for. To access the MySpace search feature, go to MySpace.com, click on Search under the MySpace logo (not the search box to the right of the logo) and type in your child's name, e-mail address or what you think might be their "display name" (kind of a nickname) and check the appropriate "search by" option just above the place where you type (in some cases it might require that you be a MySpace member to access information. If so, go ahead and signup for a free account).

If the information you're searching for appears in your child's profile, you will get to a page where can view the profile - if it's public. If it's private, you will see some information - but not the full profile.

Of course, it is quite possible for your child to sign up using a different name and an e-mail address you might not be aware of (anyone can get free email addresses from services like Hotmail and Yahoo).

Another way a parent might search for a son or daughter is to use the Classmate finder option in the search area. Locate the child's school by name and state and once you get to the school, you can narrow the search by gender, age range and whether your child is a current student or year of graduation. Because some kids lie about their age, it's best to choose the age range from 16 to 100.

It might not work, but you can also try searching MySpace as well as Google and other search engines for other information such as your child's cell phone number, street address or anything else that might show up on the web or in a profile.

Another way for parents to track a child's activity on MySpace is to use a web service called MySpaceWatch.com.

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 page.

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.