[LM_NET] MAJOR WARNING TO EDUCATORS!!!

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

Hopefully I got your attention. I have also posted the text of this email in
my blog. This nation's attorney generals have been encouraging the
development of digital identification - and pressuring social networking
sites to implement such identification. At a recent meeting of a task force
that has been established at the Berkman Institute, the ides of having
schools help by verifying the identity, age, and other variables of students
took steam. There are two companies, eGuardian and identity.net that are
already " on the street" trying to get schools involved in this. Eguardian
is associated with WoogiWorld and Identity-net is associated with ISafe.
They are trying to use the election to get schools to participate.

THE DANGER IS that these companies are using "fear of the Internet" to
encourage schools to participate. These approaches will allow for far more
effective market research profiling of young people to be used for targeted
advertising - because the way these companies are going to make money is by
providing their "partners" - the web sites - with a unique persistent
identifier, age, gender and geographic location of your students.

I am working with some privacy experts to get this stopped. IF there is a
need for digital identification of minors, there MUST be federal legislation
to ensure that this digital identification data NOT be used for market
profiling and targeted advertising.

I have posted a blog on this:

http://csriu.wordpress.com/digital-identification-and-the-dangers-to-youth/

Please spread this message far and wide.

Nancy


-- 
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
http://cyber-safe-kids.com
http://csriu.wordpress.com
nwillard@csriu.org

Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social
Aggression, Threats, and Distress (Research Press)

Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the
Internet Safely and Responsibly (Jossey-Bass)

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