Re: [LM_NET] Incredible "teachable moment" Illinois legislation

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

This is a major challenge. There are several problems.

One is that in most countries there is no effective way to clearly identify
minors. And further, whereas my identity and your identity will not change,
the identity of the adult who has custodial authority over minors may
change. So keeping such a system up to date would be very difficult. And a
friend of mine has checked out the effectiveness of some of the verification
systems used on adult sites and has found he also can easily get into the
sites. 

The second is that there are companies seeking to get into this business
whose funding model is being able to sell demographic data about children or
teens to the web sites so the web sites can engage in better targeted
advertising. 

Eguardian is a US company that telling schools and parents that its digital
identification system will protect children from online predators. Predators
are not targeting children. They target teens who are interested in talking
about sex with online strangers. The teens meet knowing these guys are
adults who want to have sex. Eguardian is bribing schools. They tell schools
that when parents pay $29, they will give the school $11 for fund-raising.

But the way Eguardian intends to make big bucks is be being able to provide
its partner web sites with demographic data that they can use to target
advertising to children!

If you want to get really scared, look at the site of Aristotle.
http://www.aristotle.com. This company is partnering with the AGs to push
for digital identification for social networking sites. What they clearly
want to be able to do is to accurately track social network site users -
their interests, friends, activities - and tie this with their already too
intrusive database that they sell to politicians (of their choosing).
Yikes!!!

So from my perspective, the best way to protect children is through the use
of family safety protections. Windows Vista has a great system. And Norton
just announced their new Online Living.

Parents need to understand that regardless of what site their child (under
13) is on if this is a social-networking like site, their child should only
link to to people they know in the real world. Period. My rules for my 15 YO
daughter is only people who you know - or someone you know knows in person,
so you do not connect with a fake profile. She has successfully detected
several fake profiles when someone made a friendship request.

And the best way to protect teens is through the protective features on the
sites themselves and through effective education. Note, that MySpace has
removed the profiles of 90,000 registered sex offenders. The news that was
not well reported is that NOT ONE of those RSOs had been rearrested for
sexually offending on MySpace. This is a testament to the effectiveness of
the MySpace protective features - and the intelligence of youth.

Nancy

> Nancy wrote
> <<Make sure they focus on the things parents and teens can do to make sure
> they are safe online -
> because they will find, like the Berman Task Force found, that age and
> identity verification will
> not accomplish this >>
> 
> As part of the discussions about Facebook, it was suggested that under-teens
> could use
> http://www.imbee.com.  All memberships have to have parent approval, and all
> adult memberships are
> 'validated' by credit card verification or a phone a/c.
> 
> One of my colleagues here has signed up and, being unwilling to share his
> credit card details with
> unknowns, he submitted his phone details.  But, as he said, if they just do an
> online check, all
> they will find is a phone a/c registered in that name and even if they ring,
> they have no real
> verification he is who he says he is.
> 
> While we can appreciate the efforts made by this company and others to keep
> kids safe, I'm not quite
> sure how they can prove their members are who they say they are.
> 
> There is Super Clubs in the UK and Australia who seem to go that bit further
> ...
> http://www.superclubsplus.com/i/validate so maybe someone in the US will set
> that up for your
> children.
> Barbara
> 
> Barbara Braxton
> Teacher Librarian
> COOMA NSW 2630
> AUSTRALIA
> 
> E. barbara.288@bigpond.com
> Together we learn from each other
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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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