January 16, 2004
Dear Subscribers:
Here's our lineup for this second week of January:
- Family Tech: A tech-literate dad on file-sharing
- Web News
Briefs: Teens' blog life; Blogs help Iranian political prisoner;
Net use in 14 countries; Canada's new online-safety program; Cell-phone
monitoring for parents; Pay-per-folk song; Yahoo IM security; The Net and
child pornography; Parent-school digital divide; New AOL, MSN services;
'Speed-dating'....
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Family Tech: A tech-literate dad on file-sharing
For this, Part 2, of our conversation with father-of-six
and CorePROTECT CEO Tim La Fazia,
we asked Tim what parents need to know about file-sharing for both child online
safety and family computer security.
"It's important to understand that when you install
file-sharing software [like Kazaa, Grokster, or Blubster], you're setting
your system up as a [Web] server," Tim told us, elaborating a bit: "The software's
default setting turns your PC into a server and [as with instant-messaging
services] broadcasts your presence on the Internet. People out on the Net
can now find you and access the shared folders on your system.
"You can share far more than you intended to without
ever knowing it, because your hard drive is now open. I would make sure that
when anyone installs [Kazaa, for example], pay close attention to every option
or preference." There are many, many file-sharing networks (for a large sample,
see AfterNapster.com), and they're all a bit different. They don't necessarily
come set up to share everything on a PC but undoubtedly arrive on your machine
with file-sharing turned on, Tim said. "Once that happens, a PC is exposed
to all the security risks [viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, etc.]."
So the No. 1 tip: "The best thing is for parents to
set up the software themselves. In my house you're only using it to get files.
We disable file-sharing," Tim said. "But again, pay close attention to all
the preferences."
That could be daunting to some parents, we suggested,
and Tim acknowledged that "there's a learning curve with each software program."
But the preferences aren't that hard to figure out, it's worth the effort,
and the payback is not just in better online privacy and PC security; working
through the set-up process with your child can bring other parent-child benefits.
"In addition to maintaining high-security settings
in the software," Tim continued, "make sure your virus software is updated....
Also, P2P clients [software products] are replete with spyware. Just downloading
the client brings in all kinds of spyware," which can slow your PC down considerably.
For that, get
the free spyware detect-and-removal software, Ad-Aware.
We asked Tim if anyone shares files at his house.
"Yes, my 16-year-old girl does. We have a rule that she not use P2P to share
copyrighted information - don't download anything copyrighted unless you're
at a site that says you're allowed to - like something from a new rock band.
She knows to look for the disclaimer on the site - that's how to tell. And
I do regular check-ups with her." We asked him if she knows where to find
the copyright disclaimers. "Their locations vary, but there is an immediate
disclaimer for each application as you install it - read the user agreement,
at least the legal part."
Tim seems to have reached a certain comfort level
with his daughter's file-sharing. "I'm reasonably sure she's not downloading
copyrighted music. The key is good communication - and 'reasonably' is the
operative word." With a policy agreed upon, good and frequent communication,
and some basic Net smarts [e.g., go to a search engine, type in "security
vulnerabilities" and the software's name - e.g., "Blubster" - and you'll find
user groups discussing these services, he said), he feels the formula's working.
"Although banning P2P altogether might be the simplest
solution, as a Dad, one of my charges is to teach responsible behavior. Sooner
or later our kids will endeavor into the realm of P2P. I'd much rather have
an influence over how they approach and use it. That said, there's always
a risk that they would choose to abuse it - but I must err on the side of
teaching and trusting my children."
Finally, we asked Tim a question on many minds these
days: Parents are telling us they can't believe all the security issues they're
having to be aware of and deal with all of a sudden. What's going on in the
big picture that seems to make giving kids Net access so complicated now?
Tim told us that what's at issue more is what kids
like about the Net than viruses, spyware, and hackers. "Security issues have
always been present regarding kids' access to the Internet. However, as more
applications, services, and forums are available to and popular with our kids,
the more complicated it seems to get. My best advice to parents is to 1) be
as aware of your kids' Internet behavior as possible, through communication
and supervision, and 2) set some fundamental rules and guidelines regarding
Internet-related use that can be applied across any of the sites, systems,
and /or services to which they might subscribe."
Further info/latest news
- File-sharing risks. Beyond the legal and
ethical issues surrounding copyrighted music, software, videos, etc., the
three nasties readily downloaded on the file-sharing networks are viruses,
porn, and spyware. And that's just incoming risks. The outgoing one, if
the software's configured to share and not just download files, is loss
of privacy. People have inadvertently shared tax files, medical records,
and other personal info on their hard drives by misconfiguring (or not configuring)
file-sharing software (see "New file-sharing detection software," 11/14/03,
for more info and links to US congressional hearings on this).
- Kazaa's dark side. Two views of it in the
news this week: 1) "45% of the executable files downloaded through Kazaa,
the most popular file-sharing program, contain malicious code like viruses
and Trojan horses," Wired
News reports; 2) a porn producer, Titan Media, complained in a letter
to the US Congress that Kazaa "has not blocked users ... from downloading
its films, even though they have the technology to do so"; Titan said that
pornography constitutes 40% of the content available via Kazaa, Reuters
reports. [Two caveats: The P2P services' ability to filter porn and
other copyrighted material is under debate, and Titan's letter to Congress
was more along the lines of bad publicity for Kazaa, since Sydney-based,
Vanuatu-registered Kazaa is not a US company.]
- Kazaa v. Kazaa Lite. P2P filtering may well
be possible: Kazaa is suing Kazaa Lite, a version of itself developed by
someone else, ZDNet
recently reported. Kazaa Lite claims to block the adware and spyware that
comes with Kazaa, as well as protect users against record company lawsuits.
- UK file-swappers to be sued? The British
Phonographic Industry (BPI trade association) "said the 'disturbing increase'
in piracy was making legal action against users 'increasingly likely',"
the BBC reports.
UK-based pay-per-tune sites like Apple's iTunes are expected to launch this
year, and the BPI says it'll be watching to see if P2P piracy subsequently
subsides or if it'll have to start suing file-sharers.
- File-sharers & anonymity. The US federal
court's December ruling that hobbled the RIAA's litigious strategy against
file-sharers is part of courts' struggles with online anonymity. The
Register does an eloquent job of illustrating the pluses and minuses
of anonymity long before the Internet's advent. Wired
News recently provided an update on file-sharing lawsuits, saying the
battle is far from over, and here's a CNET
FAQ on the US federal court's decision.
- Illegal file-sharing's up. Lawsuits don't
seem to have had much effect. The Associated Press just reported there was a surge in illegal
file-sharing "a month after recording companies began suing hundreds of
music fans." The surge followed a six-month decline in file-sharing, the
study by market researcher NPD Group found.
Readers, we'd certainly welcome any tips and comments you have
about file-sharing kids. Have you set any rules that really work for your
family? Your experiences can be very helpful to fellow parents! Email us anytime
at feedback@netfamilynews.org.
(Last week's feature on instant-messaging kids can be found here .)
* * * *
Web News Briefs
- Teens' blog life
US teen life today: The school-based social group
reconvenes at home(s) via its linked blogs or online journals. Where you
find them - LiveJournal.com, Blurty.com, DeadJournal.com, Xanga.com, Diaryland.com,
etc. - has a lot to do with the kids' "type" (emo, goth, "the athletic
crowd," "the social crowd," etc.) at their school. "Each pool of blogs
is its own ecosystem," according to this not-to-be-missed piece in the
New York
Times Magazine. Though this whole online scene, the Times says, is
"invisible to most adults," it's huge (one study the Times cites found
that 90% of bloggers are 13-29, and 51% 13-19; there are expected to be
10 million blogs by the end of this year). "Peer into an online journal,
and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic
misery, quick-change moods, and sardonic inside jokes. Gossip spreads
like poison. Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they
get it. And everything parents fear is true. (For one thing, their children
view them as stupid and insane, with terrible musical taste.) But the
linked journals also form a community, an intriguing, unchecked experiment
in silent group therapy - a hive mind in which everyone commiserates about
how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison."
The question that occurs is how this public/private
scene of "compulsive self-chroniclers" changes when it actually becomes
visible to adults (i.e., when we all realize just how public it is)? Probably
the "hive mind" will just move to a different hive.
- Blogs & politics: Iran, US
There's another
side to blogs in places where they take on the role of a free press. An
Iranian journalist credits blogs for his release from prison, Online
Journalism Review reports. "Call them self-referential. Call them elitist.
Call them blowhards. Call bloggers whatever you want, but you can't deny
that they can make a difference, especially when they band together for
a serious cause. In the case of jailed journalist/blogger Sina Motallebi,
the Iranian and American blogospheres came together to get publicity and
thousands of signatures on an online petition." There is a world of activity
(virtual and real-world) going on in Iran-related blogs, both English- and
Persian-language ones, from raising funds for Bam earthquake victims to
protesting government censorship to circulating petitions. According to
the OJR piece, "President Mohammad Khatami recently bragged at a United
Nations summit that 'of the Weblogs that are created and generated - after
those in English and French - we are No. 3 [in Persian]'."
As for places where there is a free press, blogs
are both part and sign of a shift in voter expectations. Young voters
want to ask candidates questions and be listened to, via blogs or online
chat, according to a new study out of the University of Maryland. "The
study showed that teenagers and younger voters resented being peppered
with one-way communications. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents said
they would be less likely to pay attention to a candidate who sent weekly
text messages to their cell phones or handheld devices," the Washington Post reports.
- Net use in 14 countries: Survey
In its survey of Internet use in 14 countries,
the University of California, Los Angeles, found a lot of similarities
from country to country, the Wall
Street Journal reports. "Internet users in all of the surveyed countries
spend more time than nonusers in social activities and more or as much
time as nonusers socializing with friends or exercising. In all of the
countries except Germany and the US, Internet users also spend more time
reading." The digital divide most apparent in countries is between the
sexes, according to UCLA's
World Internet Project (the range is from 25.1% men/23.5% women in
Taiwan to 41.5% men/31.5% women in Italy). The top 5 countries in terms
of Net use are the US (71.1%), Sweden (66.1%), Korea (60.9%), Britain
(59.2), and Japan (50.4%). Two other interesting findings the Project
highlighted were: "surprisingly high levels of online use among the poorest
citizens in all of the survey countries - in spite of major divisions
in Internet use between the richest and the poorest" and "important effects
on social, political, economic, and religious life in urban China, where
the world's largest population finds increased ability to reach out to
others, in spite of government restrictions." [Another, China-based, study
released this week found that that country now has 79.5 million Net users,
up 20.4 million just in 2003, Reuters
reported.]
- Canada's new online-safety ed program
Launched this week, the national public-awareness
campaign, Be
Web Aware, encourages parents to be involved in their children's online
activities. A worthy message, since 80% of Canadian kids have regular
access at home and more than half use the Net "with little or no supervision,"
the Toronto Globe & Mail reports. Further, 25% "have been asked
by someone they've met only online to meet face-to-face" and, of those
kids, 15% have gone to such a meeting and almost two in 10 of this group
went to these meetings alone," according to the Globe & Mail, citing figures
from a just-released Media Awareness
Network study.
The Web site has some useful resources for families
and educators, including a list of kid-friendly search engines, Internet
101 for newbie parents, a list of risks online kids face, online safety
tips by age level, and info on where Canadian parents can report trouble.
The coalition behind the site includes the nonprofit, Ottawa-based Media
Awareness Network, Bell Canada, Microsoft Canada, and the Canadian Association
of Internet Providers.
- Cell-phone monitoring for parents
The new "text-track" technology is much more affordable
and convenient than that of the GPS sort. Parents using it call their
child's phone and get back a text message that reveals their child's location,
the Melbourne Herald-Sun reports. They can also use the Web and a home phone
to track their children. On what's being reported as the upside, parents
can track kids 24 hours a day or at scheduled times (say, after school),
including when the child's indoors (unlike with GPS). Parents can also
"set up a zone around their wayward child's school or banned boyfriend's
house. If the teenager leaves or enters the zone, an alarm is triggered
and an SMS [short message system] alert is instantly sent to parents."
The cost: 55 cents (Australian, or about $.42 US) per check, and set-
up for less than $100 (about $77 US). "Previous tracking systems used
GPS satellites costing up to $1000 [$770 US]." The rather scary downside:
"Privacy experts warn pedophiles and stalkers could hack the system and
engage in clandestine tracking." The Herald Sun also quotes a psychologist
saying kids will figure out ways around this "with ease," and "it doesn't
say a lot about trust and respect."
- Pay-per-folk song
And now the nonprofit version of iTunes: The Smithsonian
Institution is making its entire catalog of 33,000 folk songs available
online at 99 cents a tune, just like at iTunes, the new Napster, and all
the other pay-per-download music services, CNET
reports. "Two titles currently for sale on the organization's Web
site include Abayudaya: The Music of the Jews of Uganda [24 tracks for
$15] and Cowboy Poetry Classics," just in time for the National
Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko later this month. Smithsonian Folkways's
pay-per-tune launch date is April 1. Meanwhile, Napster-for-Penn State
students has launched" and seems to have caught on, the Associated Press reports. There were about 100,000 downloads
or streaming-audio requests Monday, three days after its debut. The service
offers about 500,000 songs.
- Yahoo IM: Security fixes, coming features
Remember what Tim La Fazia said (in last
week's issue) about vulnerabilities IM creates for the family PC?
Well, timely news when it was reported that someone could run malicious
code on a victim's PC (using Yahoo Instant Messenger) just by "sending
the user a file with an overly long filename." A PC security firm deemed
the vulnerability "highly critical," Instant
Messaging Planet reported. The article added that Yahoo fixed the
problem at its end, but The
Register added some helpful detail: "The latest version (5.6.0.1358)
of Yahoo! Messenger is immune to the problem but users of earlier versions
reportedly cannot upgrade to the new version unless they reinstall the
product" (the article provides a link).
In other Yahoo IM-related news, CNET reports that the company is considering adding new features,
including games, friend icons, avatars, stealth-mode capabilities, and
letting IM users listen to music together and share information about
their music tastes (also remembering Tim's heads-up about how each feature
- text chat, audio, images, video, etc. opens up its own port or window
out to the Net from the family PC). Picking one of those features, "Yahoo's
proposed stealth-mode tool would allow people to use IM without publicizing
they are online - a feature Yahoo already offers. A projected facet of
that feature would be the ability to select who could see you and who
could not." Hmmm, more options for parents to consider in IM Preferences
(see some tips offered last week)!
- The Net and child pornography
"The activities of Internet paedophiles have recently
changed significantly," reports Rachel O'Connell, director of cyberspace research at the University of Central
Lancashire, in The
Guardian. They "now use the Internet as a library rather than downloading
images onto their hard drives or floppy disks. They are also far more
careful to remove evidence of illegal material from their computers."
She goes on to say that law enforcement certainly has the technical expertise
to keep up with changing criminal practices, but generally not the resources
and organizational structure. Ms. O'Connell was responding to a widely
covered report from children's charity NCH in the UK's national media.
The report said that demand for child pornography on the Internet has
led to a 1,500% rise in child pornography cases since 1988, and that this
increase "would be reflected in more children being abused to produce
the pictures," The
Guardian reported. Here's the
BBC's coverage of the NCH report and a separate
repor on NCH comments what kids could be subjected to with next-generation
(3G) cell phones with video capabilities. The NCH report is available
in pdf format here.
- Child porn sting
US prosecutors announced dozens of child porn-related
indictments this week. According to Reuters,
they were part of Operation Predator, which was launched last summer.
This time police arrested not just users but operators. The indicted were
"people involved with a Belarus-based business called Regpay and Connections
USA, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., credit card billing service offering paid
memberships to 50 Web sites." About 1,600 people have been arrested so
far in Operation Predator. "Among 15 people taken into custody in New
Jersey on Thursday were previously convicted sex offenders, a pediatrician,
a minister, a teacher and an 85-year- old retired engineer." The article
added that 20 other people were arrested in the US and three of four principals
of Regpay were in custody in Paris and Madrid and awaiting extradition.
The fourth principal was still at large.
- Parent-school digital divide
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is concerned that
his state's schools are relying on the Internet too much to communicate
with parents, USAToday reports. He had pledged to expand Internet use in school
and commissioned a study in support of his plan. But the study found some
problematic stats: while 97% of Illinois's 4,000 elementary and secondary
schools are connected to the Internet, only 47% of homes are. The study
concluded that this and other disparities "could widen the information
gap rather than close it if schools don't augment high-tech systems with
newsletters, parent-teacher conferences, and other traditional means of
communication."
- New MSN features and bare-bones AOL
MSN and AOL are scrambling to keep customers at
a time when many are moving on to broadband (high-speed Net access providers).
MSN has added features such as "a souped-up email client, a more sophisticated
digital photo editor that emphasizes picture sharing, the ability to access
email from a separate Outlook account ... parental controls, antivirus
software, a firewall, a pop-up blocker, spyware detection, and spam filters,"
CNET reports. These are available for $9.95/month, some
in a slimmer version for $5.95/month. AOL has plans soon to offer a stripped-down
version of itself under the Netscape name for $9.95/month, to compete
with the likes of NetZero and Juno, the Washington Post reports.
- 'Speed-dating' at Match.com
It's the latest trend in "offline dating services,"
now offered online, the Washington Post reports. It's like years of blind dates compressed
into 45 multi-tasking minutes. "SpeedMatching" users will go into their
Match.com accounts and call the company at a designated time for a 45-minute
session during which they'll be introduced to 4-8 potential mates in a
succession of quick one-on-one phone conversations while they review the
potential mates' online profiles in the Match.com site." Whew! But, hey,
if that biological clock's ticking.... The Post adds that "users can vote
on whether they want to connect later with anyone they encounter during
a session - if both parties are interested, the service will bring the
two together."
* * * *
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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Anne Collier, Editor
Net Family News
