Age verification not the ‘killer app’

ConnectSafely.org, a site and forum, Larry Magid and I co-direct, was invited to join the Internet Safety Task Force that is part of MySpace’s settlement last January with 49 state attorneys general. The Task Force’s first meeting last month – attended by Internet companies including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, AOL, Google, and Yahoo, age- and identity-verification companies, and online-safety organizations – caused Larry to feel “a bit of a disconnect,” he wrote in a commentary at CBSNEWS.com. Why? Because one of the Task Force’s main goals is to see if age verification technology can be used to protect minors from bad stuff in social sites and,” yet, at its first full meeting … the experts who addressed the task force painted a picture that causes me to wonder if such technology would be helpful even if it could be employed.” Pls check out his piece to see why. See also “Verifying kids’ ages: Key question for parents” and “Social networker age verification revisited.”