A 12-year-old boy in Washington State got stuck in a particular level of the PlayStation 2 game Ratchet and Clank, so he called the tipline printed on the game disk and found he’d called a phone sex line, KNDO TV reports. “The number appears on multiple games, including top sellers like Hot Shots Golf, and a similar number on other games leads to the same service.” When the boy’s mom called Sony, … [Read more...] about Phone-sex number on game disk
Risk & Safety
Stalking: New fact of life?
“Stalking” isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. Say you’re single and someone lines up a blind date for you. You’d want to find out a little about him, right? So you “stalk him,” as the digital natives put it. To many social networkers, it’s a fun, innocuous sort of “background check,” to see who a person’s friends are, where her tastes lie, what she talks about, etc., and definitely what she … [Read more...] about Stalking: New fact of life?
Cellphone safety
There are entertainment “thumb jocks” (videogamers) and then there are the communications ones, including cellphone texters at your house. Teens love texting, I think partly because of the extra privacy this silent form of communication affords them and partly because it can be 24x7 (see “Teen dating abuse”). They also love the growing number of features cellphones have, so they can snap and share … [Read more...] about Cellphone safety
AMA on ‘game addiction’
The American Medical Association is looking into whether videogame play can become an “addiction.” The AMA has released “an extremely readable” but “cautious” report summarizing the current “state of knowledge” on the subject, ArsTechnica reports. “In terms of ‘gaming addiction,’ the report suggests that it is likely to be a subset of internet addiction, as it most frequently occurs in players of … [Read more...] about AMA on ‘game addiction’
Employers searching social sites
Just another bit of evidence that job recruiters are “stalking” too (see my feature this week) – using social sites to find out more about job candidates. Though it may take employers a little more work, they probably prefer free “background checks” to costly services. According to AllHeadlineNews.com, “Rob McGovern, CEO and chairman of online job site Jobfox, claims that recruiters are … [Read more...] about Employers searching social sites