March 12, 2004
Dear Subscribers:
Here's our lineup for this second week of March:
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Kid's-eye-view of parents' Net restrictions
It would be interesting to see if their parents agree,
but US kids' own reports on Net restrictions at home are valuable in their
own right. Pollsters Harris Interactive kindly allowed us to ask a question
about this of the 1,200+ 10-to- 18-year-old respondents to their nationwide
YouthQuery last month. Our question was: "Which of the following limitations
do your parents put on your use of the Internet?" Here are their just-released
responses - how many 'tweens and teens gave a "yes" answer on the following
restrictions....
- Rules about the Web sites I can visit: 77% of 10-to-12-year-olds;
16% of 13- to-18-year-olds
- Rules about the amount of time I can spend online:
63% (10-12); 16% (13-18)
- Rules about the people with whom I can communicate
online: 69% (10-12); 13% (13-18)
- A filtering system that limits my access to certain
Web sites: 40% (10-12); 11% (13-18)
- A monitoring system that allows my parents to review
my online activity: 32% (10-12); 7% (13-18)
- Time-out software: 5% (10-12); very small base of
13-to-18-year-olds
- Other: 19% (10-12); 4% (13-18)
- None: 7% (10-12); 64% (13-18)
The March edition of Harris's "Trends & Tudes," with
this data in it, can be found in pdf format here.
* * * *
'Parents, know your kids' screen names': Det. Williams's
Tip No. 5
"Using a computer every day at work or home," Det.
Bob Williams writes, "you may take a screen name for granted or not give it
a lot of thought. But to ensure your children's online safety, their screen
names and passwords deserve some thought. Their screen names should not include
their actual names, because if your ISP (AOL, MSN, etc.) provides member profiles,
the information in them, along with children's names, can be very helpful
to online predators in several ways. For example, a predator can enter certain
criteria in a member-profiles search - names, hobbies, sports, or other interests.
The search will produce a list of member screen names. The predator can then
send an instant message and start a dialogue with the child, using his or
her own name. Children are inclined to respond to messages from people who
use their names and act familiar by using personal information found in member
profiles.
"Also, if you have teenagers at home you may want
to know their passwords (it's a given with younger kids, right?!). Now, from
experience I realize I am entering dangerous territory - the big debate about
privacy invasion vs. concerned parent. I have investigated numerous reports
of runaway teenagers and, in most cases, the fleeing child contacted a friend
online and told them where they were headed - or contacted the person to whom
they were running. In one case, the parents knew the child's screen name and
password, so they could search through the child's online communications and
figure out where the child went. A lot of time was saved, and the child and
parents were quickly reunited.
"Reunions can happen a lot less quickly when parents
don't know screen names and passwords because this information is protected
by federal law. For police to gain access to an account in order to search
through a child's messages for her whereabouts, they have to obtain a search
warrant for the ISP to release a temporary/emergency password for an account,
losing valuable time in a run-away case."
Det. Bob Williams is a father of two high school
students and Youth Officer in the Greenwich, Conn., Police Department (see
Part 1 of this series for more on Bob).
Send questions, comments, your own family's stories
anytime - via feedback@netfamilynews.org!
* * * *
Web News Briefs
- EC commits $61 million to kids' Net safety
The European Commission wants to step up Europe's
fight against Net content that's illegal and harmful to children and is
putting 50 million euros behind the effort. Since 1996, the focus of the
Safer Internet program has been mostly inappropriate content on the Net;
now with Safer Internet Plus, the EC is adding racism, spam, and other
new media (including content on mobile phones) to the project. Safer Internet
Plus is a four-year program that starts in 2005, according to the EC's press release.
Part of the explanation offered for this significant
commitment is the online- family data: "According to an upcoming Eurobarometer
survey, half of Europe's parents do not think their children know what
to do if a situation on the Internet makes them uncomfortable," the presser
reports. And on family Internet practices: "An EU Safety, Awareness, Facts
and Tools (SAFT) survey last year found that 46% of children in Northern
Europe who chat on the Internet say someone has used it to ask to meet
them and 14% have actually met someone in this way, but only 4% of parents
believe that their children have done so.... European parents seriously
underestimate their kids' daily exposure to harmful content and dangerous
situations online."
- Tons of news on spam...
But nobody's sure how much impact it'll have on
you and me. The US's biggest ISPs - America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo,
and EarthLink - have teamed up to file the first major lawsuits under
the CAN-SPAM Act, ZDNet
UK reports. (FindLaw.com has the actual lawsuit
docs.) But the New
York Times has a source saying the lawsuits aren't likely to be very
effective, that ISPs have sued spammers before ("Microsoft filed 60 spam-related
suits last year"), and the situation is like cutting off one of the hydra's
heads and having two more pop up." Here's the Washington Post's coverage. Meanwhile,
the FTC has started
the public- comment period on CAN-SPAM enforcement measures, including
the idea of a Do Not Email Registry (like the Do Not Call one for telemarketing),
and Maryland legislators are proposing a new state law that would criminalize
the sending of spam, FOXNEWS.com
reports. On a new spam front, the FTC is starting an effort to nip
cell-phone spam in the bud, CNET reports . (Our
thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing some of
these pieces out.)
- Alcohol sites attracting kids: Study
Almost 700,000 kids and teens people visited alcohol
company Web sites just July through December last year, according to a
Georgetown University study. Many of those children "played video games
and downloaded music, email gadgets, and icons - all the while immersed
in the marketing of beer and alcohol," according to the Associated
Press's article on the study. One of the study's authors, Jim O'Hara,
director of the university's Center on Alcohol Marketing & Youth, likened
these sites as "virtual cyber playgrounds with no adult supervision."
The Distilled Spirits Council in Washington called the study a "publicity
stunt" for fund-raising purposes. Here are other key findings:
- 13% of all visitors to 55 alcohol company sites
were "under the legal drinking age of 21."
- The most popular sites among youth marketed
beer and so-called "malternatives" ("generally sweet-tasting alcohol
products"), according to the AP.
- 59% of Bacardi.com's visitors were "underage
persons."
- The two sites with the most visits from underage
users were Budlight.com and Budweiser.com (an estimated 90,000 visits
each, July-December '03).
- Parental controls on computers block some but
not all of these sites - 6-8 filter programs blocked Budlight.com; only
one blocked Bacardi.com.
- The sites generally require age verification,
"though there is no way to verify the truthfulness of the user."
- Games were featured on 10 of 15 beer Web sites,
7 of 19 sites for distilled spirits, and 4 of 12 for malternatives.
- US and UK to fight violent sex sites
UK Home Secretary David Blunkett and US Deputy
Attorney General Jim Comey this week announced they would be setting up
a joint task force to investigate ways to shut down extreme porn sites
on the Web. The
Guardian quotes a spokesman for Britain's Home Office as saying that
the sites are "a significant problem, not in terms of numbers but in terms
of the evil of these sites." Two sites featuring necrophilia "were implicated
in the trial of the man who killed [31- year-old] Brighton teacher Jane
Longhurst" last March, according to The Guardian. This week's development
came after Secretary Blunket met with Longhurst's family. The Home Office
spokesman said cracking down on these sites would be more difficult than
on child porn sites because of US's First Amendment, but "possible action
could involve work with Internet service providers and credit card companies
whose services enable users to pay to access porn on the Web." Here's
coverage from the
BBC and ZDNet
UK on this.
- IM security flaw found
If anyone at your house uses MSN Messenger for
instant-messaging, you'll want to get it patched - it could be a window
on your PC's hard drive for strangers. According to CNET,
three new security flaws have been found in the latest versions of Messenger,
and one allows people to "view the contents of a victim's hard drive during
[an IM] chat session." The three flaws are not super-high-risk, but worth
patching in any case. Here's where to go to download the patches at Microsoft.
Of course, if you and your kids have configured Messenger's preferences
so that no one but people on their buddy list can IM with them, the flaws
can't be exploited, but patch them anyway. Smart kids can change the preferences
anytime. The best thing is to have everybody heeding a family rule that
parents and kids together set preferences, which can't be changed without
a parent's permission. See our
January 7 issue for more on "IM risks & tips," with information on
configuring IM preferences/options.
- Web's scintillating personality tests
Online personality tests are hot, and we have
a feeling teenagers are a factor. Tickle.com, one site offering tests
on sex and careers, as well as personality (plus dating and social-networking
services), had 14.3 million visitors this past December, up from 5.6 million
in December 2002, the New
York Times reports. A section of Tickle's
"Fun Tests" is specifically for Teens. The Internet makes personality
tests - "long a staple of women's magazines" - more personal (because
instantly customizable) and more social (people can email each other their
results). At Tickle, "a small staff of psychologists develops the tests,
which are then rewritten by the marketing department for popular appeal,"
according to the Times. The dating-service part of Tickle (the $19.95/month
fee might be a barrier for teens) puts those test results into member
profiles. That distinguishes Tickle from other dating services like Match.com.
The test results "and Tickle's matchmaking test, which has 18 questions,
are used to produce a compatibility score between a prospective couple."
The free eCrush.com and Bolt.com might be more appealing to teens for
matchmaking, but Tickle's basic personality quizzes are free.
While we're on the subject, parents might want
to ask their kids what they put in their online profiles, whether at AOL,
in instant-messaging services, or individual Web sites. These can be read
and used by foes as well as friends!
- Multilingual worm posing as Microsoft
Worm writers certainly don't make it easy for
us computer users! Windows PC owners are told to apply Microsoft's ever-more-frequent
security patches, but watch out for worms posing as patches. "The latest
variant of the mass-mailing Sober worm masquerades as an official Microsoft
patch for the MyDoom worm," CNET
reports. It comes in an email with fake Microsoft warnings and error
messages, so people think they have to click on the attachment. Tell your
kids not to click! "Microsoft has always maintained that it does not email
patches to people, so they should ignore any such messages." Instead,
go to Microsoft's
Windows Update page.
From the "What Will They Think of Next?" Department,
a worm that attacks worms! And antivirus viruses! The latest variant of
the NetSky worm (the 11th in less than a month), will be the last, according
to a message from its author in the worm's code, CNET
reports (of course, new NetSky versions appeared since, The
Register reported today. "Although the NetSky worm has caused misery
for users," CNET says, "it is not malicious in the same way as Bagle and
MyDoom, which have been designed for the sole purpose of transforming
unprotected PCs into an army of spam senders," according to CNET. "Recent
versions of NetSky have actually attacked and removed the Bagle worm,
and the author of NetSky refers to his team as 'antivirus' writers."
- US states moving against spyware
Utah is the first and other states will follow,
CNET reports
in a story about state legislatures' drive to control "spyware" and other
software that hijacks personal computers without owners' permission. Utah's
governor hasn't signed the bill yet, but it passed, and lawmakers in Iowa
and California have also introduced anti-spyware proposals. People in
the Internet industry are worried, though, that "spyware" and "adware"
aren't clearly defined in these initiatives, and that legislatures are
trying to regulate technology rather than how it's used. There's anti-spyware
activity at the federal level too. The "SPYBLOCK" Act, introduced in late
February, "would make it illegal to use the Internet to install software
on people's computers without their consent and would require companies
that offer software downloads to provide more disclosure about what the
programs do and what information they collect," the Washington
Post reports.
- China: Net buffer zone near schools
The Chinese government will create a cybercafe-free
zone of 660 feet around schools, the Associated
Press reports. "Although Chinese leaders encourage Internet use for
business and education, they have expressed growing alarm that it is exposing
young people to pornography and influences the government deems harmful.
Officials also worry that students spend too much time playing video games."
The AP adds that China has 79.5 million Internet users, as of the end
of 2003.
* * * *
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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Anne Collier, Editor
Net Family News
