The US Federal Trade Commission has just announced its proposed changes for the 10-year-old Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the law that inadvertently created the social Web's "minimum age" of 13 (in its effort to define an age when all children are developmentally able to protect their own privacy). Because COPPA requires children's sites and services to obtain parental consent … [Read more...] about FTC’s proposed updates for COPPA
online privacy
A new book & fresh look at online privacy
We may not be fully aware of it yet, but as our media environment is changing – from a top-down (regulated, professionally produced) one to a user-driven, multidirectional, social one – so is our idea of privacy. Slowly, maybe, but changing it is. In their new book, A New Culture of Learning, University of Southern California Profs. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown touch on how today's … [Read more...] about A new book & fresh look at online privacy
Various fresh findings on Facebook use
There used to be two bodies of research most relevant to kids online: social-media research and youth-online-risk research (as co-chair of an online-safety task force last year, I tried to bring more of the former into the discussion). But that binary is fading fast, as it should; since the Internet mirrors virtually all of human life, what's happening on it should be looked at by researchers in … [Read more...] about Various fresh findings on Facebook use
Hawk drama (& human drama) in the digital age
The subhead might be: "Birth and growth under the digital microscope" or "The 'observer effect' with digital media." And a red-tailed hawk family in New York City is the metaphor. In this case, mom and dad hawks built a nest outside the window of the 12th-floor office of New York University's president, and "furnished it with three speckled buff-white eggs," the New York Times reports. The Times … [Read more...] about Hawk drama (& human drama) in the digital age
Facebook privacy policy’s new look
The new, much improved privacy policy Facebook just unveiled is more a guide to Facebook's privacy practices than a privacy policy, as Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum told the Wall Street Journal. It's clearer, more conversational, and has more visual aids. Facebook says the company felt the policy "should focus on the questions people who use Facebook are most likely to … [Read more...] about Facebook privacy policy’s new look