Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Children's Advertising Review Unit: Parry Aftab to Speak at CARU's Conference
Children's Advertising Review Unit: Parry Aftab to Speak at CARU's ConferenceJoin CARU supporters and leading experts at this amazing conference. Learn how to do it right and what others are doing.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Been there and done that!
some of us have been working in cyberrisk management and safety for more than 15 years. We did it when a dial-up speed of 2400 was lightening speed. We did it before kids were online. We did it when those online didn't need protection, since they were mostly university professors, military researchers and geeks. (with the utmost admiration for "geeks" I know and love.)
We have seen some brands rise and then disappear. We have seen experts change sides. We have gone from how we can protect the Internet from government censorship to protecting the governmental websites from 13 year old hackers. ICU became AOL AIM, IRC became chatrooms, AIM profiles became MySpace and Facebook, computing moved to cellphones and handheld devices.
We went from confusion to scare tactics to confusion to scare tactics and now we are moving back to scare tactics.
I am not talking about the fear of sexual predators scaring our teens straight. I am talking about misinformation and hype designed to get so-called experts on TV or giving them a place at the table when they weren't otherwise included for being contrary.
I am very concerned about a trend I am seeing that is designed to exclude law enforcement and legal avenues from the cybersafety arena. Many "advocates" are claiming that the only way to deal with cybersafety is through educational institutions. Police, they claim, have not role here. It's education 100% and there is no room for legislation or the criminal justice system.
I beg to differ. And their tactics will end up throwing the baby out with the cyber-bathwater.
Cybersafety takes a village. Heck, it takes a huge city with multi-million residents. Everyone has a role to play.
1. Educators need to educate. They need to teach our children to tell the difference between credible sources and hype. They need to teach media, technology and information literacy skills. They need to teach our children how to think and be discerning and discriminating consumers of information.
2. Mental health professionals (including guidance counselors) need to help our children understand impulse control and perspective. They need to be there to help them handle issues that we never dreamed our children would have to handle. They need to help them find ways of letting off steam and finding balance and comfort.
3. School administrators need to understand what is going on and what isn't going on during the school day, how to inform students, school personnel and parents about that and learn to manage the risks and find the opportunities. They need to support their teachers, students and the community.
4. Legislators and policymakers must avoid knee jerk responses to issues and craft relevant, and effective policies and laws that can be enforced and will work beyond the current hot issue. (I love Rep.Wasserman-Schultz's and Sen. Menenedez's bills to fund programs that work.) They need to do high level factfinding and support government agencies on the frontlines.
5. Government regulatory agencies need ot help guide the industries they oversee to take a forwarding-thinking approach and find the safety business model. They should provide resources and help in addressing the risks they oversee and promote those that do a good job.
6. Parents need to parent. That takes courage in the face of fire, and the willingness to put your child's development and well being before your design to be their best friend. They need tools, information and resources ot help them juggle the millions of responsibilities they have and keep their kids safer too.
7. The kids, tweens and teens need to have the skills, information and resources they need too. They need to thinkb4theyclick. They need to help each other. They need to help their parents with younger siblings. they need to take responsibility for their actions and to be discerning information consumers (see above, under educators)
8. Law enforcement and the judicial system is there when the other things fail. Sometimes education alone doesn't cut it. They play an important role. And community policing services and SROs are on the frontline when it comes to the intersection between school and safety.
If we look to design systems without law enforcement, they won't work. And we will be back at this end of the pendulum swing in a couple years.
I've been doing this longer than most. I've seen this before.
We need balance and a balanced approach and far fewer "experts" who look to promote themselves at the cost of our children.
We have seen some brands rise and then disappear. We have seen experts change sides. We have gone from how we can protect the Internet from government censorship to protecting the governmental websites from 13 year old hackers. ICU became AOL AIM, IRC became chatrooms, AIM profiles became MySpace and Facebook, computing moved to cellphones and handheld devices.
We went from confusion to scare tactics to confusion to scare tactics and now we are moving back to scare tactics.
I am not talking about the fear of sexual predators scaring our teens straight. I am talking about misinformation and hype designed to get so-called experts on TV or giving them a place at the table when they weren't otherwise included for being contrary.
I am very concerned about a trend I am seeing that is designed to exclude law enforcement and legal avenues from the cybersafety arena. Many "advocates" are claiming that the only way to deal with cybersafety is through educational institutions. Police, they claim, have not role here. It's education 100% and there is no room for legislation or the criminal justice system.
I beg to differ. And their tactics will end up throwing the baby out with the cyber-bathwater.
Cybersafety takes a village. Heck, it takes a huge city with multi-million residents. Everyone has a role to play.
1. Educators need to educate. They need to teach our children to tell the difference between credible sources and hype. They need to teach media, technology and information literacy skills. They need to teach our children how to think and be discerning and discriminating consumers of information.
2. Mental health professionals (including guidance counselors) need to help our children understand impulse control and perspective. They need to be there to help them handle issues that we never dreamed our children would have to handle. They need to help them find ways of letting off steam and finding balance and comfort.
3. School administrators need to understand what is going on and what isn't going on during the school day, how to inform students, school personnel and parents about that and learn to manage the risks and find the opportunities. They need to support their teachers, students and the community.
4. Legislators and policymakers must avoid knee jerk responses to issues and craft relevant, and effective policies and laws that can be enforced and will work beyond the current hot issue. (I love Rep.Wasserman-Schultz's and Sen. Menenedez's bills to fund programs that work.) They need to do high level factfinding and support government agencies on the frontlines.
5. Government regulatory agencies need ot help guide the industries they oversee to take a forwarding-thinking approach and find the safety business model. They should provide resources and help in addressing the risks they oversee and promote those that do a good job.
6. Parents need to parent. That takes courage in the face of fire, and the willingness to put your child's development and well being before your design to be their best friend. They need tools, information and resources ot help them juggle the millions of responsibilities they have and keep their kids safer too.
7. The kids, tweens and teens need to have the skills, information and resources they need too. They need to thinkb4theyclick. They need to help each other. They need to help their parents with younger siblings. they need to take responsibility for their actions and to be discerning information consumers (see above, under educators)
8. Law enforcement and the judicial system is there when the other things fail. Sometimes education alone doesn't cut it. They play an important role. And community policing services and SROs are on the frontline when it comes to the intersection between school and safety.
If we look to design systems without law enforcement, they won't work. And we will be back at this end of the pendulum swing in a couple years.
I've been doing this longer than most. I've seen this before.
We need balance and a balanced approach and far fewer "experts" who look to promote themselves at the cost of our children.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Amazon.com: The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries (Child Development) (9780787988319): Michele Borba Ed.D.: Books
Amazon.com: The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries (Child Development) (9780787988319): Michele Borba Ed.D.: BooksI love and trust this parenting expert! Michele Borba is amazing. buy this book!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
An Aert if You Use Google Docs and link to them from public websites
Hello Google Apps admin,
We wanted to let you know about some important changes around published documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
In a few weeks, documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been explicitly published outside your organization and are linked to from a public website will be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. There is no change for documents published inside your organization or shared privately.
If you wish to prevent users from publishing documents to the public internet, we now offer an admin control in the Google Apps Control Panel that allows users to continue to 'share documents outside the domain' without allowing them to publish the files to the public Internet. To change this setting, follow these steps:
- Login to your admin control panel
- Select Service Settings > Docs
- Un-check the option 'Users can publish documents to the public internet'
If a user does not want their published Docs to be crawled, then the user must unpublish them by doing the following:
- Go to the 'Share tab'
- For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
- Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'
For more details, please see this Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60781
This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Enterprise product or account.
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
We wanted to let you know about some important changes around published documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
In a few weeks, documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been explicitly published outside your organization and are linked to from a public website will be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. There is no change for documents published inside your organization or shared privately.
If you wish to prevent users from publishing documents to the public internet, we now offer an admin control in the Google Apps Control Panel that allows users to continue to 'share documents outside the domain' without allowing them to publish the files to the public Internet. To change this setting, follow these steps:
- Login to your admin control panel
- Select Service Settings > Docs
- Un-check the option 'Users can publish documents to the public internet'
If a user does not want their published Docs to be crawled, then the user must unpublish them by doing the following:
- Go to the 'Share tab'
- For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
- Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'
For more details, please see this Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60781
This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Enterprise product or account.
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Espejo Público - Antena 3 televisión
Espejo Público - Antena 3 televisiónsexting issues in Spain and information about the hughe upcoming EU cybersafety event in Gijon.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Join us at the topCyberbullying Coalition event - October 13, 2009 in DC
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Please Join Us October 13, 2009
What: The StopCyberbullying Coalition Roundtable � Understanding, Preventing and Addressing Cyberbullying from the Trenches
Where: The Russell Senate Office Building SR:325
When: Noon � 4pm (lunch provided)
Who: Members of the StopCyberbullying Coalition, Industry Leaders, Tweenangels and Teenangels, Cyberbullying Experts, Members of the Media and Policymakers
Cybersafety organizations, Internet industry and entertainment leaders, members of the media and news agencies, child protection and anti-violence advocacy groups, community service organizations, law enforcement agencies, policymakers, authors, researchers and educational institutions, coalitions and working groups are each tackling cyberbullying and the risks associated with kids and teens hurting each other using digital devices and technologies. Members of the StopCyberbullying Coalition representing each of these stakeholder groups will share their work and expertise at the StopCyberbullying Coalition Roundtable.
The afternoon will consist of a lunch presentation, followed by three one-hour long panels of experts, young people, industry representatives and key stakeholder groups. Vibrant discussions and interactions with the participants will take place throughout the afternoon as we move towards a greater understanding of the issues, the wonderful work taking place and next steps.
Space is limited. RSVP required, 201-444-8910 or parry@aftab.com.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Verizon | International “Stop Cyberbullying” Conference
Verizon | International “Stop Cyberbullying” ConferenceIvan Seidenberg's speech at WiredSafety's Stop Cyberbullying Conference.
A trip down memory lane - Speaking Out - PC World
Speaking Out - PC World11 years ago, several of us joined in a panel on the Internet and children.
Se i software per la sicurezza dei bambini in Rete, rivendono le conversazioni dei vostri figli a scopo di marketing… - Gizmodo IT - Il gadget weblog
Se i software per la sicurezza dei bambini in Rete, rivendono le conversazioni dei vostri figli a scopo di marketing… - Gizmodo IT - Il gadget weblogSentry software expose is reported worldwide.
Gijón se convierte en sede mundial del debate sobre el uso de Internet entre los niños - Ticpymes
Gijón se convierte en sede mundial del debate sobre el uso de Internet entre los niños - TicpymesAn upcoming international conference on children online in Gijon, Spain, October 2009.
Generation Rude
Generation RudeParenting Magazine ran an article about teens and technology, netiquette and was digital communications are misunderstood. An interesting read.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Sentry "Parental Control" software is collecting and sharing kids information
Parents looking to buy a reputable monitoring software to keep track of their kids' chats, IMs and online communications might have considered Sentry's various products. But AP just learned that Sentry collects the information that parents may think is stored only on their home computer for their own review for the purposes ot selling it to marketers. They claim they strip it of more personal information, but admit to collecting at least the screen name or other identifier used by the kids. Legal? Maybe not. Unethical? Certainly looks that way if the AP report is accurate.Bismarck Tribune Online - World and National NewsThe plot thickens. I suspect that Fox and others will run like the dickens when they learn how data is obtained. Parent's permissio to sharing of COPPA-applicable info on their preteens is more than an opt-out. The privacy policy does not otherwise comply with COPPA. With fines of more than $1 million in recent years to getting it wrong when COPPA is concerned, you'd think a public company would be more careful.
My advice to everyone with Sentry installed on their home computers is to turn it off until we learn more.
My advice to everyone with Sentry installed on their home computers is to turn it off until we learn more.
Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats - wtop.com
Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats - wtop.comParents get a free downloadable product to oversee their kids surfing and online communications. Great, right? Not so great if that company is capturing those communications anc activities for its own use, like to share with marketing and datamining services. But no one would do that without letting parents know in big letters, flashing neon signs and foghorns, right? No quite. What about not letting you know in a privacy policy found on each page where everyone else keeps them. What about tucking the privacy policy (and the inadequate disclosure) in a "support" link and then in a "policies" link under that.
Not an issue, claims the company. Parents can opt out if they don't want the company or third parties getting info about their kids. AP claims that wasn't in their download. I don't want their download anywhere near my machine. It's not on the site, not where it should be and not clearly stated, and even if it were, it's probably not legal or sufficient disclosure for any consumer protection agency.
I am saddened to hear that a company claiming to be in the child safety business may be putting them at risk. Hopefully when both sides are fully-heard and the regulatory agencies (FTC and state AGs) finish looking into this it will be a tempest in a teapot. But if it's not...shame on Sentry!
Expect to hear more, much more.
Not an issue, claims the company. Parents can opt out if they don't want the company or third parties getting info about their kids. AP claims that wasn't in their download. I don't want their download anywhere near my machine. It's not on the site, not where it should be and not clearly stated, and even if it were, it's probably not legal or sufficient disclosure for any consumer protection agency.
I am saddened to hear that a company claiming to be in the child safety business may be putting them at risk. Hopefully when both sides are fully-heard and the regulatory agencies (FTC and state AGs) finish looking into this it will be a tempest in a teapot. But if it's not...shame on Sentry!
Expect to hear more, much more.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
National Journal Online -- Tech Daily Dose -- Contributor Profile
National Journal Online -- Tech Daily Dose -- Contributor ProfileAgencies, Web Safety
NTIA Unveils Web Safety Working Group
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration unveiled its Online Safety and Technology Working Group on Tuesday -- a panel of experts dedicated to keeping children safe on the Internet. More than two dozen private sector and child and family advocacy leaders will help evaluate industry efforts and make recommendations to promote education, labeling and parental control technology. Members will work with the Justice Department, FTC, FCC and others. "President Obama recognizes the importance of protecting the safety and privacy of our children as they use the Internet," Acting NTIA Administrator Anna Gomez said in a press release. "We are committed to helping foster a safe online environment for America's youth." Within a year of its first meeting on May 22, the group will submit a report to the administration on how to increase Web safety.
Members of the working group include:
Parry Aftab, WiredSafety
Elizabeth Banker, Yahoo
Christopher Bubb, AOL
Anne Collier, ConnectSafely.org
Bradon Cox, NetChoice Coalition
Caroline Curtin, Microsoft
Brian Cute, Afilias U.S.A.
Jeremy Geigle, Arizona Family Council
Marsali Hancock, Internet Keep Safe Coalition
Michael Kaiser, National Cyber Security Alliance
Christopher Kelly, Facebook
Brian Knapp, Loopt
Continue reading NTIA Unveils Web Safety Working Group.
http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/04/ntia-unveils-web-safety-workin.php#more
NTIA Unveils Web Safety Working Group
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration unveiled its Online Safety and Technology Working Group on Tuesday -- a panel of experts dedicated to keeping children safe on the Internet. More than two dozen private sector and child and family advocacy leaders will help evaluate industry efforts and make recommendations to promote education, labeling and parental control technology. Members will work with the Justice Department, FTC, FCC and others. "President Obama recognizes the importance of protecting the safety and privacy of our children as they use the Internet," Acting NTIA Administrator Anna Gomez said in a press release. "We are committed to helping foster a safe online environment for America's youth." Within a year of its first meeting on May 22, the group will submit a report to the administration on how to increase Web safety.
Members of the working group include:
Parry Aftab, WiredSafety
Elizabeth Banker, Yahoo
Christopher Bubb, AOL
Anne Collier, ConnectSafely.org
Bradon Cox, NetChoice Coalition
Caroline Curtin, Microsoft
Brian Cute, Afilias U.S.A.
Jeremy Geigle, Arizona Family Council
Marsali Hancock, Internet Keep Safe Coalition
Michael Kaiser, National Cyber Security Alliance
Christopher Kelly, Facebook
Brian Knapp, Loopt
Continue reading NTIA Unveils Web Safety Working Group.
http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/04/ntia-unveils-web-safety-workin.php#more
SpectorSoft - Spector Pro for Windows
SpectorSoft - Spector Pro for WindowsParents are looking for monitoring tools...
WiredKids: From Safety and Privacy to Literacy and Empowerment
WiredKids: From Safety and Privacy to Literacy and Empowermentgotta love this man! Art Wolinsky is an amazing teacher and leader in the field.
Girl's suicide after online chats leaves a town in shock - The Boston Globe
Girl's suicide after online chats leaves a town in shock - The Boston GlobeMegan Meier was not the first, nor (sadly) the last teen to take their own life after facing cyberharassment. It's crucial to reach out and help if you see someone being hurt online or off.
Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar - The New York Times
Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar - The New York TimesThis was the first major piece done on cyberbullying. I remember bringing Amy to a school presentation to hear from the kids first hand. She was shocked. It ended up front page NY Times and began the coverage on this issue. As I search for archive pieces to help round out what we think are new issues, this piece stands out.
Parry Aftab's Blog
Parry Aftab's Blog I just added a polling gadget to my main blog page. I'm looking to see what others (especially parents) think about posting something on their teens' walls or on their Facebook pages. Creepy? No big deal?
Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids | The Onion - America's Finest News SourceTurn about is fair play, how parents "get even" and stalk their kids on Facebook. :-)
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
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