'My daughter's Xanga'

Anyone close to a teenager is probably seeing what we are: there's an important online component to the teen social scene - blogs. A Net Family News subscriber and mother in the northwestern US (who wished to remain nameless) recently emailed me: "I read my kid's Xanga, and kept track of it. She was writing dark poetry and disclosing stuff, so I cut her off, initiated passwords and monitored computer usage, and things started to change for the better to stay off of the junk online. [Socializing online] does not let them learn interpersonal skills. Xanga is bad news, parents! Be aware!" (Click here for more from this mom.) On the other hand, another parent, Craig in Pennsylvania, emailed me last December that blogs can be "a powerful tool of insight for parents." That's if the parent doesn't have qualms about kids' privacy issues, as this mom did. What do you think? I'd love to hear from other parents who have experience with this.

Math tutoring 24/7

High school and college students will soon be able to get math tutoring on the Web 24/7, eSchoolNews reports. Other subjects will follow. That's live instructors available 24 hours a day, to be provided by a commercial online tutoring company called SMARTTHINKING, Inc. Gallaudet University, a school in Washington, D.C. for deaf and hearing-challenged students will be among the first to pilot the program. Its tutoring sessions are like live Web chats. "Tutors and students communicate by typing on a virtual white board displayed on their computer screens. Each 'white board' supports equations, annotations, and color-coded dialogue." What's new is the round-the-clock service. "According to SMARTHINKING, 300 colleges and 50 high schools from coast to coast use its service. In the past year, the company said, it has held some 155,000 tutoring sessions for approximately 70,000 students," eSchoolNews reports.

Keeping marketers honest

Children's watchdog CARU (the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the Council

of Better Business Bureaus) got two companies to fix some kid-confusing

marketing practices this week. The Wrigley Company agreed to make its contest

rules (and the part about "no purchase necessary") much more prominent on the

Web site for its Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape sweepstakes. And the Upper Deck Company

agreed to make its directions for kids clearer in its Sports Illustrated for

Kids ad, which advertised "2004 Power Up! Baseball Collect Play and Win!"

sweepstakes. It's great to know organizations like CARU are looking out for our kids. CARU is also one of the Federal Trade Commission-designated watchdogs for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Phones that track kids

It probably makes sense that South Korea - where 75% of the people carry at least one cell phone - would be one of the first countries to have mobiles that keep track of kids' whereabouts. According to Reuters, the SK Telecom phones, which cost about $90, tap into the global positioning satellite network (GPS). Reuters adds that "the phone has four buttons to save phone numbers of key contacts, such as Mum and Dad. The GPS technology works even when the phone is turned off." Some child advocates wonder, though, what would happen if people other than Mom or Dad should use this tech to track children (see "Monitoring kids by mobile phone"). Where kids are concerned, technology is never either all positive or all negative. [An alternative to mere tracking is the idea of parental controls on cell phones, which is in the works in the UK and US (see my feature on this, 5/7.]



Meanwhile, cultural differences in cell-phone behavior have already emerged, the BBC reports, citing a Surrey University study. For example: "In Paris and Madrid, users are happy to stand in the street and talk. But Londoners prefer to create a temporary phone zone where several users, unaware of each other, stop to speak in the same place."

Too young for tech?

It's an ongoing debate with few answers and no definitive research: whether exposure to technology is good for the littlest tykes. The Associated Press recently did a good job of framing the debate. On the one hand, "some parents and scholars see no benefit, and a handful even warn of a hindrance to child development." On the other: "Developers of the kids site Googles.com - not to be confused with the search engine - say their games and songs promote self-esteem. Scholastic Inc. says its Clifford products teach reading and music - not to mention computing. Others say they can't possibly quell their kids' curiosity for a machine their parents - and older siblings - are using so much." The only thing that's clear: "More research is needed, proponents and skeptics agree." And besides that, some numbers gathered to date, such as these from the Kaiser Family Foundation: 31% of children 3 and under are already using computers; 16% percent use them several times a week; 21% can point and click with a mouse by themselves; and 11% can turn on the computer without assistance." In the end, as usual, it's up to parents to decide what's best for their children. We'd love to hear from you about that - via feedback@netfamilynews.org!

SD gov yanks teen site

It's not that surprising that politics entered into what a public library has in its Web site, but we've not seen this before: South Dakota's Republican governor, Mike Rounds, shut down the teen section of the state library's Web site, eSchoolNews reports. Though the State Library Board last spring rejected a request to remove a link to Planned Parenthood in the section, on July 9 the board reversed itself and agreed to remove the link. "Rounds opposes abortion; Planned Parenthood lobbies to keep abortion legal," according to eSchoolNews. Governor Rounds "said the removal of the Web links does not amount to censorship, because Internet users still can go directly to those organizations' sites. State government sites should not feature links to advocacy groups that are politically active, he said." ESchoolNews adds that most of the links in the section were related to teen culture, but there were links to Columbia University's Go Ask Alice!, "which provides answers to health concerns and some explicit sexual questions" and to " 'It's Your (Sex) Life,' which includes information on pregnancy, birth control, and sexually transmitted diseases."

New online Amber Alert

Using the Web will only get the word about an abducted child out faster and to more people, "including ordinary citizens who can receive text messages on their cellphones," the New York Times reports. The new Net-based Amber Alert system is being tested in 13 states this summer. The Times cites figures from the National Center for Missing & Ecploited Children showing that 250-300 Amber Alerts are issued nationwide each year (the alerts were named in memory of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996). The way it works is, a local police officer enters a description of the kidnapping, "including information like location and license plate numbers, and photos of the victim," into the secure Web site. "The alert then goes out to other police departments, state agencies and broadcasters, and to cellphone and pager users who have signed up to receive them." The new system does even more than blanket an area's media with info; it calculates the abductor's location and targets media and communications devices in that area, according to that timing.

Kids & politics, online/offline

Personal as well as national politics, judging from Children's PressLine's coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Boston (at Connect for Kids). Three CPL reporters received media credentials to report from the convention floor - Gabriel Decker-Lee, 10; Laurence James, 13; and Nily Rozic, 18 - but a lot of people's good thinking backed them up: "We know we won't be the only journalists there. There'll be like 50,000 other reporters trying to get [politicians' comments] too. But ... because we are small and because we're kids, politicians will be more open to talking. We won't be surprised if we hear a lot of other reporters complaining, 'Oh, I can't believe I lost another interview to those kids!'" When they report on politics, Children's PressLine news teams focus on issues that affect people under 18. Here's more on this at ConnectforKids.org. It's important work - for both kids and the grownups who support them, because, according to USAToday, "experts see a critical need to engage America's youth since the percentage of adults who vote continues to decline. Even worse are voter participation rates among younger Americans. While about half of college-age students are registered to vote, only one in five actually does. By comparison, three out of five people over the age of 55 vote, according to the US Census Bureau." For more on teaching kids about the democratic process, see TakeYourKidstoVote.org and KidsVote2004. "A search for "politics" on AOL's KOL channel, which screens out inappropriate sites for kids under the age of 13, turns up more than 820 Web sites," USAToday reports, linking to some of them too.

Kids gambling online

A 16-year-old UK girl was able to register at 30 gambling Web sites after lying about her age, The Guardian reports. "Only seven sites requested verification of her age when she claimed to be 21." She used her youth debit card to register. The Guardian cited children's charity NCH as the source of this information. "NCH claims the findings show it is possible for children as young as 11 to register with gambling Web sites, because some banks issue debit cards to 11-year-olds." NCH called for more age verification by gambling sites. Britain's minister for gambling promised to ensure that banks and the industry work together to that end. "Around 675,000 (45%) of 16- and 17-year-olds own a debit card," The Guardian reports. "This figure does not include the number of 11-to-15-year-olds with a Solo or Visa Electron card."

To avoid this week's worm

It's just the latest version of an old worm called "MyDoom," and it's the reason why Google and other search engines slowed down or didn't work this week. The Washington Post tells how to avoid infection and - if your child does open the attachment that launches it - provides links to free fix-it tools offered by several computer security companies. Here's the BBC with more on what this worm's like and what it does. Also, see our "What if our PC's a zombie?!" if you think your family computer's infected.

Back-to-school tech: Cheaper now

Good news for students and parents: Prices are dropping and quality improving on tech products that have been around for a while, Reuters reports. That includes laptops, DVD players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and little data storage devices. Reuters cites market research company NPD Group as saying prices have dropped 5% to 10% from last year. And the article points out that Taiwan-based Elitegroup Computer Systems's notebook computers start at $598 at Wal-Mart. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a similar story, reporting that: "DVD players were about $30 cheaper than reported in April." It added that 15-inch notebook PCs have dropped an average of $65.

File-sharing paid-for tunes

It has become a trend: More and more pay-per-tune services are offering file-sharing of tunes their customers purchase. MusicMatch is the latest to join in, the Washington Post reports. "Like Napster 2.0 [and unlike Apple's iTunes], MusicMatch subscribers can share playlists with fellow subscribers and others who don't subscribe to the service," according to the Post. "Unlike Napster, which only allows nonsubscribers to listen to 30-second song snippets, MusicMatch allows songs to be played three times before the songs lock. Then only 30-second cuts can be heard." This is quite likely the direction iMesh will take later this year, after its recent $4.1 million settlement with the RIAA that included an agreement to shut down free file-sharing altogether.

Oz porn watchdog: No bite

Once famous for its unusually tough approach (for a democratic country) to Internet porn, the Australian Broadcasting Authority has been found "powerless against offshore [porn] operators," Australian IT reports . The article adds that the ABA shut down only four Australia-based sites last year. But Aussie adult sites aren't the primary problem, apparently. The international, borderless nature of the Internet is. "The ABA said it was powerless to shut down most obscene Web sites because the sites were located overseas." The ABA reported that about 52% of all content it defined as prohibited - child pornography, pedophilia, bestiality, sexual violence, and terrorism instructions - came from the US, 22% form Russia, and just 4% from Australia. Australian IT cites investigative reporting by the Sydney Daily Telegraph as its source.

File-sharers to be 'unmasked'

This may be a little scary to young music fans and file-swappers, and possibly their parents, because the RIAA sues minors too. A federal judge just made the RIAA (Recording Industry Assoc. of America) very happy by granting its request to "unmask anonymous file-swappers accused of copyright infringement," CNET reports. US District Judge Denny Chin ruled that Cablevision, a broadband Internet service provider in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, has to provide the RIAA with the names of customers it's suing for copyright violations. Legal experts say the ruling is "the most detailed so far in any of the many 'John Doe' lawsuits brought by the [RIAA]." The good news for lawyers on the anti-RIAA side was that Judge Chin's analysis of the case ensures that anyone filing suit "must prove they have a real case and aren't merely on a fishing expedition for someone's name."

Google glitch

Actually, it wasn't just Google, but just having Google down can affect a lot of family and corporate Net researchers. If you tried to do a search and couldn't at Google, AltaVista, Lycos, and possibly Yahoo today, it's because they were attacked by a worm, CNET reported. In a separate article, CNET said that this week's version of the MyDoom worm, working on home and business PCs that had been infected by it, slowed or knocked out those particular search engines just by using them to search for more email addresses. It uses (or "harvests") these addresses to send spam or to launch denial-of-service attacks on major Web sites and corporate computer networks. One infected computer can do thousands of search queries, so hundreds or thousands of them can really slow search engines down.

Bin Laden virus

Tell your kids not to open any attachment or go to any Web site that's supposed to show pictures of Osama bin Laden. It's just another attempt by some malicious hacker to take control of your family PC. Reuters cites computer security experts saying that the virus was written by someone who runs a "zombie network" - a huge network of PCs that have been infected by a "trojan" virus that allows its code writer to take over people's computers (turn them into zombies - see my 7/16 issue). "The zombified computers can then be used to distribute spam [and make money] or launch denial-of-service attacks [and make trouble]." Anti-virus companies have updated their services, so be sure your family PC's anti-virus software or service is right in step with your anti-virus provider. For more on "zombie networks," see "1 very illegal summer job." Here's more on the bin Laden virus at the BBC.

Games & girls

Not film, not digital music, but - at $7 billion in sales last year - video games are "the world's fastest-growing entertainment industry," the Washington Post reports in a thoughtfully researched update. Women make up 39% of gamers, a significant proportion, but that large industry - with all its male game designers - has a long way to go before it figures out how best to appeal to that large group, which some analysts say is just as sophisticated and diverse as male gamers. Some girls and women like shooter and sports games, some like the very popular Nancy Drew-based games such as "Secrets Can Kill" by Her Interactive. Her's Megan Gaiser had a hard time getting a publisher, so she promoted "The 3D Adventures of Nancy Drew" through Her's Web site and sold them on Amazon.com. "Since 2000, the Nancy Drew franchise has sold 1.8 million units." A couple of Nancy Drew game reviews can be found at Games4Girls.com ("Message in a Haunted Mansion" is one of their favorites).

Free iPods for students

Every single one of the 1,650 freshmen arriving at Duke University for the new school year next month will receive a brand-new 20GB iPod. "The North Carolina university said the iPods will be pre-loaded with information for new students, as well as a copy of the academic calendar," the BBC reports. "They will also hold course material such as lecture notes and audio books." Then there's music. Quite possibly to draw student interest away from all the music file-sharing that plagues university network administrators, Apple has also set up a special version of its iTunes online music store for Duke (and presumably other schools that follow suit). Duke says the iPods will be great for courses that have audio elements. Here's coverage at Wired News too.

For families seeking safer surfing

Mozilla's Firefox is great, but there are other very viable options if you're disenchanted with Internet Explorer, Wired News reports. The article reviews iRider ($30), Deepnet Explorer (free), and Opera (free with ads or $39 ad-free). On the Mac side, there's also a quick mention of Apple's admirable Safari, "lest [Wired News] gets pelted with emails from disgruntled Mac fans." For more on this, see our "New family PC risks: Web sites," 7/2.

BT's scary child-porn data

British Telecom's new Net-filtering tool is blocking more than 20,000 attempts to access child pornography a day, Reuters reports. BT said there is no way to tell how many users are going to such sites by accident. The filtering technology, which only blocks illegal child porn sites (not adult content in general), is called "Cleanfeed." BT uses it for its 2.5 million retail (non-business) customers. Cleanfeed automatically checks requests against a database of thousands of child-porn sites identified by the UK nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation. The IWF's real-time database is updated every time an illegal (under the UK's 1978 Child Protection Act) site is found. BT says it doesn't attempt to identify the people making the requests or pass such info along to police. Here's further coverage in ZDNet UK and The Telegraph.

Kid Net-safety tools reviewed

Reviews of online-kid-protection software and services are few and far between these days, so hats off to PC Magazine for keeping online families up to date on what's available. Echoing what all online-kids advocates are saying, its intro says porn isn't parents' only worry. Besides the relatively rare sexual-predator danger (see "Rethinking 'stranger danger'," 6/11), there's the infinitely more commonplace teen online social scene. "Computers have become a hub for social activity. And for the most part, it is an unsupervised environment. Many parents go to sleep every night convinced that their kids are sleeping too, while some of the kids are actually chatting online with friends and strangers." As great as the Net is, for the most part, for everything from research to keeping in touch, some parents could use a little help from technology itself on the tech part of parenting. "The good news," says PC Mag, "is that the products on the market offer a variety of approaches, so finding the right solution shouldn't be too difficult." They looked at all kinds of solutions. The categories are: Filtering Software, Kids' Browsers and Services (e.g., AOL's "KOL" and "RED"), Router-Based Parental Controls, and Monitoring Software. The page layout for this resource could be a little confusing because the pages are long and have all kinds of unrelated content; so all you need is linked to from the little green-bordered Table of Contents box on the right-hand side of each page.

Kids' own digital DJ

He calls us parents "the wrinklies," but that's ok - it's all in fun. He's Rick Adams, DJ for AOL's live (3-7pm Eastern) Internet radio show for kids at Radio KOL (for AOL members only), and 1 million 6-to-14-year-olds listen to him every weekday, the Washington Post reports. "They email and instant-message him, they badger him for giveaways, they send their shout-outs to friends and family, and they ask for songs, some of which are way inappropriate and which he can't play, but most of which he can and does." He also puts a lot of kids on the air when they call in. Then there are all the IMs (as many as 400 IMs knocking at his computer screen at any given time during the show) and emails (he gets about 5,000 a day!). Rick's only direct competitor is Radio Disney, with 3.5 million listeners (only on satellite radio, digital cable TV, or - as with KOL - online, not conventional radio).

Broadband: Family-life essential?

To some families, having high-speed Internet access is like having electricity and running water. In her readable way, the New York Times's Katie Hafner shows what life is like in households that have had broadband connections for years. She talked to families in Scripps Ranch, "a sprawling development of about 12,000 homes at the northeast corner of San Diego" and one of Time Warner's first test locations for its high-speed Road Runner service. For example, in the Gibb home, "the large, airy upstairs den ... is the electronics hub, filled with computers, printers, a cable modem and a router. Downstairs are another two computers and a printer. Everything is on a network. Each of their 13-year-old twin sons, Morgan and Cayman, has his own computer, and neither can remember life without broadband," Katie writes. The boys could do without TV, but - like many teenagers these days - not without the Net, which makes grounding from cyberspace a much more effective disciplinary tool than the kind we baby boomers had to deal with when teenagers. When Morgan lost IM privileges for a month, he "went nuts," his mother told Katie.

P2P: The next generation

Napster came first and Kazaa represented the 2nd generation. Notice the past tense. Parents of file-sharers may want to know that next-generation BitTorrent has surpassed former file-sharing leader Kazaa, CNET reports. Citing a detailed worldwide survey by UK network management company CacheLogic, CNET says BitTorrent now accounts for 53% of all peer-to-peer traffic, which is "skyrocketing," contrary to some reports. BitTorrent is the next generation because of its technology as much as its traffic. One of its attractions - in the face of anti-piracy lawsuits by record, software, and film companies - is that it's harder to track. That's because, unlike Kazaa and eDonkey, it doesn't represent a single network of file-sharers. Rather, it "works by creating smaller networks based on a single piece of content - say, the latest episode of 'The Sopranos.' Because each file has its own network, it is much harder to estimate how widespread use of the software has been." Meanwhile, popular Israel-based iMesh soon will no longer be a free file-sharing service. It agreed to block "unauthorized file-sharing" on its service and to pay the RIAA $4.1 million in a legal settlement this week, The Register reports. The service, whose software had been downloaded more than 76 million times, later this year will be a pay-per-tune one.

Web: Teen source for sex ed

The beauty of the Web for teens is that it helps them avoid asking embarrassing questions. Its anonymity eliminates "the awkwardness factor," when they have questions about things like emergency contraception or sexually transmitted diseases, reports TheLedger.com (in Lakeland, Fla.). "Research has shown the Internet is rapidly becoming a primary source of information about sex and personal health for teens," according to The Ledger, which adds that health officials are concerned about the credibility of the Web sources they're turning to and the teens' own critical judgment about them. Here are some state the article cites from various studies:



-76% of 15-to-17-year-olds online had looked up information on diet, health and fitness in 2002; 33% of those teens had researched HIV and AIDS, 25% sexually transmitted diseases, and 20% pregnancy or birth control (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2002).

- Half of 10th-graders had used the Internet to get health information - most frequently sexually transmitted diseases, followed by diet, fitness and exercise, then sexual behaviors (Mount Sinai Hospital Adolescent Health Center, NY, 2001).

- About 66% of US teens 12-17 use the Internet - Pew Internet & American Life project (no date given).

Spammer started at 14

Michigander Ryan Pitylak was 14 when he started his career as an "online marketer" in 1997. Now he's a 22-year-old student at University of Texas, living in his own $450,000 house in "one of Austin's nicest neighborhoods" and driving a "late-model Jaguar," the Chicago Tribune reports. One of his companies spams people with "5 Free Health Insurance Quotes" or "Incredible 3.51% Mortgage Rates" or "Home Invasion Protection." The Trib says that people do click on the links in these emails and fill out the forms they lead to, which earns Ryan $3-7 per referral. The insurance agents who pay for these referrals told the Trib they don't ask questions about how Ryan gets them. Ryan, this article indicates, is a typical spammer, and the typical spammer sends out millions of emails a month - in a very automated way, of course, so he still has time for his university studies. What will be interesting, though, is whether the Federal Trade Commission enforces the CAN-SPAM Act (with which some of Ryan's messages do not comply) and prosecutes. That might interfere with the studies.

Video game camp

Hmmm. The campers are "all guys ages 15 to 20," USAToday reports. Though this all sounds a bit sexist, the good news is, they're using New York University's Center for Advanced Digital Application's "cutting-edge facilities to learn the techniques behind best-selling digital masterpieces such as Doom, Quake, and Madden NFL Football." Typical day at camp? "Campers will arrive each day for a 9 a.m. warm-up of playing time-tested analog games like chess or cards, followed by a discussion of the elements that explain the games' persistent popular appeal. Lights-out could happen more than 14 hours later, if they choose to work in the computer lab from 9 to 11 p.m." Campers can choose from three majors: art, design, or programming. We hope there are camperships for this elite-sounding program that costs more than $5,000.

Xanga and other teen 'hangouts'

About 13% of the students at San Jose's Evergreen High School have blogs on Xanga.com, and that's just one online journal site. One student told the San Jose Mercury News that he visits Xanga "like 50 times a day," either to post to his own blog or visit someone else's. Most of the blogs are innocuous, some cruel. "Evergreen's Xanga crowd operated largely under the radar of school officials until a parent called attention to an anonymous blog called Mc_Smack_Crew that mocks students with digitally altered photos and vicious messages," the Mercury News reports. "School officials alerted San Jose police, who opened a 'hate crime' investigation. The police decided last month not to press charges, calling it a 'case of name-calling, however foul'." The school blocked access to the site from school computers, which of course did nothing to help the site's young victims. But most of the Evergreen blogs are the typical teen diary fare (or the digital sort): true confessions, gossip, school news, flirtations, virtual relationships, and seeking validation through peers' posts/responses and links. "Most teens abide by an unwritten code of the blogosphere: What happens online stays online," e.g., test relationships - reading an interesting prospect's blog, learning all about him, flirting with him via IM and posts on his blog, deciding he's a little too weird, and ending it, without ever having had even a phone conversation.

 

Just for context, about every 5.8 seconds a new blog is created somewhere in the world, The Register reports. That translates to 8,000-17,000 new blogs every day.

 

Interesting note for parents: The secrets in today's teen diaries are open to the public but not to parents, who remain generally clueless about them. In fact, some parents feel they're invading their child's privacy if they do what everybody else does, go to the blog, and read it (see an example in "Daughter's blog, mom's dilemma"). Would you agree? Is it wrong to read your kid's Web site? Please email us your answers!

What if our PC's a zombie?!

You may've heard of the new Digital Age kind of zombie. I hope so, because it could be your family PC. Actually, the odds aren't great that your computer has been turned into a dummy machine run by malicious hackers, but the probability is growing - especially in households with very connected kids (gamers, IM-ers, file-sharers, Web researchers, emailers, contest-enterers, etc.). So if your PC's acting strangely (unexplained shutdowns, error messages, etc.), it'd be good to have a family chat about what everybody's using the Internet for - what applications they're using, what's being downloaded, how Preferences are being configured, and so on. It'd also be good to have the anti-virus software (which I trust you've installed and kept up-to-date) scan the PC(s) for viruses. That's all a zombie is: a computer that has been infected by a PC-controlling virus. Virus writers' favorite goal these days is not to damage your computer, but rather to take control of it altogether - turn it into a zombie (see "One very illegal summer job" below for how groups of teen are allegedly capitalizing on controlling networks of these dummy PCs all over the world). When this happens, the quite reasonable question comes up: "If our PC's a zombie, what can we do about it?" For the answer, click here (to this week's SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter). We'd love to hear your family's stories about computer viruses - email me anytime via anne@netfamilynews.org or post a response here!

Michigan: Kids' do-not-email list

For this law to work, a lot will depend on execution. "Michigan will soon become the second state [after Utah] to make it illegal to certain types of spam to kids," the Detroit News reports. Parents will be able to add their children's email addresses to a state-run do-not-email registry modeled after the federal do-not-call list run by the Federal Trade Commission. Anyone who emails those addresses about porn, gambling, tobacco, drugs, or any products children can't legally purchase could be fined $5,000 per email and be required to turn over their computer, according to the law, which has passed the state legislature and been sent to Gov. Jennifer Granholm (her spokesperson said she will sign the bill). The idea of a do-not-spam list for kids "has attracted questions about its enforcement," according to the Detroit News. "Some parents are skittish about giving their kids’ e-mail addresses to the government." The FTC rejected the idea of a US do-not-spam system as unworkable.



A more workable solution - for anyone who wants only kid-friendly email in their in-boxes - might be a children's email-filtering product or service. There are a lot of options, among them: JustSafe.com, KidMail.net, KinderStart.com, KinderMail.com, and kidZmail.com. Email me if you try any of these and like it - your experience would be helpful to other parents!

UK teen arrested for spamming

The teenager was fired from his $223/week job so, in return, he bombarded the company's servers with 5 million emails, crippling its Web site, CNET reports. All he did was search for a spam tool (software) on the Net, download it, and proceed to send 100 emails a second to his former employer. "He now faces six months in prison or a fine of up to $9,283," CNET adds.

Spyware: Not just a privacy prob

Here's a new rule for child surfers: Don't click on "yes" to all those "Download this!" offers they run into on the sites they visit - check with Mom or Dad first. "Why?" they might ask. There's a strong chance they'll be downloading spyware, or "scumware," as the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes calls it. It can "reset your home page to a porn site ... and then refuse to let you change the page back" (see our "Spyware & an 8-year-old" last week) or "hijack your search requests and then direct them to its own page" or even "secretly record the keystrokes you use to log in to bank accounts and then send the info off to who knows where," Lee writes, adding: "A program making the rounds in Europe installs a piece of software that dials up expensive 976 numbers the spyware authors have set up," running up large family phone bills. There's a fund of information on spyware and what to do about it at SpywareInfo.com.

Graphic images online

Parents worry about the graphic images children are exposed to in the media, but Americans in general are divided about what should be available on the Web. Nearly half of Americans disapprove of posting images online that have been deemed too horrific to run in newspapers and on TV, according to a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life project. But "24% went online to view some of the most graphic war images," and "of those who have seen the images, 28% actively sought them out." When viewed, the images elicit mixed feelings as well as mixed opinions. Pew found that, though "millions of Internet users want to be able to view the graphic war images and they see the Internet as an alternative source of news and information from traditional media ... many who do venture outside the traditional and familiar standards of the mainstream news organizations to look at the images online end up feeling very uncomfortable. Women are particularly opposed to the display of the images and are much less likely than men to have viewed the images online." Released late last week, the nationwide survey was conducted in May, when some of the most violent imagery was coming out of Iraq. Here's coverage of this survey by Newsday (New York), the Chicago Sun-Times, the Associated Press, and ClickZ Stats.

One very illegal summer job

Unbeknownst to countless families around the world, groups of teenage malicious hackers are renting out zombie family PCs to "spammers, fraudsters, and digital saboteurs," Reuters reports. "Zombie PCs?" you might ask. They're regular old Net-connected home computers that have been infected by "trojan" worms and viruses that allow the virus writers to control the infected PCs. "The result is a powerful network of zombie PCs that security experts call a 'botnet'," according to Reuters. Scotland Yard's computer crime unit told Reuters these botnets are networks of as many as 10,000-30,000 computers that small groups of young people, probably working out of their bedrooms, are renting to anybody for as little as $100 an hour. Consequently, "there may be millions of such PCs around the world doing the bidding of crime gangs," say computer security experts who believe the gangs are using these kids as child labor - a new, technically sophisticated form of it. As for the botnets they've developed, experts are worried the people who manipulate them will move beyond mere spamming to taking down key data networks and major Web sites.

Kid-tracking tech: Japan & UK

A primary school in Osaka will soon be testing a high-tech way of knowing children's whereabouts at all times. RFID (for radio frequency identification) chips will be attached to students' schoolbags or clothing tags and read by readers (like bar-code readers in grocery stores) that will be "installed in school gates and other key locations," UK-based Silicon.com reports. Legoland in Denmark is already using this "Kidspotter" tech. As of last May, children entering the amusement park were given RFID bracelets that could be tracked anywhere within its boundaries, so that parents could be called on their cell phones about their lost child's location, Silicon.com reported in a separate article. Just one caveat: the marketing angle. The chips will also tell Lego exactly where customers go, which will be great for "insightfully targeted marketing campaigns for the perennially popular Lego brick toy sets."



Interestingly, tracking kids by cell phones, on the other hand, has some important detractors in the UK. "A coalition of children's charities has urged the UK government to set strict controls on services that let parents track their children by their mobiles," the BBC reports. The organizations are worried that, as more and more companies market the technology without legal safeguards, the tech can get into the wrong hands. "The onus is on the child to decide whether to accept or reject the request, if it is not from a parent."

Another view of hackers

We hear from the media much more about malicious hackers than about the regular kind - many of whom are young and still living at home! So, because many news people put a negative twist on the word "hacker," we thought fellow parents might be interested in the way hackers view themselves. Insights are provided in this USATODAY article (part of a series) on a conference in New York over the weekend called "The Fifth HOPE" (HOPE for Hackers On Planet Earth).

File-sharing's up

Unless your family's had "the discussion," chances are any file-sharers at your house are swapping tunes as much as ever. Despite recording industry's thousands of lawsuits, last month file-sharing was up 19% over that of June 2003 - "8.3 million people were online at any one time" using P2P services such as Kazaa and eDonkey, USATODAY reports. Kazaa is becoming less popular, while New York-based eDonkey and Israel-based iMesh are picking up some of that P2P traffic. Most of the files being swapped were tunes (1 billion songs were available for downloading last month, up from 820 million a year ago). But parents, look at this: porn videos and images came in second. So back to "the discussion" - about file-sharing activity at your house. The very best way to start might be to discuss PC security: e.g., how the eDonkey software's preferences have been configured, what's being shared (if anything), if the kid's concerned about spyware, and whether we shouldn't take a look at all this at the PC together. For more discussion points, see "Teen writes: Kids like P2P risks", "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing" and "File-sharing realities for families." After you've been through the security issues, it might be interesting to ask your kids about the ethics involved. We'd love to hear how the discussion goes - email me anytime via anne@netfamilynews.org.

New family PC risks, Part 2: Games!

Last week we looked at the phenomenon of invasive Web sites and pop-ups. This week a heads-up for gamers of all ages.... If your child plays Unreal Tournament or other multiplayer games that run on the basic Unreal game code, your PC could become a hacker playground. "As they develop more online capabilities, games have become an increasingly popular avenue for online miscreants," CNET reports. The "miscreants" could compromise the Unreal engine's "security tool" and use it to take over the computer your child uses to play these games. We asked CorePROTECT CEO and father-of-six Tim LaFazia what he thought of this new PC security development. Click here for his view.

What's on your mind?

The SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter is working on a feature that features you! You might call it "What's on your mind (concerning kids & tech)?" We'd love to receive questions, concerns, stories about kids' use of Net-related technologies - IM, file-sharing, games, blogs, Web sites, etc. - at your house. We can reach out to a wonderful range of expertise to answer your questions, but many of you have come up with your own great solutions, and it's these real-life answers that are often more helpful to fellow parents than all the professional expertise in the world. We'd like to publish many of them in our newsletter and blog. So please email me anytime at anne@netfamilynews.org. Thanks in advance for your contributions!

Gamers: More and more going online

If they don't know already, parents of gamers will want to know how easy Sony and Microsoft are making it for console gamers to go online, link up with other players, "form alliances and socialize in groups," the New York Times reports. We're not referring to computer gamers; we're talking about the PlayStation 2 and XBox gamers who typically start playing at much younger ages. Computer gamers were always necessarily a little more techie and knew how to go online; now it's easy for gamers of all ages. "Once a console is hooked up to an Internet connection, players merely click a button that takes them directly to the online game portal," according to the Times. More than 10% of the 25 million PlayStation 2s sold are online-capable, but about 1.2 million PS2 users are playing online so far, according to market research. Microsoft says 1 million out of 14 million Xbox users have bought the online kit and subscribe to Xbox Live, while - for Nintendo GameCube - only two games are available for online play (by contrast, Sony expects to have 100 PS2 games available for online play by Christmas, up from 65 now, the Times reports).

Peer-to-peer gambling

First it was pretty much just music (widely shared with file-sharing technology). Then porn, viruses, and spyware (see our "File-sharing realities for families"). Now casinos are using P2P technology in a big way. "Peer-to-peer betting, which has been increasingly popular in Europe, Asia and Australia, is one of the fastest-growing online gambling enterprises," the New York Times reports in "Gambling Sites Offering Ways to Let Any User Be the Bookie." The US-based P2P gambling service that will illustrate this phenomenon will be Betbug, set to launch July 21. It's "remarkably similar to file-sharing programs like Kazaa and Morpheus, which let people exchange music and other media over the Internet. Anyone downloading the Betbug software will be able to propose a wager, then reach out to everyone else on the network to find a taker for the bet." The US Justice Department has lately been after offshore Internet gambling casinos, but Betbug's creators use a similar argument to that of the file-sharing networks: They say they should be exempt from US law because they're not acting as a central bookmaker - just making software available to users who choose what they want to do with it. Just to hedge their bets, though, they're basing Betbug in Toronto. Of course, where child Net users are concerned, file-sharing networks with no central databases or participation in the goings-on are passing the buck to parents.

Firefox not the perfect solution either

Just as computer security experts have been suggesting that we try alternative browsers like Opera or Firefox, the people behind Firefox announced it too has a security flaw. This only affects PCs with the Windows XP operating system, ZDNet UK reports. So if you're an XP family and you heeded the experts' advice and switched browsers, you definitely need to click to this page on the Mozilla site, download the patch and follow the instructions (they're a lot less user-friendly than Microsoft's security patches, we have to say - to Microsoft's credit). "Mozilla developers said that future versions of the Firefox Web browser would have automatic update notifications that would make it easier to notify users about security fixes," according to ZDNet. See "Spyware & an 8-year-old" below for more on browsers.

Teen romance, online-style

"Even the most personal conversations now occur without human contact," reports college student and contributor Amy Sennett in the Washington Post. In her entertaining article about the electronic elements of dating, she tells us that, these days, instant messaging (IM) is the "communication lifeline" of young adults, and "the rules of virtual conversation and courtship are no more simple or well defined than they were in Jane Austen's world." There are no fewer conventions with email- and IM-enhanced relationships, you see. "One of the new conventions is that an email carries more weight than a casual IM conversation," where mere flirting occurs. "E-mail, at least for my guy friends, is one rung down on the emotional ladder from marriage proposals and shared bank accounts," Amy writes. "As a result, hundreds of thousands of confused college women like me now decode these messages as if we are searching for hidden professions of love in the Rosetta stone." Amy's piece focuses on the nuanced impact of various technologies on new friendships, more than on the ethics and etiquette involved at the other end - breaking up online. Is it a cop out not let someone down face-to-face? All this is still being worked out, and it's a fascinating process needing plenty of TLC on the observer/parent's part (we would love to hear from you and your son or daughter if you have stories of this type to tell - email feedback@netfamilynews.org).



Another layer of this social-techno tangle kids face, not dealt with in Amy's article, is texting on a cell phone - probably closer to IM in lightness of touch and brevity of message. One mom told us her high-schooler uses his phone more "for quick messages to figure out meeting logistics with friends and his family" (see my 5/7 issue on cell phone parental controls). Maybe phones kick in when the relationship is already in full swing!

Controlling kid TV-viewing

Some parents have heard of the V-Chip, but few know what it is or how to make it filter out TV programming they don't want their kids to see. ZDNet home electronics specialist Steve Kovsky calls the V-Chip - legally required in every TV over 13" manufactured since January 2000 - parents' "first line of defense." But it isn't always user-friendly (you can always read your TV's user manual), Steve says, so for parents seeking better, more convenient parental controls, he recommends DVRs (digital video recorders) such as TiVo and ReplayTV or, even better, Windows XP Media Center. All of these options, of course, add a significant chunk of change to filtering efforts.

School tech tidbits

Almost two-thirds of K-12 teachers say that the availability of computers improves student performance on standardized tests, and 77% say they don't have enough computers for students in their classrooms, according to a "Teachers Talk Tech" poll unveiled at the recent National Education Computing Conference. Another interesting highlight, from a survey by NetDay, found that "teachers think their students learn about technology from their friends first and from their teachers secondly. In reality, students feel that friends, self-exploration, family, and TV and radio ads all have a stronger influence than teacher recommendations." That survey also found that 71% of teachers said they would use students to provide tech support or expertise in the classroom (interestingly, older teachers were more comfortable with student tech support than those 29 and under).



As for negative online encounters in school: TechLearning's InstantPoll found that 75% of school tech decisionmakers give their districts relatively high marks for adequately protecting students from inappropriate content. But despite their best efforts, 59% report incidents of students accessing inappropriate Web content at school in the past year. The content they're referring to was games (45%), pornography (39%), and music file-sharing (19%).

Patch that Windows PC!

If your family computer runs on Windows (and you're still using the Explorer browser to surf), get this brand-new patch for that Explorer problem we featured last week. That patch page at Microsoft has instructions for home users right near the top. The Explorer flaw "allows online thieves to steal computer passwords and private data such as bank account numbers," the Washington Post reports, adding: "The patch does not fix the problem, instead it turns off the function inside Internet Explorer that contains the flaw. Microsoft is working on another patch to repair the hole." This article in CNET, "Another Internet Explorer flaw found," confirms our troubles are not over. But did we need confirmation?!

Spyware & an 8-year-old

We keep hearing about this thing called "spyware" - Congress is certainly confronting it (see Reuters report) - but many parents aren't exactly sure what it means. Well, a recent commentary in The Register literally brings the issue home....



"One of my friends called me in a panic the other day. It seems his eight-year-old daughter was surfing the Internet, searching for Barbie dolls ... when something bad popped up on the screen. She may not have understood what she saw, but she knew it was bad and so she called Mom and Dad. You can probably guess what popped on the screen. That's right, a page with explicit, graphic pornography. But wait, there's more. It gets worse." The site she clicked to somehow installed porn images all over the computer - from the desktop to the browser's Quick Links toolbar to the Favorites list. "The browser was also redirected, or 'hijacked' to display an explicit porn site as the home page." The dad tried two different anti-spyware programs, and they detected it but couldn't remove it. The spyware could update itself and did so to a newer version that the removal software couldn't affect. The dad, who works in the software industry, "spent significant time figuring out how to manually delete a malicious, system-level application that he never installed."



The problem, PC security experts say, largely lies at the Explorer browser's doorstep, and the reason is its popularity (about 80% of the world's Net users use Explorer), which spells significant impact for anyone with bad intentions. Even so, the odds are against your children having an experience like the above, but - to avoid it - you can switch browsers (to Safari on the Mac or Firefox or Opera on the PC). USAToday this week ran reviews of these and other browser alternatives. Or turn up Explorer's security setting to "high" (the Washington Post helpfully explains how). And CNET reports that more and more security software companies, such as PestPatrol, are offering consumers anti-spyware information on the Web.

Cell phone injures teen

It wasn't a serious injury but something parents might want to know about. The 16-year-old in California, who'd had the phone in her back pocket, was treated for second-degree burns and shortly thereafter released from the hospital. A fire investigator said the phone in question, whose battery reportedly caused "fist-size flames," was a Kyocera Wireless 2325, CNET reports. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission "has yet to decide what to do" and - as of this writing - Verizon Wireless, which sold the phone, was trying to get more information from the girl's family and Kyocera didn't return the reporter's calls. CNET adds that "it's not the first reported instance of a Kycera phone malfunctioning. All of the incidents have raised concerns over the safety of a device jammed into pockets, handbags or pressed against a person's face."

New family PC risk: Web sites!

As if family computer use wasn't enough of a minefield already, two new risks have recently emerged - ones that kids can easily encounter. This week we'll look at the first one: Web sites! (Next week: multiplayer games.)



These are Web sites that put malicious code or spyware on the PCs of average surfers who simply click to them. At least one professional techie was telling his family late last week simply not to use the Web unless they absolutely had to, the Washington Post reported, referring to the "world wide minefield" some malicious hackers in Russia had temporarily turned the Web into. The good news is two-fold: 1) the server the hackers were operating was shut down, and 2) their exploit alerted a whole lot of us to a new PC security risk: hijacked Web sites that can send our computers code that allows its writers to take control of them (and make money by using our PCs to spam other people!).



Another example last week, also linked to organized crime, experts said, was pop-up ads that upload password-stealing spyware on people's PCs when they go to banking sites such as PayPal, USBank, and 40+ others (see Australian IT).



These exploits aren't particularly new, but over the past two weeks have affected a lot more people, which on the positive side means a whole lot more people have become aware of them and are alerting their families and taking precautions (click here for solutions).

'Camera phone backlash' already

To teens who snap and email on-the-fly photos of themselves and friends, they're just fun. But concerns about everything from children's privacy to industrial espionage are now being raised wherever "phone snappers" flock, and they're certainly not just kids. "Worldwide, more camera phones were sold last year than digital cameras - a first," the BBC reports, adding that "sales went up almost five-fold from 2002 to 84 million. In some countries, almost every model sold has a built-in camera." In Japan people can even distinguish among the postures of phone snappers, talkers, gamers, and texters (it's now almost impossible to take a sneaky photo there without people noticing). Schools, strip joints, health clubs, and corporations in many countries are banning camera phones from their premises. They're entirely banned in Saudi Arabia and frowned upon in other Mideastern countries, according to the BBC. "In the US, lawmakers are considering a bill banning so-called up-skirt photos and other forms of voyeurism." The Italian government's media watchdog has issued guidelines for camera phone use.

COPA counterpoint

For anyone interested in more than the Supreme Court justices' thinking on protecting kids from online porn (and the Child Online Protection Act they just sent back again to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia for deliberation, this time on how filtering tech has improved since the Philadelphia court blocked the new law's enforcment in early '99), the Washington Post this week held chats between the public and very articulate representatives of the debate's two sides: Ann Beeson, associate litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America (these are the chat event transcripts). Further great perspective: the Post's cogent editorial on this week's decision.