SafeKids.com

by Larry Magid

The BBC is reporting that a 15 year old Dutch boy, identified as “Jinhua K” has been sentenced to a year in jail and 3 years of psychiatric evaluation after being convicted of killing a school girl “over a row that appears to have begun on Facebook.” Jinhau was 14 at the time of the murder.

Reportedly, there was a falling out over comments that the victim, Joyce “Winsie” Hau had made on the wall of a minor identified as “Polly W. The BBC said that Polly W and her boyfriend “gave Jinhua a note with the victim’s address and let him know when she would be home.”

Facebook not to blame

It’s no surprise that the comments that apparently infuriated Polly were made on Facebook because that’s where many teens congregate. But if they weren’t made on Facebook they would probably have been made elsewhere — on the phone, in email, in a chat room, on Twitter or — even more likely — in school or another physical location. If this murder had been the result of an angry phone exchange in the UK, I don’t think the media would be calling it a “British Telecom Murder.”

The report quotes experts as saying the Jinhua “was suffering from a severe behavioral disorder with psychopathic tendencies,” which is a far more logical description of cause then blaming it on the medium where it took place. Just as the movie theater where James Holmes opened fire on a crowd in July, isn’t to blame for that crime, neither is Facebook implicated in this killing.

It’s also important to put this case into perspective. Millions of teenagers around the world (the vast majority in many countries) use Facebook daily and there are very few reports of violent incidents or crimes. When they happen they make news — just like the killing at the movie theater — but just as you can go to movies your entire life and likely never encounter a serious crime, the same can be said for using Facebook.

What’s a parent to do?

Although I wasn’t quoted in the BBC article referenced in this post, I did speak with BBC World News television about the case and when asked what parents should do, my response was to talk with your kids and explain that this case is extremely rare but there can be consequences to one’s online behavior. It might be a good time to ask kids about arguments they’ve had on  Facebook and how they responded.

For more advice, see A Parents’ Guide to Facebook from ConnectSafely.org and Facebook’s Safety Center.

Listen to Larry’s comments on BBC World News (you can only hear his side, not that of the interviewer)

Disclosure: I’m co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook and other companies.

A new optional “life event” lets you tell the world you’re expecting

Facebook has added “Expecting a Baby” to its list of things you can add to Family & Relationships.  If you opt to use this feature you can specify (or not) the baby’s gender and due date  along with “who with,” “location” and whatever “story” you wish to report or conjure up.

I’m guessing that by location they mean where you live or where you expect the baby to be born, but I suppose you can be creative. I’m not sure how wise it is to be creative with the “who with” category, but I’m told by a Facebook spokesperson that if you select another Facebook member to share the honor with, that person will have to approve it before their name shows up.  You can also add photos of, well, I guess either the parents or maybe the ultrasound if you care to share that.

The feature is entirely optional and, like most things you post on Facebook, you get to specify who can see it. You can make it public, share it with friends or restrict it even further to specific people or groups of people.

No advertising — yet

In a statement, Facebook said “Currently we are not using this life event for ad targeting. We’ll explore the option in the future, as we observe how people use the feature.” In other words, they’re not going to start pitching baby products to you right away, but they could start at some point in the future.

Think before you post

As with anything, you should think carefully before you post the good news that you’re expecting. Do you really want to share this with the world?  Is there anyone — perhaps an employer or a family member — who you’re not quite yet ready to tell? Are you far enough along in the pregnancy to want to share the news?  I know this sounds awful, but the American Pregnancy Association says that “from 10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage,” with most happening “shortly after implantation.”  While the chances very good that your pregnancy will result in a healthy baby, you should still put some thought into when you want to disclose it.  While you can limit the audience to this or most other types of posts, there is always the chance that someone who sees this on Facebook might inadvertently share it with others — perhaps many others — via their own Facebook account.

How to add expecting to Life Events

Follow these steps to add the news to your Facebook Life Events

1. Go to your timeline by clicking on your name in the upper right corner

2. Click on “Life Event” in the box below your photo (near the upper left of the page)

3 .Click on Family & Relationship

4. Click on Expecting a baby and fill out the form. Remember, all fields are optional so only disclose what you’re comfortable telling the world and pay special attention to the area at the bottom where you can specify who can see this post (the default will be whatever you set the last time you posted but you can change it by clicking on the small arrow to the right of your current selection (see area outlined in red)

Disclosure: I’m co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization the receives financial support form Facebook.

Guide advises parents and safe use of smartphones

by Larry Magid

Scroll down for podcast interview with mobile security expert and Lookout CTO Kevin Mahaffey 

If you’re like most parents, your kids already have a cell phone or are chomping at the bit to get one. And, increasingly, teens and even “tweens” are getting smartphones that can do everything a family PC can do and more.

A March, 2012 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 23% of 12 to 17 year-olds have a smartphone. Nearly a third (31%) of older teens (14-17) have one.

Today’s smartphones are not only more powerful than PCs from just a few years ago, they are equipped with more features including cameras, camcorders and location services that make it possible to track both the phone and its user. And just as PCs run software, smartphones run “apps” from third party developers who are mostly unaffiliated with the phone maker or carrier.

It’s not just teens using smartphones. Younger children are also getting them and as a parent, it’s important to understand what these phones can do, whether they’re right for your child and how you can make sure that your child is using his or her phone appropriately.

The guide was written in partnership with “The Online Mom,” Monica Villa

A new free downloadable booklet, Generation Smartphone: A Guide for Parents of Tweens & Teens, helps answers these and other questions. Created by mobile security company Lookout in partnership with Monica Vila, The Online Mom, the guide is designed to “help parents take the guesswork out of raising intelligent, responsible smartphone touting kids.”

Is your child ready?

The guide poses “4 Questions to Ask Yourself To Determine If Your Child Is Ready for a Mobile Phone” including whether your child needs a phone for emergency situations, if he or she understands and respects time and usage limits, if the child understands what apps are OK and how to safely use the Net; and whether your child knows “who and who not to communicate with? What they should and shouldn’t share online? What sorts of words and pictures NOT to send?”

Once you get your kid a phone, the guide recommends “7 things to do” including setting a password, adding important people to the contact list, educating yourself on school phone rules and making sure the kids understand family rules for downloading apps. The guide also recommends downloading “a security app to protect your investment.” Lookout, along with several other companies offer “freemium” (some services are free but you can pay for enhanced services) that can help locate missing phones, protect against malware and even wipe phones that may have gotten into the wrong hands. The iPhone comes with a “find my phone” feature that locates and wipes lost phones. For more on this see my post Cell Phone Safety: Protecting Privacy, Data and Kids Too

Building responsibility

My favorite section of the guide, entitled 4 Ways to Build Responsibility & Your Relationship With Mobile Phones recommends ways for parents to help teach their kids responsibility and good judgement. Tips include having your child contribute to the bill, sending them text messages ranging from telling them that you love them to engaging them in conversations, incentivizing them with expanded phone privileges and encouraging them to use their phone in a balanced way.

Parents as role models

I’m sure Monica would agree that how you act with your own phone can have a big impact on how your kids use theirs. Parents need to be good role models, which includes thinking about how you’re using your phone when your kids are around. Are you paying more attention to friends and business associates on the other end of a phone than you are to your own family? Are you limiting the use of your phone when you’re around your kids and are you being safe when in the car by not texting while driving or allowing phone conversations to interfere with safe driving.

Podcast interview with Lookout CTO Kevin Mahaffey

Larry Magid sat down with Lookout’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Kevin Mahaffey to talk about the company, cell phone risks and the report.

Click to listen

Lookout CTO Kevin Mahaffey

Using tools like SpoofCard to disguise your identity could get in you trouble if you’re “SWAT-ting.”

UKnowKids, a company that helps parents monitor what their kids are doing on the web and with mobile phones, is on a mission to educate parents and children about the dangers of “SWAT-ting.” The term, which gets its name from SWAT, as in “special weapons and tactics,” is when someone activates an emergency response as a prank.

In an email, Unknowkids Vice President Steve Woda, wrote that “many SWAT-ters use a service like Spoofcard to disguise the origin of the prank call which allows them to change their voice and add background sound effects.” He pointed out that “teens who engage in online gaming, chat rooms or social media may be at risk” of having the cops show up at their house because of a SWAT attack by a prankster.

Wooda points out that “certain calls could cost law enforcement up to $10,000 and that legislators are currently working on a law that will make SWAT-ting a four-year felony.”  Parents need to warn their kids that SWAT-ting is a dangerous game that could put lives at risk and get them into serious trouble.

TMZ reported that police recently showed up at the home of actress Miley Cyrus after someone reported a home invasion and possible shots fired.  The police dispatched a helicopter and surrounded the house in what must have been a very expensive and potentially dangerous waste of use of taxpayer funds.  Police told TMZ that if someone were hurt or killed because of the practice, the caller could face felony charges.

A bit of perspective

Although SWAT-ting is disturbing, it’s not an epidemic so let’s not unleash yet another technopanic. Just because it’s happened doesn’t mean that lots of kids are doing it. Still, it’s one more thing to talk with your kids about to make sure they understand that sending the police on a wild goose chase is itself a serious crime.

Click here for an infogrpah on how SWAT-ting works

Click here or on the image to bring up the full infogrpahic

By Larry Magid

There are lots of companies that build Internet filtering products and while most do a pretty good job of keeping kids away from porn, none are perfect.  MetaCert,which claims to have labelled nearly 630 million pornographic web pages, isn’t perfect either but its CEO Paul Walsh claims that it has less than a 0.3% error rate.

The company has software, called “crawlers,” that scour the web constantly looking for porn. If it finds a site that meets its criteria, it adds it to the list but if anyone suspects that it’s not really a porn site, they can submit it for review and have it removed if it got there by accident.

The company has a number of products including plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome and its own DNS (domain name service) server that can block porn on all devices connected to your home network. It’s also about to release its own porn-free browser for the iPad called Olly. Parents can make Olly available to their kids but restrict access to Apple’s unfiltered Safari browser for themselves only.

Click here for more from Larry’s CNET blog post

Listen to interview with MetaCert CEO Paul Walsh

MetaCert CEO Paul Walsh

by Larry Magid

Source: Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a revised set of proposed rules (PDF) regarding the implementation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

When implemented, this will be the first time the FTC has revised the rules since 1999, back when there was no  Facebook or such thing as an “App for that.” Even MySpace wasn’t founded until 2003. Facebook came on the scene in 2004 and the first iPhone was released in 2007 followed in 2009 by the first Android phone. And while there was Internet advertising back then, we didn’t have the plethora of ad networks and third party tracking cookies and your phone didn’t know your exact location as is common today.

Third party ad networks and plug-ins covered

So, to keep up with modern times, the FTC wants to revise COPPA rules so that they apply to third party advertising networks along with app and plug-in developers and to expand the definition of “personal information.”

According to the FTC, the new proposed rules “clarify that a plug-in or ad network is covered by the Rule when it knows or has reason to know that it is collecting personal information through a child-directed website or online service.”

Services for both kids and adults

The new rules would also allow sites and services with content designed to appeal to both young children and others, including parents to be able to “age-screen all visitors in order to provide COPPA’s protections only to users under age 13.” At first glace this seems reasonable, but I worry that it could have an unintended impact on news or sports related sites aimed at adults and kids if those sites use any type of geolocaton (IP address on a PC or GPS or WiFi data on a mobile device) to determine what city the person is in. If, for example, a person visited a sports site and got an ad suggesting they attend a local game, that could be construed as using personal information for advertising and potentially be a COPPA violation.

Sites and services that knowingly  target children under 13 as their primary audience must still treat all users as children.

The new rules also create the notion of co-responsibility between companies that furnish apps or plug-ins along with those that operate the platform where the plug-in runs.  The FTC said that “an operator of a child-directed site or service that chooses to integrate the services of others that collect personal information from its visitors should itself be considered a covered ‘operator’ under the Rule.”

New rules on personal information

The new rules would also modify the definition of personal information to include “‘persistent identifiers’ that recognize a user over a period of time which are used for purposes other than “support for internal operations.” This rule is aimed squarely at tracking cookies that are capable of not only delivering advertising within a site but can also be used to track people across sites to deliver targeted information.

Another important change, especially for many mobile apps, is that personal information now includes “a home or other physical address including street name and name of a city or town.” Such geolocation data is often collected by smart phone apps along with phone numbers which are also now prohibited by the proposed rules.

What’s not covered

As I understand it, these rules apply to information that is being collected for the purposes of advertising or marketing — not information necessary to maintain a network or offer a service. And it’s only for sites that are specifically aimed at children (or aimed at both children and adults) but not sites that don’t allow children. Facebook, for example, requires users to state their date of birth and does not allow users who’s stated birthdate indicates that they’re under 13. Of course, it’s possible to lie about one’s age which is why Consumer Reports estimates that 5.6 million of Facebook’s users are under 13.  There have been stories in the news that Facebook may open its membership to kids under 13, but the company has not confirmed its intention to do that and, as of now, remains available only to people 13 and older.

It’s unclear whether these rules would apply to Facebook apps and plug-ins, including those that put Facebook’s “Like” button on sites. Not withstanding that some kids lie about their age, any site that requires a user to sign-in via Facebook is certifying that that person claims to be 13 or older based on Facebook’s terms of service.

Impact on small businesses

The FTC acknowledges that these proposed rules could have a negative impact on small businesses. The agency estimates that “approximately 500 additional operators may newly be subject to the Rule’s requirements,” and that “approximately 85-to 90% of operators potentially subject to the Rule qualify as small entities.”

Via email, Morgan Reed, Executive Director of Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), which represents small and medium sized businesses, said that the FTC has underestimated the number of small businesses that could be affected. “Today’s app world is being driven by thousands of developers all over America  - many of whom are parents looking to just make educational tools their kids might use – and that’s a great thing.” He said that his group “works with more than 1,200 educational app developers through our Moms with Apps affiliation, and we added more than 500 kids apps developers in just the past year.”

When COPPA was first implemented in 2000, it did have an impact on a number of small sites, some of which went out of business or stopped serving children under 13. Large companies, such as Disney and Nickelodeon, were able to adhere to COPPA regulations and continue to serve  children. To be fair, some small businesses also become “COPPA compliant” and there continue to be new companies entering the field that operate within COPPA rules. Still, the additional restrictions are likely to have a negative affect on some small operators while larger companies should have relatively little trouble complying.

Unintended consequences

While COPPA is a well-intentioned law and the new proposed rules do bring it into the 21st century, there are unintended negative consequences.  For one, it discourages companies from offering services to people under 13 or even allowing pre-teens to use services that could benefit them. Because COPPA doesn’t apply to people 13 and over, there are a lot of great services aimed at teens and adults but since kids do want to use many of these services, they wind up lying about their age, often with parental consent or involvement. In a 2011 study,  danah boyd and other researchers demonstrated that nearby a fifth (19 percent) of the parents of 10-year-olds acknowledged that their child was on Facebook. About a third (32 percent) of parents of 11-year-olds knew their kid was on it. And the same was true for more than half (55 percent) of parents of 12-year-olds. For kids who were under 13 at the time they signed up, 68 percent of the parents “indicated that they helped their child create the account.” Among 10-year-olds on Facebook, a whopping 95 percent of parents were aware their kids were using the service and 78 percent helped create the account.

Seeking comments

The agency is currently seeking comments on its proposed rules. Comments must be filed by September 10, 2012

More from around the web

FTC: Privacy rules should apply to apps aimed at children (The Hill)

The ‘minimum age’ & other unintended consequences of COPPA (Anne Collier of NetFamilyNews & my co-director at ConnectSafely.org)

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News
by Larry Magid

A recent survey by Opinion Matters on behalf of GFI Software found that many people don’t fully understand how to protect their data and privacy in the event their phone is lost or stolen.

The survey of just over a thousand U.S. adults found that 57 percent of respondents were most concerned about “the hassle and cost of having to buy a new phone” but nearly as many (54 percent) were more worried about “losing my contact list.” Just over a third (34 percent) worried about losing memorable or irreplaceable photos, while 29 percent were most concerned about “being vulnerable to identify theft by having my personal information or documents stored on my smartphone compromised.”

Those worried about losing their contacts or other data may be unaware of ways to back up phones via the cloud, and I wonder if those who worry about data getting into the wrong hands know that there are programs that can be used to remotely lock or wipe their phones.

If my phone were stolen, I would certainly fret about the cost of replacing it, but I would have absolutely no concern about losing my contact list or valuable photos because they’re all backed up in the cloud. I use Gmail and let Google (GOOG) store my contact lists and calendar on both my iPhone and my Android phones, and my wife does the same on her Blackberry. If the phone were lost or stolen, the data would still be safe and the contact list and calendar are always in sync, so if I add or change something from my PC or Mac, I can see it on my phone and vice versa. It also means that all my mobile devices are in sync. Apple’s (AAPL) iCloud offers similar backup services.

I would worry a little about my data getting into the wrong hands, but there are Apps for that. Apple’s iOS operating system comes with Find My Phone that allows owners to remotely lock or wipe their phone. It can also be used to locate a missing phone. The “find” feature works by sending a relatively loud tone and displaying a message like “if you find this phone please call me at 408 555-5555.” You can access Find My Phone from any Web-enabled device or by using the app on other iOS devices.

One of several products that can help find, secure and wipe your phone

There are many similar apps available for Android and Blackberry devices. The study’s sponsor, GFI, just launched GFI VIPRE Mobile Security Premium, which includes these features along with anti-virus protection, online backup and activity monitoring and location tracking of children’s’ phones. The “freemium” app offers free lost device alarm, anti-virus, and contact backup. The full suite of features are available for 99 cents a month or $9.95 a year after a 30-day free trial period.

The only drawback to these apps is that the phone needs to be on and getting a signal for them to work. So, if your phone is lost or stolen, you need to act quickly while it’s still running. Apple’s service has a feature that sends you an email when the phone is found, which means that if someone finds it and turns it on later, you’ll get an email so you know to log on to iCloud right away to wipe the device. If you use GFI VIPRE to wipe a phone that’s not online, the phone will be wiped if and when it connects to the Internet via the cellular nework or Wi-Fi.

Regardless of whether you use any of these location-based products, it’s a good idea to lock (password protect) your phone. In addition to keeping prying eyes away from your data, it also prevents people from using your phone to make expensive international calls or using it to send inappropriate emails or text messages that appear to come from you. It’s is especially important to remind kids that their phones are an extension of them and anyone using their phone can easily impersonate them.

The GFI survey also asked parents whether it’s more important to monitor their kids activity on a PC (laptop or desktop) or on a phone, and 13 percent chose PC while 8 percent chose phone. Most respondents said they didn’t have kids (61 percent) or that their children don’t use PCs or smart phones (9 percent).

It strikes me that if you’re worried about what your kids are doing with technology, you should be more concerned about their cell phone use than what they’re doing on the home PC. I’m not saying that they can’t get in trouble at home, nor am I suggesting that all kids need to be monitored either at home or on mobile devices; as I frequently say at my SafeKids.com and ConnectSafely.org sites — I think that talking with kids is sometimes sufficient or even better. But kids use mobile devices in places where there is no adult supervision and they can do just about anything with a mobile device that they can with a PC plus a lot more — like taking and sending pictures, allowing others to track their location and, of course, talking on the phone.

Smart phones and cars are the most powerful technologies people own. Both expand your mobility and enhance your life but — if not used carefully — they can both get you into trouble.

Facebook engineer Arturo Bejar (Photo by Jordi Bejar)

(This post is adapted from Larry’s Daily News column of July 18, 2012)

by Larry Magid

Like other engineers at Facebook, Arturo Bejar, a mathematician by training, is helping to build new products to encourage users to communicate and share.

But his products are a bit different.  He works on social tools to help people get along with each other and resolve conflicts ranging from the posting of annoying pictures to serious cases of bullying.

Listen to Podcast interview with Facebook Engineering Director Arturo Bejar about social reporting tools and compassion research

Working with researchers from Yale, Berkeley and Columbia University, Bejar and his team are tasked with improving the tools that enable Facebook users to report and resolve problems.  When analyzing user abuse reports, Bejar and the researchers noticed that many complaints did not fall under the company’s Community Standards, which are the rules of the road that Facebook requires users to follow. These rules cover offenses like violence and threats, encouragement of self-harm, bullying and harassment, hate speech, nudity and pornography and such things as spam and phishing scams.  Violation of these terms can result in content being taken down and – in some cases – being kicked off the service.

And while Facebook has staff around the world who deal with reports of serious abuses, they also hear about issues that have more to do with interpersonal relationships among members — like someone posting or tagging you in a photo that you don’t like, or someone saying something unpleasant about you that – while annoying – is not considered bullying or harassment.

“We found when we were looking at reports that there were a lot of things getting reported that were really misunderstandings or disagreements among people who use the site,” said Bejar in a recorded interview.

So, instead of putting Facebook employees in the impossible position of resolving feuds, the company started experimenting with “social reporting” designed to encourage users to work out issues between themselves or seek help from trusted friends or relatives.  For example, if you see a photo on Facebook that bothers you, you can click the Options link and “Report This Photo.” But rather than automatically report to Facebook, it asks you “Why are you reporting this photo,” with choices ranging from “I don’t want others to see me in this photo” to “this photo is harassing someone.”  If it’s just something you don’t like you can specify why it bothers you (such as “it makes me sad” or “it’s embarrassing”) and you’ll be able to send a message with suggested wording like “Hey Marie, seeing this photo makes me a little sad and I don’t want others to see it. Would you please take it down?”

New Facebook screen for reporting photos

If it’s an issue that can’t be easily resolved, Facebook lets you seek help from a trusted third party or, if you feel you need big guns, you can still seek help from Facebook support staff who will intervene if the photo or post violates community standards.

Bejar said that most of the reports they hear about have to do with unintentional slights like posting an unflattering picture of someone.  What they found is that if they simply put up a blank message box for asking a friend to take down a picture, only 20% of the people will fill out the dialog box to send a message to a friend. “Asking your friend to take a photo down that they uploaded is actually kind of difficult.”  They began experimenting with various default messages to “trigger a compassionate response” and then studied how people responded to those options.

Based on this research, they are fine-tuning their social reporting and in the process of rolling out new suggested messaging that is proving  to be more effective.

A friendly message is sometimes all it takes

Some of this research was presented to the public earlier this month when Facebook conducted its second “Compassion Research Day” at its Menlo Park headquarters. In addition to Bejar and others at Facebook, speakers included Marc Brackett from Yale’s Health, Emotion, & Behavior Laboratory, Robin Stern of Columbia University,  Dacher Keltner, Director of Berkeley’s Social Interaction Laboratory and Piercarlo Valdesolo of  Claremont McKenna College.

Bejar said that his work enjoys “extraordinary support” from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg who see it as “a big part of our mission and what it means to support the people who use Facebook.”

A parent of a young son, Bejar is both optimistic and realistic. He doesn’t necessarily think that being a kid is better or worse than it used to be but it’s going to be a “different world.” He added, “when I look at my son and the access he has to computers, how he is learning to program at this age and how he uses the different services that connect him online, I think he’s going to have a wonderful childhood and it’s going to be a wonderful set of teenage years.” But, said Bejar, “I also think that there will be significant challenges as he becomes a teenager.”

Truer words were never spoken.

 Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook

Adapted from an article that first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

by Larry Magid

A lot was written about the DNSChanger scare last week, including several articles about how over-hyped it was. I tried to downplay the risk, but some security experts and journalists sounded alarms. Could it be that spreading fear about malware helps sell security software and improves ratings for news stories?

DNSChanger hype
In case you missed the hype, DNSChanger is a computer virus of sorts that caused infected computers to access rogue DNS servers and be directed to hackers’ sites instead of where they meant to go. The FBI took down those servers in 2011 and temporarily replaced them with clean ones, then announced a long time ago that those clean servers would go offline on July 9th, at which time anyone still infected would effectively have no Internet access. Months ahead of that deadline, people with infected machines received notifications from their ISPs and major websites, so it’s not as if the deadline should have taken anyone by surprise.

There is no way to know the exact number of computers that were still infected on July 9th. But even if you take a high estimate of 50,000 in the United States, that represents about one in 5,000 PCs. It’s no wonder a Comcast spokesperson told me that their customer support volume last Monday was no higher than a typical Monday.

A bit of perspective
We’re talking about not being able to access the Internet, which is hardly life threatening. And even if you were infected, it isn’t that hard to fix the problem.

To put this in perspective, I dug up a 2007 article from New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope, who laid out the odds of dying from a variety of causes. It turns out that the odds of some really scary things happening are a lot higher than the chances of being knocked offline by DNSChanger.

For example, the odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 84 over an 80-year life span. There’s a 1-in-218 chance of dying from falling over that same life span, and a 1-in-1,100 chance of drowning. And of course, we all have a 1-in-1 chance of dying from something.

In 2009 the property crime rate in the U.S. “declined to to 127.4 crimes per 1,000 households,” according to the Department of Justice. That’s still a 1 in 8 chance of being victimized, which is far higher and more consequential than many online crimes. And by the way, violent and property crime rates in 2009 were at the “lowest levels since 1973.”

I’m not trying to scare people. I’m trying to put this persistent techno-panic into perspective. Why is there so much hype about bad things that can go wrong with technology when the odds are higher that worse things will happen to us in the nondigital world?

Other techno-panics
DNSChanger was far from the only example of a techno-panic. There have been virus stories in the news for decades, sometimes featuring spokespeople from anti-virus companies with dire warnings of impending doom. Many of my fellow journalists — especially my colleagues in the broadcast media — love to dramatize these stories. I know because I’m often called upon to comment on the air and sometimes I get the sense that the person interviewing me is a bit disappointed at my relatively relaxed attitude.

I wasn’t always that way. In 1992, I was one of the journalists who quoted John McAfee when he said that millions of PCs would fail to startup on March 6th of that year — Michelangelo’s birthday. But the hype over the Michelangelo virus was far worse than its bite.

One question that was raised back then and keeps coming up is whether all the pre-publicity prevented the problem. The same claim was made for the Y2K scare, which also fizzled. It’s certainly true that raising an alarm about potential threats causes people to take precautions, but there are ways to accomplish that without going out of your way to scare people.

It’s not just malware. We’re worried about all sorts of technology-related catastrophes. In 1994, I wrote “Child Safety on the Information Highway” because I was genuinely worried about how this newfangled online world would affect our children. I’m still promoting Internet safety, but I’ve since learned that kids are less vulnerable and more resilient than I once feared.

For years NBC Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator” feature scared Americans about online pedophiles. But I don’t recall the program ever pointing out that children who are sexually abused are many times more likely to be victimized by a family member or an acquaintance than by a stranger they met online.

Predator panic, though still with us, has diminished slightly, but now we’re panicking about cyberbullying, even though school bullying is far more prevalent. Last year, a leading pediatrics journal published an article about “Facebook depression.” But the Journal of Adolescent Health last week reported no correlation between social network use and depression in older adolescents.  Likewise people panicked about sexting with stories that one in five kids were sending around nude pictures of themselves until a credible study from the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that only found that only 1.3% had sent or created an image of themselves that showed breasts, genitals or “someone’s bottom.” A somewhat higher number (2.5%) sent images where they were either nude, partially nude or in a sexy pose, even if fully clothed.

We worry about Internet privacy but how many of us bother to shred confidential papers or think twice about the information we’ve turned over to financial institutions, insurance companies and even supermarkets?

“Cell yell”
I do think we need to worry about cell phone privacy, not because they’re easy to bug (they’re not) but because we’re using them out in public where strangers can hear what we say.

For some of the best thinking on techno-panics, see Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle from Adam Thierer and Why Technopanics are bad from my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier.

Here’s an interesting slide show with some data about how teens (and adults too) are using social networking, cell phones and other technologies. And here’s a summary from CNET.