When Anne Collier and I wrote our long out-of-print book,  MySpace Unraveled, we pointed out that MySpace was the largest referrer to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. We noted that kids were alive because of the way friends had reached out to save their friends.

Facebook, of course, took MySpace’s place in that regard but now Facebook and the Lifeline have teamed up to make it easier to report friends in distress and for people who are suicidal to have a live chat with a prevention specialist.

In a CBS News CNET podast interview, the Lifeline’s Lidia Bernik told me that “a lot of people would rather communicate via chat or text, as opposed to calling.” To that end, Facebook offers a direct link to a Lifeline page where people can have a live confidential chat with an expert.

In her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this the “911 of the social web,” adding that friends can be “first responders.” She said, “Neither a Web site nor a national hotline can immediately or fully be ‘there’  for someone if the people on that person’s friends list – the people he or she interacts with from day to day – aren’t there to notice.”

Important development

To me, this is a natural evolution in the long term relationship between Facebook and the Lifeline and it’s an important development for anyone who understands how important social media has become in so many people’s lives.

The bottom line is that friends need to help friends. And being a friend today means using any means available – including social media — to support each other.

Bernik said that if you see someone who is in distress, the best response is to reach out to that person directly but “if you’re not comfortable doing that,” you can use the Facebook reporting tool to make sure that Facebook reaches out. Facebook will only pass on information to the Lifeline or authorities in the event of a “life threatening emergency.”

The National Suicide Prevent Lifeline can also be reached at 800 273-TALK (8255).

For more, see the guest post of U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin linked from Facebook’s safety page.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook. ConnectSafely also serves on Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board and helped organize a meeting last year between Facebook officials and suicide prevention specialists, including Lifeline staff.

This post also appears on Forbes.com.

Facebook last Wednesday announced new privacy settings that give users some additional control over what information they share, while taking away the ability to hide a few pieces of information from the general public.

One particular piece of publicly available information–users’ friends lists–caused a bit of an uproar from a number of sectors, including business people who don’t necessarily want to expose their professional networks to the public and their competitors. It is also a concern to some parents who might not want their kids–or a list of their kids’ friends–to be widely available.

Facebook quickly backtracked. A day later, the company announced on its blog that users can now uncheck the “Show my friends on my profile” option in the Friends box on their profile so that your friend list won’t appear on your publicly viewable profile.

Unfortunately, they weren’t very clear on exactly how you make the change. You won’t find this checkbox in your Facebook privacy settings. Instead you have to follow these steps:

1. Click on Profile on the blue bar a the top of the screen:

2. Scroll down to the beginning of your Friends list and click on the pencil to the right of the word Friends:

3. Uncheck the box that says “Show Friend list to everyone”:

You can’t hide your friends from your friends and applications
Unchecking that box will hide your friends list when a non-Facebook friend views your public profile, but it will not hide your Facebook friends list from your friends when they look at your profile. Also, this information will be available to applications and application developers.

In addition, this procedure does not hide other publicly available information including your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks you belong to, and pages you’re a fan of.

Double-check your privacy settings
Most Facebook users have by now gone through the mandatory privacy settings wizard, but you can revisit your settings at any time by hovering over settings in the tool bar on the top of the screen and selecting privacy settings. If you don’t do this, a fair amount of your information might be available to the public including the names of your kids and other family members (with links to their Facebook accounts), your relationship status, and where you work.

To find out how your Facebook profile looks to the public, click on Profile Information in privacy settings and then on Preview My Profile…on the upper right section of that page.

This article first appeard on CNET News.com

This isn’t an optional step. Users will be able to “skip for now” the privacy wizard on the first encounter, but they’ll eventually be required to complete it to access their Facebook accounts.

Unless you want to customize the settings, it’s possible to zip through this privacy wizard quickly. But at least it forces you to think about privacy — if only for a minute or two — as a condition of being able to continue to use the service.

As I thought about how to configure my own privacy settings, I realized how little thought I typically give to such questions as who on Facebook gets to see information about my family and relationships, my work and education, and the posts that I create. Going forward, I’m sure I’ll stop thinking about these issues but — for a moment — they were upfront and center.

It reminds me of how many things we do on the Web without really thinking about them. Just about every site we interact with has some type of privacy policy, but how many of us actually read them? I sometimes skim the policy if it’s a site that’s asking for personal information, but skimming — especially for a non-lawyer like me — is far from understanding. And truth be told, there are times when I’ve failed to even click on a site’s privacy policy.The same is true with “terms of service,” or TOS. These terms — which are on Facebook, MySpace and just about any other site where users are allowed to enter information — are actually a contract. Your responsibility is to read them, understand them, and either agree to them or not use the site. But like those long and complicated rental car contracts that very few people read or those signs at parking lots that say “This Sign Constitutes a Contract — Read It,” most of us never do.

Then there are those EULAs, which stands for “End-User License Agreement.” They’re on almost all software packages, some Web sites and some free plug-ins that we download from the Internet.

Several years ago the Web site PCPitStop.com included a clause in one of its own EULAs associated with free software that promised anyone who read it a “consideration,” including money, if they sent a note to an e-mail address listed in the EULA. Over four months, more than 3,000 people downloaded the software, but only one person followed up with an e-mail. That person was rewarded with a check for $1,000.

This experiment was conducted during the height of the spyware epidemic in which businesses were giving away free avatars, emoticons, password trackers and other software in exchange for getting user permission to put all sorts of advertisements in your face. While spyware has diminished, those days are not completely behind us.

I’m not trying to beat up on people for being in a hurry to get that software or log into the cool site, but perhaps we should pay a little more attention to what we’re “signing” with a click of a mouse.

The Facebook solution is far from perfect. It, too, has its default. And if you rush through it, you’ll wind up exposing much of your content to “everyone” rather than the more granular “friends” or “friends of friends.” And some people might not notice that Facebook has changed its privacy policy to make some information public for all its users, including name, profile picture, gender, networks you belong to, friend lists, and pages you affiliate with.

Facebook has a good argument for making this information available — it helps others find you even if you have a common name. But it takes away the user’s option of hiding this information, though you can leave some of these fields blank. Bottom line: Even with Facebook’s more transparent privacy settings and forced transition tool, users are going to have to be alert.

At the end of the day, it’s all about people thinking critically before they click or volunteer information. While I don’t suggest we all go out and hire lawyers to read every EULA and TOS put in front of us, I do think we need to slow down just a bit and put a little more thought into what we’re doing and disclosing online.

Going forward, I hope other sites take their cue from Facebook and work harder to make sure people have to put a bit of thought into their privacy and security, and what they’re giving in exchange for what they’re getting from the site.

“As far as we know, it’s the first time in the history of the Internet,” said Facebook spokesman Simon Axten, “that so many people have been required to make affirmative decisions about their privacy.”

The company on Wednesday provided details of the changes that CEO Mark Zuckerberg blogged about last week. These include eliminating regional networks and giving users more granular control over who can see individual pieces of content while making some basic profile information available to everyone. Also, Facebook is simplifying what this blogger and others have criticized as overly complex privacy controls, but it is also requiring members to make some information available to the public.

All Facebook users will be asked to configure privacy settings
(Credit: Facebook)

Controversial privacy history
Over the years, Facebook has been the subject of criticism, lawsuits, and threatened federal action over various changes to its privacy policy.

In 2007, Facebook announced its Beacon advertising service, which broadcast member activity on partner sites to their Facebook friends. If you bought a movie ticket on Fandango, for example, all of your Facebook friends would immediately know about it. The Beacon program unleashed a campaign from consumer advocacy groups including MoveOn.org as well as a class action law suit that was settled this September. As part of that settlement, Facebook agreed to shut down Beacon and to donate $9.5 million to an independent foundation to “fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.”

In February of this year, Facebook found itself at the center of another privacy storm after it announced a change in its policy that would give the company seemingly perpetual control over user-supplied content. That prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center to threaten filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and also led to the formation of a Facebook group called People Against the new Terms of Service that attracted nearly 150,000 members protesting the changes. The uproar caused the company to rescind those changes and resulted in CEO Mark Zuckerberg holding a press conference where he announced that the company would create “a new approach to site governance” so that its decisionmaking would be more transparent.

Mandatory privacy settings
All users will soon be confronted with a “privacy announcement” informing them that they must configure their settings. Initially, you will be able to “skip for now” but you will later be required to go through the steps in order to continue using the service, according to Axten.

To encourage people to share information, Facebook has set the default to “everyone,” but you can later go back to set more restrictive settings. You can also keep your old settings. If you’re not sure what they are, you can display them by hovering over the radio button.

In the final step, Facebook displays your settings and gives you a chance to change them. At this point or at any time in the future you will be able to adjust any of your settings

Final stage verifies new settings.
(Credit: Facebook)

The Facebook settings will be based on four basic levels: friends, friends of friends, everyone, and customize. If you belong to a network, you will also have the setting friends and networks. As before, you will also be able to customize settings to include or exclude specific friends or groups of friends.

Some information must be publicly available
Some information–including name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks you belong to, friend lists, and pages you’re a fan of–will be available to everyone. The only way to keep that information from the general public is to not include it as part of your Facebook profile. Users also have the ability to limit what can be found via a search on Facebook and what information Facebook will make available to search engines like Google and Bing.

According to Axten, that information is being made publicly available to make it easier to find people using Facebook search, especially people with common names. If you locate a “John Smith” in a Facebook search, seeing his picture and knowing where he lives can make it easier to pinpoint the right person. Though not mandatory, Facebook, according to a spokesperson, is encouraging people to make other information public such as where they went to school or where they work. However Axten added that if a user had previously configured their privacy settings, they should keep what they already have.

While adults have the option of making content available to everyone, the maximum exposure available to users under 18 will be friends of friends or school networks.

Control over who gets to see your posts
The most important change is that you will now be able to specify who can see each piece of your content including status updates, photos, and videos. Each time you add content, you’ll be able to determine whether it can be seen by everyone, friends and network, friends of friends, only friends, or a custom setting. Customized settings allow you to include or exclude individual people or lists of people. For example, one could share last night’s exploits with his fraternity brothers but not with his fellow church members or office mates. The list feature, which has long been available, allows you to divide your friends into groups. For example, as a journalist, I encourage readers to “friend” me at Facebook.com/larrymagid, but I also maintain a list of “real world friends.”

Third-party application settings
As in the past, you will have some control over the information that can be seen by operators of third-party Facebook applications. Facebook has added the ability to fully block an application from accessing any information but, in most cases, that will disable the application.

Facebook’s Axten said that application developers will have access to all publicly available information, but can only access other information with the user’s permission. Applications are also required to only access user information that is essential for them to run. The company, said Axten, has an enforcement squad to ensure compliance.

Facebook is also launching a new Privacy Center that will offer “a comprehensive guide that helps users understand and control how they share information.”

Disclosure: Facebook is one of several companies that provides support to ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit Internet safety organization I help run.

This post first appeared on CNET News.com

This post originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

More and more people are using social networking sites, including, sadly, criminals seeking to take advantage of the rest of us.

Threats on those sites include applications and quizzes, as well as malware, worms and viruses. But the main risk, says Trend Micro’s Rick Ferguson, is information you post yourself that can jeopardize your privacy and your security.

Ferguson says that “we have a tendency on social networks to share more information that we need to.” While you may need to reveal which schools you went to and where you worked to connect with old school mates or colleagues, “you don’t need to share your date of birth, phone number and address,” Ferguson said.

The threats are not limited to Facebook or MySpace. Ferguson also warns users not to be lulled into a false sense of security when using professional networks like LinkedIn. “Because it’s a professional networking site, people give it more credibility and think it’s safer than other networks,” he said, adding that you put yourself at risk by “posting your entire résumé and exposing your business connections.”

Both Ferguson and Symantec safety education director Marian Merritt warn about online quizzes and applications that are popular on social networking sites.

“Every time you accept an application, you’re giving some third-party developer access to information in your profile,” Merritt said.

She warns that “quizzes are sometimes attached to fraudulent marketing companies.” She said her own teenage daughter took an IQ quiz and had to put in her cell phone number to get her score.

“She didn’t notice that the terms of service would sign her up for premium texting until the bill came.” Fortunately, this particular teenage girl has one of the most cyber-security-conscious moms on the planet, who convinced the carrier to stop the charges.

Some quizzes and surveys reveal far too much information. I recently came across a third-party survey that asks users to reveal “60 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” with such questions such as “What are you wearing?” “When was the last time you were drunk?” and “How often do you have sex?” With answers to questions like these on your profile, it doesn’t take a sophisticated hacker to derive information that he shouldn’t have access to.

Some Facebook users don’t seem to be aware of the difference between private messages and wall postings. I have a friend who is posting personal messages to family members’ walls, unaware that those messages are seen by all of the person’s Facebook friends.

Ferguson says to beware of applications that don’t seem to have any purpose other than to spread themselves. Some of these applications automatically send notices to all your friends, telling them that you’re using the applications and encouraging others to install them as well. In addition to spamming your friends, these applications could be gaining access to your profile information and displaying unwanted advertising to all who sign up.

Company spokesperson Simon Axten said Facebook has a team of people and software tools working to enforce rules for application developers. MySpace, according to a spokesperson, also employs a robust security team and tools, including software to block outgoing and incoming spam and warn users about potential phishing sites.

Facebook’s application development process, said Axten, “is relatively open to stimulate innovation and allow people to develop quickly.” But he said developers must agree to a set of rules which, among other things, prohibit them from sending messages on the users’ behalf.

Developers are now required to disclose what information they collect during the installation process, and Axten recommends that users “pay attention to those notices.” He said developers are allowed to collect only the information that they need to run the application, but that can sometimes include profile information and the profiles of your friends.

On all sites, be cautious about clicking on any links, especially those shortened ones that are commonly used on Twitter. If a link is shortened by bit.ly or tinyurl, you have no idea where it will lead you until after you click. Most security suites can warn you before your browser opens potentially dangerous Web sites.

There are other threats, including the Koobface worm, that can steal your password and send spam from your account. Most Internet security programs will protect you against this and other malware.

Users should also be careful about links that appear in posts and messages that could lead to phishing or malware sites. And put on your thinking cap before responding to a friend’s plea for money, even if it comes from your friend’s Facebook account and includes a horrendous story such as being stuck in an overseas jail. Try to reach your friend some other way before responding, because it’s likely a scam.

Disclosure: I am co-director of the nonprofit Internet safety organization, ConnectSafely.org, which receives support from Facebook, MySpace and other social networking companies.

This is my first post at SafeKids.com and it was generated by a question from a reporter: “I am currently working on a story about the explosion of Facebook and other social networking sites and their use by both students and teachers (and what free speech implications that has for teachers), as well as how school districts are reacting to students having smartphones (that can do more than just make calls).”  Here is what I said:

The power of these new social networking technologies is flat out amazing. One only needs to consider the recent events in Iran to be struck with the understanding of how profoundly our society has and will be changed by these technologies. Sure the Church and the Crown were concerned about the invention of the printing press. With good reason. The invention of the printing press led to reformation, the scientific revolution, and democracy.

What these technologies are doing is challenging the hierarchical authoritarian-based structures in our society. We are changing to a network-based, community-based society.

And this brings us to schools. Currently, most schools function as strict hierarchies. But they don’t have to. For decades, astute educational leaders have been arguing that schools would function better as learning communities. Where instead of being the “sage on the stage,” the teacher acts more as the “guide by the side.”  Where learning is relevant – and student directed. Where the focus is on learning how to learn and find information – not regurgitation of facts. Where collaboration is viewed as a desired objective – not cheating.

Innovative schools across this country are shifting to the use of the web 2.0 interactive technologies – as they must. It is impossible to prepare children for their future in classrooms that were designed to serve our past.

Unfortunately, some schools are reacting to all of this by trying to impose greater control. Hierarchical forms of control are doomed to failure. Filtering software was supposed to provide schools with the ability to prevent students from accessing certain sites. Guess what? The same bypassing technologies that allowed the Iranians to bypass their country’s filters are being used by students across this country to bypass the filters that schools are wasting millions of dollars for. Think I am wrong? Google the terms “bypass Internet filter.” Close to 700,000 hits.

The wise educational leaders in our society are providing the insight to shift our schools into this new mode. The school leaders who seek to retain their power, their authority, their control will ultimately fail. Just like the shah of Iran.

There is a growing community of professionals who are seeking to respond to the challenges of the risks that young people do face online – but with an understanding of the source of those risks (the young people at the greatest risk online are the ones who are already at greater risk offline) as well as a profound respect for the incredible benefits to our society presented by these empowerment technologies.

Nancy Willard executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, is a recognized authority on issues related to the safe and responsible use of the Internet.

I’ve been an Internet safety advocate since 1993 and right now I’m discouraged and angry about what’s going on in this field.

I’m angry because people who ought to know better are trying to mislead the public with false information about online risks, which is diverting attention away from real risks. And I’m not alone.

Many respected online safety organizations and leading youth-risk researchers are trying to shift the discussion away from mostly predator danger to youth behavior risk. Thanks to some politicians, it’s an uphill battle.

Online safety groups and public officials should be spending our time educating families on how to avoid real risks that affect most kids – like bullying, harassment and unwanted exposure to inappropriate material. We also need to do a better job of identifying and reaching the small minority of “at risk” kids who are putting themselves at greater risk by the way they behave online.

At issue is the constant drumbeat of predator panic coming from state attorneys general, including Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who are co-chairs of the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, which represents attorneys general from 49 states. Although their rhetoric is purported to help protect young people from harm, the actual impact of their campaign to rid social networks of predators may be inadvertently putting young people at greater risk.

In addition to shifting attention away from more common online dangers, they have proposed the use of age-verification and parental controls which could actually increase risk by driving teens “underground,” possibly to overseas sites that are far more dangerous than sites like MySpace and Facebook.

What’s more, all the hoopla is disrupting the work of several of the most respected non-profit Internet safety organizations which, ironically, have to spend resources countering this misleading information at the cost of focusing on how to help young people use the Internet more safely.

A bit of background

For more than two years, these and other elected officials have been talking about predator dangers on MySpace and other social networking sites and calling for the use of age-verification technology to help separate minors from adults. A year ago, the working group of attorneys general entered an agreement with MySpace to form a task force to study the issue.

After months of careful consideration, including a review of all research, the task force came back with a report that questioned the prevalence of predator danger and also questioned both the desirability and effectiveness of using any single technology to verity the age of users. Instead of carefully considering the report, it was rejected out of hand.

The justice officers’ reaction to the report was best summed up by Blumenthal, who recently said it was, “based on outdated and incomplete data – falsely downplaying the threat of predators on social networking sites.”

I have a great deal of respect for much of the work that Blumenthal, Cooper and other attorneys general do for public safety and to protect consumers, but when it comes to Internet safety, they continue to rely on anecdotal evidence rather than available peer-reviewed academic research (PDF).

Disclosure: I served on the task force as co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from several Internet and social networking companies including MySpace and Facebook. I also served as a member of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force and am the founder of SafeKids.com.

Now there’s a new argument based on the disclosure last week that MySpace has evicted 90,000 registered sex offenders from its roles. In a press release, Blumenthal said, “This shocking revelation – resulting from our subpoena – provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators.”

But what Blumenthal failed to point out is that 90,000 is not the number of currently or recently evicted registered sex offenders (RSOs) on MySpace, but a cumulative number based on all the RSO’s MySpace has ejected since two years ago when it adopted technology to identify and remove them from its roles.

Facebook, too

In the meantime, Facebook has been under attack for its own reported predator problem. Tech Crunch ran a story last week with the headline “Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook.” It reportedly got the information from John Cardillo, CEO of Sentinel, the security company that helps MySpace and other social networking sites identify registered sex offenders so they can be removed.

Facebook is not one of Sentinel’s customers, but says that it employs other methods to attempt to identify registered sex offenders and others who might endanger its members. This includes relying on Facebook members and working directly with state databases and state attorneys general, according to Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.

But, the attorneys general who are screaming about predators don’t seem to have information about specific individuals harming children. Facebook, according to Schnitt, “is not aware of a single case where a registered sex offender has contacted a minor through Facebook.”

The same is true on MySpace. According to MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam, “not one of the deleted MySpace offenders has ever been prosecuted for criminal misconduct with a teen on MySpace.”

Based on surveys with teens, I suspect that this is largely because the vast majority of teens are savvy enough to avoid these creeps. As you would expect, officials from both Facebook and MySpace say that they are doing all they can to rid their sites of registered sex offenders.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll be 100% successful. Short of shutting down their services, I can’t think of anything that can be done to completely eliminate even registered sex offenders, let alone the much larger number of offenders who haven’t been caught and convicted.

They’re everywhere

At the risk of contributing to the paranoia, it’s important to point out sex offenders are also in the real world. Unless we decide to keep them in jail forever, they are going to be among us. They go to malls, they shop at grocery stores, they live in neighborhoods and many have jobs. I know for a fact that there are registered sex offenders living within walking distance from my house and I have no doubt that my children have encountered them in the real world.

And then there are the ones who haven’t been caught. It’s a known fact that some of them teach in our schools, patrol our streets, preach in our places of worship, work in our hospitals and clinics, and coach our kids.

What’s worse, family members, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, account for “a quarter to a third of offenders.” Strangers make up the smallest group with estimates ranging between 7 and 25 percent.

Strangers who meet their victims on the Internet represent an extremely small percentage of all cases, especially compared to family members. It’s analogous to worrying about being killed in a plane crash instead of focusing on driving safely. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is one of several safety organizations that no longer condone the use of the phrase “stranger danger.”

As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, researchers who study sexual assault cases have found very few actual cases of children being sexually molested as a result of a contact they made on the Internet. It happens, but it happens in far fewer numbers than other forms of sexual abuse. And when it does happen, it is almost always a case of a teenager who is taking extraordinary risks online, including – in most cases – engaging in sexual conversation with a person known to be an adult.

I’m not saying this to place blame on the victims or excuse illegal behavior of some adults, but rather to point out that how young people behave online affects their risk.

It’s time that all of us – politicians too – start looking for real solutions and talking with real experts, not just relying on anecdotal data and provocative sound bites.

For more perspective, check out CNET News’ Caroline McArthy’s post on this subject.

]]> http://www.safekids.com/2009/02/11/predator-panic-a-risky-distraction/feed/ 0 http://www.safekids.com/2009/01/13/net-safety-task-force-says-predation-risk-exagerated/ http://www.safekids.com/2009/01/13/net-safety-task-force-says-predation-risk-exagerated/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:33:06 +0000 larrymagid http://safekids.com/?p=171 Continue reading →]]>

by Larry Magid

A long awaited report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concludes that children and teens are less vulnerable to sexual predation than many have feared. The report also questions the efficacy and necessity of some commonly prescribed remedies designed to protect young people.

The task force was formed as a result of a joint agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general.

Over the past couple of years, several state AGs have been looking into potential dangers to youth, and some have called for social-network sites to use age verification technology to confirm the ages of users in an attempt to prevent adults from or interacting online with minors. The task force includes representatives of Internet and social-networking companies, security and identity authentication vendors, and nonprofit advocacy organizations. It’s chaired by John Palfrey of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Disclosure: I served as a member of the task force, representing ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit internet safety organization I co-founded along with Anne Collier. ConnectSafely receives financial support from MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and other Internet and social-networking companies. I am also founder of SafeKids.com and am on the board of directors of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is represented on the task force.

Based on data analyzed by its Research Advisory Board, the task force concluded that “actual threats that youth may face appear to be different than the threats most people imagine” and that “the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated offline encounters.”

While the task force found that youth risk from predators is a concern, the overwhelming majority of youth are not in danger of being harmed by an adult predator they meet online. To the extent that young people have received an unwanted online sexual solicitation, data from a 2000 study and a 2006 follow-up from the Crimes Against Children Research Center concludes that “youth identify most sexual solicitors as being other adolescents (48 percent in 2000; 43 percent in 2006) or young adults between the ages of 18 and 21 (20 percent; 30 percent), with few (4 percent; 9 percent) coming from older adults, and the remaining being of unknown age.”

What the task force did find is that “bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most salient threats that minors face, both online and offline.” Partially because researchers can’t agree on a definition of bullying and harassment, the actual risk is hard to quantify, but it is clearly much higher than the risk of being harmed by a predator. Some studies suggest that as many as 49 percent of youth have experienced some type of bullying or harassment. In many cases no serious emotional or physical harm occurred. However, a study by Michelle Ybarra and Janice Wolak found that “39 percent of victims reported emotional distress over being harassed online.”

There is also a widespread belief that deception is often involved where adults pose as teens to engage with young people, but research shows that that’s rarely the case. The report found that “although identity deception may occur online, it does not appear to play a large role in criminal cases in which adult sex offenders have been arrested for sex crimes in which they met victims online.” Interviews with police show that “most victims are underage adolescents who know they are going to meet adults for sexual encounters.” This does not imply that such relationships are healthy or safe, nor that we should blame the victims or tolerate the actions of adults who engage in sex with minors. But it does suggest that child safety advocates need to take a more proactive role in helping teens understand the risk of seeking engaging in relationships with adults.

Importantly, the task force found that online risks “are not radically different in nature or scope than the risks minors have long faced offline, and minors who are most at risk in the offline world continue to be most at risk online.” For example, “a poor home environment full of conflict and poor parent-child relationships is correlated with a host of online risks.”

The attorneys general who called for the task force were anxious for us to study the efficacy of using age verification to help limit inappropriate contact between adults and children online. To help in that job, the task force formed a technical advisory board (TAB) composed of technology experts from Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts, University of Utah, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Bank of America. This board looked at a wide range of technologies including age verification and identity authentication, filtering and auditing, text analysis, and biometrics.

What the TAB found was that age verification technology can be used to identify adults and therefore help prevent minors from engaging in adult-only activities such as accessing adult content or purchasing alcohol or tobacco. There were several technologies submitted by companies that could identify adults based on accessible records such as credit reports, criminal history, and real estate transactions, but these relatively automated systems cannot reliably identify or verify the age of minors because, as the TAB concluded, “public records of minors range from quite limited to nonexistent.” Documentation about young people such as birth certificates, passports, and school records are restricted by federal law for some very good privacy and security reasons.

Age verification options presented by some companies would allow parents to request that their child’s school verify his or her identity and age, but these proposals have their own critics including those who worry about the cost, the possibility of privacy or security leaks, and the financial model presented in some cases that includes providing marketers with information about kids.

The TAB also looked at “peer-based” verification schemes that “allow peers in a community to vote, recommend, or rate whether a person is in an appropriate age group based on relationships and personal knowledge established offline” but worried that with these methods “users can vote as many times as they wish to artificially raise or lower a peer rating.” There were concerns that “minors might organize against another minor in their ratings or recommendations in an online form of bullying.”

At one task force meeting, a company presented technology that tries to distinguish between an adult and a child by analyzing the bone density of the person’s hand. Another tool attempts to identify an individual through facial recognition to match that person against a database of registered sex offenders.

Although the TAB expressed “cautious optimism” about the possibility of using technology to protect kids, it concluded that “every technology has its problems” and that “no single technology reviewed could solve every aspect of online safety for minors, or even one aspect of it one hundred percent of the time.” The bottom line was that “technology can play a role but cannot be the sole input to improved safety for minors online” and that “the most effective technology solution is likely to be a combination of technologies.”

But even if these technologies can be employed effectively, there remains the question of whether they are necessary or helpful. Using technology to separate kids from grown-ups doesn’t address the fact that kids are far more at risk from other kids than from adult predators.

Another danger is that age verification or new rules could be used to keep kids off of social networks or require parental consent. But before issuing rules about this, authorities should explore possible unintended consequences such as isolating kids, causing them to go underground, failing to serve kids from dysfunctional families, and preventing kids from accessing vital services such as the Suicide Prevention Hotline or one of the many online self-help groups.

The task force report will have its critics, including possibly some attorneys general and others who feel that it underestimates the risk of online predators. Indeed, sting operations from law enforcement (as well as the TV show To Catch a Predator) demonstrate that there are plenty of adults who, if given the chance, would engage in sex with youth they meet online. But, based on the research presented to the task force, it appears that the vast majority of young people are savvy enough to avoid such encounters.

Still, there remains a minority of youth who–for a variety of psychological and social reasons–are vulnerable both online and offline. More research needs to be done to identify these young people and provide them with resources and protective services. The fact that most kids are safe is reassuring but it’s not sufficient. If even one child is in danger, then there is work to be done, and that is one thing everyone who cares about this issue can agree on.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and your teen is all decked out and ready for a big party. She’s got her iPhone, BlackBerry, or some other cell phone with a camera in her pocketbook. And she’s ready to roll. You’re glad she’s got these gadgets so you can get in touch with her. You tell her to call to check in, to let you know she got there safely, to ask for permission to stay later. She agrees. You give her a quick hug and run upstairs to get ready for your own party to celebrate the arrival of a new beginning. You even remember to put the new digital camera you got for Christmas by your purse so you don’t forget it.

Of course, you talked to your teen about not drinking, not driving too fast, and not staying out past curfew.

Did you chat with her about all the photos that she and her friends will take with those gadgets? Photos that might have her kissing another girl on a dare, doing a shot with her best (boy)friend, flashing for the camera as the new year rings in.

Did you chat with her about all the photos that she or her friends might want to put up on their MySpace or Facebook page?

Myspace, Facebook? That’s all that techie stuff the kids do … what will you say, what can you say?

Too often it seems too complicated to talk to your teens about online safety. After all, it’s the online world and they know it better than you do. But is it? Did you know how a car engine works, what the transmission does, or how an airbag gets deployed when the car bumps something at 30 mph? Yet, you got right in there and taught your teen how to drive. Correction, you taught your teen how to drive safely.

And that is exactly what we’re talking about – teaching your teen how to drive online safely. You’ve done it all your life – these lessons on safety. “Look before you cross, don’t talk to strangers, respect your friends and neighbors, don’t go anywhere alone”.

The world may have changed, but the lessons are still the same. Don’t stop the dialogue.

Here’s a way to start an online safety dialogue:

1. Start a Conversation

Talk to your kids about why they use MySpace, how they communicate with others, and how they represent themselves online. Recognize the importance of social networking in their daily lives, similar to that of cell phones, email, or instant messenger, and express an interest in understanding the role it plays.

2. Talk About MySpace and the Internet

* MySpace, like the rest of the online world, is a public space. Members shouldn’t post anything they wouldn’t want the world to know (e.g., phone number, address, IM screen name, or specific whereabouts).
* Remind them not to post any photos that could embarrass them in the future or expose them to danger. Although MySpace is public, teens sometimes forget that the information and photos they post are accessible to others. A good way to explain it — tell your teens they should avoid posting anything they wouldn’t be willing to share in front of a school assembly.

3. Remind Teens to Be Cautious

* Just as in the offline world, people aren’t always who they say they are. Remind your teens to be careful about adding strangers to their friends list. It’s fun to connect with new MySpace friends from all over the world, but members should be cautious when communicating with people they don’t know.
* Encourage teens to be themselves, but to exercise the same basic safety principles they do in the physical world. They wouldn’t chat with a stranger at the mall or give someone they don’t know their cell phone number. Remind them that reckless online behavior can be just as dangerous.
* They should talk to you if they want to meet an online friend in person, and if you think its safe, any meeting should take place in public, with friends or a trusted adult present.

Remember, you’re the parent in the offline and online worlds. You can do it.