Week of September 18, 2005
The two top stories in family-tech news this week: PC security and the new kind of bullying online kids are experiencing that's tough to escape...
1. Cyberbullying can be worse
It's a savvy community that recognizes that "these days bullying has no face." That's the lead of an article in the Roanoke (Va.) Times about how Northside High School and other Roanoke County schools are helping students deal with bullying of all kinds, including the anonymous kind that occurs via instant-messaging and cellphones, the kind that can be particularly tough on children because it's faceless, traceless, 24x7, and therefore very difficult to get away from. "Bullying, including cyberbullying, is gaining welcome emphasis in Virginia," according to the Roanoke Times. "The General Assembly passed laws earlier this year requiring school divisions to develop local policies to address bullying," and the state's Department of Education and Virginia Commonwealth University have "implemented a new statewide anti-bullying effort that employs a holistic approach - administrators, staff and students - to combat bullying."
A catalyst was, basically, self-published child porn: "Two Northside High School girls took nude pictures of themselves and emailed them to their boyfriends, who apparently emailed them to other people. The photos spread to schools throughout the Roanoke Valley and were posted on Internet sites," according to the Roanoke Times. Unfortunately, this is not the first report about this kind of potential nightmare for teenagers - see "Kids' self-victimization online" and "Teen 'antics'." at NetFamilyNews and the accounts buried in this New York Times article. For more on bullying see "Cybersocializing, cyberbullying" and Cyberbullying.ca.
2. Hacked home PCs.
.are the explanation for a surge in online criminal activity of "almost every variety" in the first half of 2005,
the Washington Post reports. The article's reporting
on a study by Symantec showing that home PCs are being "hacked into" via vulnerabilities in Web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox. "Security researchers
uncovered 25 security holes in Firefox during the first half of 2005, nearly twice the number found in IE [Internet Explorer]," though Mozilla "tends
to issue security patches to mend problems much sooner than Microsoft does for IE," and "hackers are still focusing their efforts on IE,"
ZDNET cites the study as saying. [Firefox users need to check Mozilla.org often
for updates.] What hackers do through those browser vulnerabilities is take control of home computers and - without their owners knowing -
turning them into zombies or "bots" to create "botnets," which account for "a massive increase in the number of 'denial of service' attacks"
against Web sites (from an average of 119 a day to 927 a day in the first half of this year, Symantec found) - often for purposes of extortion
(hackers are now in it for the money, not just for "glory"). As for the number of active bot computers used daily, the number went from 4,348 to 10,352
in that six-month period. Keep those PCs patched
In Other News
- "Star Wars" worm in P2P. Tell any file-sharers at your house: "Some downloaders hoping to snare free Star Wars games are unwittingly finding themselves installing the worm P2Load.A that spreads on P2P networks using the file-sharing programs Shareza and iMesh," Internet News reports.
- Games' "shadow economy." True story: A retiring "successful Jedi knight" gets $510 in real money for his identity/game character, "a top-notch light saber, a speeder bike, a nice chunk of real estate on the planet Lok, and a bank account containing millions of Imperial credits," the Washington Post reports. We've seen stories about the darkside of videogames' no-so-virtual alternate economy (including the murder of a Chinese gamer), but we haven't seen such an interesting explanation of how it all works.
- P2P services going "legit." The end of an era is upon us - the "Wild West" of file-sharing, its decline spurred on, of course, by the US Supreme Court's decision last June (see 7/1/05). "At least five online file-sharing companies have started trying to reach an accord with the music industry to convert the free trading of copyrighted music on their networks to paid services," the New York Times reports, citing Grokster (which had the title role in the Supreme Court case), eDonkey, Morpheus, LimeWire, and iMesh.
- Phones & drivers-in-training. The US National Transportation Safety Board is proposing a ban on cellphone use by teenagers learning to drive, Reuters reports. The Board added the proposed restriction to its "most wanted" list of safety improvements for the coming year/
- Anti-porn: Phone firms soften stance. "The major American cellular carriers have so far been adamant in their refusal to sell pornography from the same content menus on which they sell ring tones and video games. But there are signs that they may soften their stance," the New York Times reports. The softening appears to coincide with the phone content-rating system the cellphone industry is developing (see NetFamilyNews 5/6/05).
