News for the Week of January 29, 2006
Teen blogging continues to be the top story in family tech news, as public awareness grows. But let's zoom in on one little piece of it: the public photo-sharing it allows children and the risks involved...
1. Of blogging, photo-sharing & peers
I received an email from a police officer in Rocky Hill, Conn., Det. Frank Dannahey, about a teen-blogging (and cell phone photo-sharing) case he wanted parents to know about. "This case is one of my few that did not get media coverage," he wrote. "We tried to keep it low-profile, since both the victim and suspect are minors (under 16). We also didn't want to bring the incident to the attention of students who may not have known about it. My fear was that this could have some people looking for the photos." But let's start from the beginning...
"At the start of this school year I investigated a case that . started my investigation into blog sites as the new threat to teen privacy issues," Detective Dannehey wrote. "Last spring, a 13-year-old girl emailed explicit nude photos of herself by cellphone camera to her boyfriend. When I say explicit photos, I mean explicit! An acquaintance of this boy had the boy's password for his email account. If there's one thing I tell students (in his Net-safety talks at schools), it's: 'never give your passwords to anyone!'
"The boyfriend never deleted the girlfriend's explicit pictures from his inbox. The acquaintance found the photos of the girlfriend, downloaded them and in turn showed them to another boy. This boy knew the girl but did not like the boyfriend. As an act of vengeance, he took the photos - 13 of them - and created a free Web site and posted them. The heading of the Web site announced that these photos were of ____...
"Some of the girl's photos had her face showing, so identifying her would not be impossible. To make matters worse, the boy went on his MySpace site and posted the link for the Web site with the explicit, and illegal (because they're child pornography), photos. It was not long before word spread to other students in our local high school that the Web site existed. Fortunately, a friend of the girl's saw the photos and notified our police department. The website was taken down very quickly, but not before the photos were out there for several days.
"The girl in question was devastated and knows that the photos may be in the hands of someone who may resurface them at a later date. The persons responsible for this incident were all subsequently identified. I don't think that those involved truly knew the implications for this young girl...
"From that point on," he continued, "I was truly amazed at the widespread use of blog sites among teens and the power, and danger, that these types of sites potentially have. I am now getting many calls from parents as they discover the abuse the sites may lead to. We have a large group of young teens and preteens lying about their ages to establish their own blog sites.. I don't think teens truly understand the privacy issues..."
2. Blogging & strangers
Detective Dannahey went on to say that what used to take sexual predators months, extracting bits of personal info in online chat to "groom" (gain the confidence of) a targeted child can now be done almost instantly. "A predator can now read a teen's blog site or sites and know literally everything about him or her. As a police detective, I could go on most blog sites and get all the information I need to determine where that child lives. And that is with sites that don't list the teen's full name. That scares me."
Lancashire University-based forensic psychologist Rachel O'Connell seems to agree. She recently told Scotland's Parliament that teen blogging is "a paedophile's dream" . For more from the law-enforcement perspective, see "A mom writes: Teen solicited in MySpace".
3. But wait, there's more!
Certainly there are other, much more positive perspectives on blogging – in school as well as at home – from opportunities for collaborative research and writing in the classroom to self-expression and social development in teens' personal lives. For example, see "18-year-old blogger Amanda on blogging", with a sampler of nationwide news coverage on teen blogging, and the parents' and teachers' pages at BlogSafety.com.
In Other News...
- Parents playing videogames. More than a third, in fact – "35%, or about one in three parents, say they play, too, and 80% of that segment play videogames with their children," reports the Associated Press, citing a just-released survey commissioned by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the videogame industry trade group. Among other findings: Almost half of gamer parents are women; two-thirds feel that playing videogames has brought their families closer together; 27% began playing videogames around the time their kids started.
- Kids as ID theft targets. People under 18 are "the fastest-growing target for identity thieves," the Christian Science Monitor reports, citing Federal Trade Commission figures. The FTC received 255,000 ID theft complaints last year, and – though complaints involving minors are growing fast – they're a much smaller percentage (5%) of overall complaints than that of college students and young adults. At 29%, 18-to-29-year-olds are the largest category. Surprising fact the Monitor noted: "Nearly half of all college students have had their grades posted by Social Security number, according to the US Department of Education." At the University of Mississippi, 700 students' SS numbers were listed by their names on a public Web site. The article has a sidebar with tips for protecting against ID theft.
- Home Web use worldwide. Ever curious about how many people around the world are actively surfing the Web at home? Nielsen/NetRatings constantly tracks that and has a handy chart at ClickZ.com that gives the number in 11 countries, also showing December-over-November growth last year (less than 1% overall). Eight of the countries experienced growth, including Spain (3.46%), Japan (2.59%), and France (1.06%) at the highest rates (the US was just .76%). Home Web use in Brazil, Sweden, and Switzerland, decreased in that one-month period.
- Record label helps family. Canadian record label Nettwerk Music Group is helping a family fight a file-sharing lawsuit from the RIAA. The label "that is home to Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies and Sum 41, is taking on the RIAA on behalf of Elisa Greubel, a 15-year-old Texan whose father was sued by the recording industry trade group in August 2005 for owning a computer that allegedly shared more than 600 music files," MTV reports. Nettwerk said it would pay all legal fees and any fines for the family if it loses, according to MTV. The RIAA is demanding that the family pay $9,000 to settle, or half that if they comply with its settlement agreement.
