Google Announces Password Lock for SafeSearch

Posted on November 12, 2009 by filteringfacts

Larry Magid at CNET reports:

Google has long allowed parents a SafeSearch filtering setting that keeps kids from using the search engine to find inappropriate sites like those with explicit sexual images or text. The problem was that kids could easily change those settings.  Starting Wednesday, however, the company is allowing parents to lock those settings to make it harder (though not impossible) for kids to bypass the settings. To change the settings, the parent will have to log into his or her Google account and enter a password. 

This is great news for parents looking to make search engines, the primary means for accessing web content, safer for kids.  This is an improvement on Yahoo’s safe search password lock, which only requires a child to click “log out” to circumvent the settings.  When the user logs out of Google, the Google Safe Search cookie keeps the settings intact.  But as the CNET article points out though, this solution isn’t perfect:

If you set them only for Internet Explorer, for example, they won’t restrict access from Firefox, Chrome, or other browsers. Also, according to a Google representative, the child can get around the settings by using the private browsing feature that is now built into the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. 

Not only does using the IE InPrivate setting defeat the SafeSearch lock in Google, but the safe search settings of both Yahoo and Google are defeated by simply clicking Tools/Delete Browsing History/Cookies in IE and deleting all cookies.  Again, safe search password locking is a  great feature for younger users, but won’t stop a tech-savvy teen.  The best overall solution is for filtering vendors to build a safe search lock into their products that covers all major search engines.

Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety | 2 Comments »

Online Safety Blogosphere Round Up for Nov 9, 2009

Posted on November 9, 2009 by filteringfacts

Marian Merritt has  a “Recap of This Year’s Family Online Safety Institute Annual Conference”
Not thinking of kids as victims. This is new thinking indeed for the Internet safety world. We know that for children who are victimized by online predators, often these are the same kids displaying risk factors for predation in the real world. Larry Magid of ConnectSafely has written a compelling story covering the FOSI conference and discussing this “watershed” moment.

 Mary Heston on Wired Moms take us “Behind the Scenes at the Wired Moms Summit at Microsoft”
This last Friday Wired Moms went offline for the first time. We held our inaugural Wired Moms Summit at Microsoft. There were articles in the paper, an interview or two on TV and we have the video tape for everyone to watch once we get that back from the AV guys.  

iKeepSafe gives “Five Suggestions on how to be Confident and Competent with Online Photo Sharing”
When it comes to building an online reputation for ourselves or our children, we need to “learn how to swim,” or, in other words, we need to learn to be confident and competent online. We have the following five suggestions for confident and competent photo sharing 

Anne Collier writes on NetFamilyNews about “Media sharing’s upside, downside & advice on what to do about it”
Why do people share innermost thoughts, unretouched photos, and rants and what they ate for lunch in texts, photos, and blogs? And why is this not just a narcissistic passing fad like streaking or something, a baby boomer, someone who grew up with mass media, might ask?

Sameer Hinduja at Cyberbullying Research describes “Cyber-Mentors – an online anti-bullying support system of youth for youth”
I really liked this article on “Cyber-Mentors”, a relatively new program from BeatBullying (based in the UK) that is gaining traction. Justin and I believe strongly in the power of older students and youth to provide guidance and advice to younger students as it relates to peer conflict (especially the online variant).

Filed under: Internet Safety | Leave a Comment »

Hula’s R-rated Movies Lack Parental Controls

Posted on October 25, 2009 by filteringfacts

Hulu is a great video site that offers free streaming TV shows and even some feature-length films.  While the broadcast TV content is what you’d expect from broadcast TV, Hulu features a number of graphic R-rated movies such as the Killing Zoe, Strictly Sexual, There’s Something About Mary and the ultra-gory Dawn of the Dead. 

Here’s what Hulu’s support pages say about parental controls:

Parental Controls
Users are required to be logged into an account and over the age of 18 in order to view mature content (films rated R, TV-MA shows) on Hulu. Unfortunately, we do not have a setting that allows for more customized parental controls at this time. The best suggestion we can offer is to log out of your Hulu account while watching with younger children; this will block mature content.

 If a user doesn’t have a Hulu account, they are blocked from viewing R-rated content, and receive a screen like this:

hulu1

This is OK for younger children, but little more than a small hinderence for older kids.  All they need to do is sign up for an account.  Then when they plan an R-rated movie that get a warning screen for a few seconds, an that’s it:

hulu2

Could Hulu do more?  Yes, they could have password-protected settings like Yahoo does, and that’s a better solution.  But this would be fairly easy to defeat by simply logging out.  In order to make sites like Hulu and YouTube really safer, the website would need to download a client program to each user that locks in settings – and that’s really not the business of a video website.  I think the better answer is for filtering companies to build controls into their products to manage the most popular video and photo sharing sites.

**UPDATE***

Adam Thierer of the Progress & Freedom Foundation comments”

David.. I’ve been thinking about this very issue a lot lately and come to the same conclusion that the blocking agent has to be operational at the OS level or through add-on filters. But the sticking point here is the trigger. We’d have to make sure the metadata was somehow standardized across major video hosting sites such that it could trigger the filtering tool or the OS-level blocking. Of course, major studios already embed that metadata in DVDs, so my assumption is that it could be (perhaps already is?) uploaded along with the videos to the major distribution sites. Any thoughts on how the devilish details might be worked out here? I think we’d need a multi-stakeholder effort to make this work.

That’s an even better approach. Just like Windows and most gaming consoles do with games using ESRB ratings. It’s also been pointed out that some of the streaming movies being offered by Netflix, etc. could use better parental controls. This something the industry should tackle at the OS level by taking the same approach the gaming industry has.  As TV moves to the Interent, there’s no reason why ratings can’t follow.

Filed under: Internet Safety | 2 Comments »

Online Safety Blogosphere Round Up September 21, 2009

Posted on September 21, 2009 by filteringfacts

Parry Aftab asks us to “Join us at the top Cyberbullying Coalition event – October 13, 2009 in DC”
Cybersafety organizations, Internet industry and entertainment leaders, members of the media and news agencies, child protection and anti-violence advocacy groups, community service organizations, law enforcement agencies, policymakers, authors, researchers and educational institutions, coalitions and working groups are each tackling cyberbullying and the risks associated with kids and teens hurting each other using digital devices and technologies.

MobiCIP Online Safety tells us “10 Things to Consider Before Giving an iPod Touch or iPhone to Your Child”
Most parents that we talk to did not even think about it until they saw the device themselves. They spend a few minutes on it and discover that they love to play with it. The second thought that hits them is, hey, this is a mini-computer. We couldn’t agree more. Apple invented a netbook before netbooks became a category of computing devices – tiny computers that are always on and instantly connect to the Internet, giving access to the essentials of the Internet age – email, browsing, social networks, Skype, blogs, news.

Joy Howell at the Safe Internet Alliance reminds us that, “Education still first step in online safety awareness”
Online safety for kids is so important, because what they put online now could undermine their privacy, safety and security now and later, and follow them throughout their lives. We need to educate kids now so they don’t compromise their security unwittingly.

Anne Collier at NetFamilyNews tells us about, “Online-safety ed, Swedish-style”

The Swedish Media Council recently unveiled three 30-second animated videos designed to be distributed “virally” by the human peers of their star, “Eddy.” He’s “an impulsive teenage boy who tries out typical online behavior in the physical world,” and he’s meant to get youth thinking about why people act differently online. It’s interesting to see what’s rising to the top as the most salient concerns in many countries.

Pandora tells us how, “Two Local Schools Combat Cyberbullying”
The Rondout District 72 in Florida has started a Digital Citizenship Project, which just sounds awesome! In Colquitt County Georgia, the school system has boosted its emphasis on bullying, along with a revamping of its Internet use policy to include a new section on cyber-bullying.

Filed under: Internet Safety | Leave a Comment »

Are There Really 4 Million Child Porn Sites?

Posted on September 20, 2009 by filteringfacts

Last week, a report by the United Nations released a jaw-dropping statistic, reported by the AP and elsewhere: 

The number of Web sites containing child pornography is increasing and more images show serious abuses, a U.N. expert said Wednesday.  More than 4 million Web sites worldwide show images of children being sexually exploited, said the U.N. investigator on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat M’jid Maalla. “There is an increase in the number of sites recorded,” she told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, citing research by the U.K.-industry group Internet Watch Foundation. 

Four million seems a staggering number.  The Internet Watch Foundation maintains a blacklist of child porn sites, and issued research in January, 2009 that stated  the number was “fewer than 3,000.”  The IWF website notes that, “The list typically contains less than 1000 live child sexual abuse URLs at any one time.”  A blacklist maintained by Danish ISPs in February 2008, reported 3,863 blocked sites.  And an Australian government blacklist published by the website WikiList listed 2,395 pages. 

So where would these researchers get a figure like 4,000,000?  I see two possibilities, either credible:

1)       The four million number refers to child pornography images, not websites. In an interview with Reuters, “Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said its database now contains more than half a million images of children being sexually exploited.”  Not four million, but at least in the same ballpark.  A statistic of 4 million child pornography images in existence worldwide seems very credible.

2)      The four million number refers to all pornography sites, not just child pornography sites.  Research from 2004 and 2005 reported the total number of Internet pornography sites at 1.2 to 1.5 million, so a 4 million number is credible here as well. (Side note: counting the number of Internet pornography sites is difficult because the Internet porn industry operates by creating large numbers of free “feeder” sites that display free content in order to “feed” users to a few thousands pay sites).

 In any event, we need some explanation from the U.N. here on this number that seems wildly at odds with other research.

Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety, Policy | Leave a Comment »

Internet Filtering Controversies Raging Worldwide

Posted on September 17, 2009 by filteringfacts

Internet filtering is drawing a lot of controversy and attention right now in the international press as well as the blogosphere. 

  • In the United States, Suren Ramasubbu writes on the Huffington Post that “Internet Filtering Software Makers Held to Higher Standard on Sharing User Data.” Ramasubbu expands on the EchoMetrix story to take on the issue of data gathering by filtering companies more generally, including Symantec’s publication of anonymous web surfing data last month.  The issue of web filtering data is complicated, because “telemetry” data from users on blocked website is an extremely powerful tool for improving filters, but as Ramasubbu points out, extra care is required to ensure privacy.
  • In the United Kingdom, Zack Whittaker on ZDNET asks, “Could Internet filtering cause more harm than good?:”
    Because of Pandora’s Box theory – once something happens, it can never be undone and is no doubt deemed to repeat itself in the future. Where does it stop? Should the Internet be entirely monitored and blocked to ensure the safety of its users? When is Internet filtering an abuse of governmental power, and how should it be regulated?
  • In Thailand, the Wall Street Journal writes about, “Web Censoring Widens Across Southeast Asia:”
    Attempts to censor the Internet are spreading to Southeast Asia as governments turn to coercion and intimidation to rein in online criticism. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam lack the kind of technology and financial resources that China and some other large countries use to police the Internet. The Southeast Asian nations are using other methods — also seen in China — to tamp down criticism, including arresting some bloggers and individuals posting contentious views online.
  • In Canada, legislation has been proposed that would create a CIPA-type law for Canada requiring filters in schools and libraries.

Filed under: Filtering, Filtering Companies, Policy | Leave a Comment »

Sentry’s EchoMetrix Recalls N2H2 Class Clicks Program From 2001

Posted on September 7, 2009 by filteringfacts

On Friday, the AP broke the story of parental control vendor Sentry using data gathered from children to create marketing data: 

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids… The software brands in question are developed by EchoMetrix Inc., a company based in Syosset, N.Y. In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. EchoMetrix CEO Jeff Greene said the company complies with U.S. privacy laws and does not collect any identifiable information. 

Déjà vu.  In 2001 I worked for a now-defunct parental control company called N2H2.  N2H2 was the top selling filtering vendor to public schools at the time, and decided to take all the data they were gathering on which sites children were visiting, and sell it as marketing data in a program called “Class Clicks.” I wasn’t involved in the planning and execution  of Class Clicks, but the thinking was that since this was “anonymous, aggregate data” there  were no privacy concerns.  The company also felt that since notification about the monitoring and reuse of data was in the product End User License Agreement (EULA), this would also help cover the company.   The reality was that these defenses were of almost no use during the PR firestorm that followed, and quickly forced the program’s cancellation, as this 2001 AP story recounts: 

(AP) — A major Internet filtering company will stop collecting and selling the Web habits of millions of schoolchildren who use its product after privacy groups howled and the Defense Department had second thoughts. N2H2, which makes the “Bess” Internet filtering software, said Thursday it has stopped selling its “Class Clicks” lists that report the Web sites students visit on the Internet and how much time they spend at each one. After N2H2 announced its deal with marketing research firm Roper Starch last September, privacy groups called the filtering company a “corporate predator” and were incensed over reports the information would be sold to the Defense Department for recruiting. 

I took over PR at N2H2 shortly after the discontinuation of Class Clicks, and I spent a lot of time cleaning up after it.  It was a PR disaster that haunted the company until its acquisition by Secure Computing in 2003.  Class Clicks was included in our competitor’s sales collateral as a reason not to buy N2H2, and was always brought up by our competitors in selling situations. 

What’s the takeaway here? Just because what a company is doing with user data is legal, described in the EULA, and anonymous does NOT necessarily mean it’s going to be OK with customers, and won’t protect the company from bad press.

 –David Burt

Filed under: Filtering Companies, Internet Safety, Policy | 1 Comment »

FCC Child Safe Viewing Act Report Due this Week

Posted on August 31, 2009 by filteringfacts

Broadcasting & Cable gives a preview of the upcoming report on parental controls mandated by the Child Safe Viewing Act: 

The FCC’s report to Congress on the state of media-screening technologies, due by the end of this month, comes to two broad conclusions, but does not suggest any action items beyond opening an inquiry prompted by its survey of the current content-control landscape for a variety of media. That inquiry includes a request for better data, something that should come as no surprise for followers of the current commission. The FCC’s two conclusions: 1) There is no universal ratings system in place, and 2) better educating parents on how to use the existing systems would likely help drive adoption. That’s according to sources familiar with the report, which will be delivered to Congress by the end of the month, according to a Media Bureau spokesperson. The deadline is Aug. 29.

 I agree parents need to be better educated about controls, but the idea of universal ratings is problematic, at least for websites.  The reality is you have several dozen private companies each creating their own rating system.  Unlike video games or movies where some sort of industry body rates sites, no one is in charge of rating websites, because there are simply too many of them.  If you count social networking sites, there are hundreds of millions of individual “publishers” of websites.  Various Internet rating schemes such as PICS, ICRA, and RSACi have been tried and have never achieved the critical mass necessary.  For the foreseeable future, parents will have rely on proprietary rating systems from parental control vendors.

Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety, Policy | Leave a Comment »

Online Safety Blogosphere Round Up Aug 19, 2009

Posted on August 19, 2009 by filteringfacts

Sameer Hinduja guest blogs on InternetSafety.com on “Beating Cyberbullying”
We continue our conversation with Sameer Hinduja, co-founder of the Cyberbullying Research Center and noted expert in the field. Today we’re going to be talking about what to do when a child seems to be involved in cyberbullying.

Larry Magid on SafeKids.com reports on “Facebook lawsuit: a jumbled mess”
While I can’t comment on the entire suit, it’s clear to me that parts of the just-filed privacy lawsuit against Facebook represent a lack of understanding of how social networks like Facebook work as well as how best to protect children and adults on the Internet. I’m especially baffled by the allegation that Facebook violated the rights of an 11-year-old child because he disclosed that he had swine flu.

On the iKeep Safe Blog, “Reputation Defender & iKeepSafe Help Kids Manage Their Digital Footprint.”
iKeepSafe has been working with Reputation Defender to help provide materials to parents, educators, and guidance counselors to teach specifically about managing children’s online reputation.  A child’s digital footprint not only affects their own future opportunities, but their parents’ and siblings’.

Marian Merritt tells us about “Another Tactic to Keep YouTube Safe for Kids: ZuiTube”
There’s a new website, ZuiTube.com, that offers parent approved YouTube content. All the videos come from YouTube, but are prescreened by parents and teachers, to provide a safe and fun YouTube-powered environment.

Linda Criddle on Look Both Ways talks about how to “Make Your School Web sites Safer”
If your school is potentially exposing any personal information about students, it is time for the school to do a safety analysis of all online communications to identify and mitigate risks. Consider whether the site should be searchable by the public and whether you should use full names of students

Filed under: Internet Safety | Leave a Comment »

Transcript of 7/27 PFF Event on Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech

Posted on August 19, 2009 by filteringfacts

From the PFF blog:

On July 27th, The Progress & Freedom Foundation hosted a Capitol Hill panel discussion entitled “Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States.” The event featured remarks from:

  • Parry Aftab, Executive Director, WiredSafety.org
  • Todd Haiken, Senior Manager of Policy, Common Sense Media
  • Jim Halpert, Partner, DLA Piper
  • Berin Szoka, Senior Fellow, The Progress & Freedom Foundation

We’ve just released the transcript of the event, which I have also pasted down below the fold in a Scribd document reader. Also, the audio for this event can be heard by clicking below:
 Download mp3

Here is the full event description: 

Online child safety, privacy, and free speech remain hotly debated issues at both the federal and state level. Bills introduced in Congress to address cyberbullying concerns propose either educational initiatives or a criminalization approach. Access to objectionable content also remains a concern and a new, government-mandated task force is looking into those issues. Meanwhile, state officials, including many state attorneys general, continue to explore age verification mandates for social networking sites and some have considered building on the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to expand “parental notification” mandates. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently announced an expedited review of COPPA to see if it is keeping up with new developments. The FTC is also exploring child safety in virtual worlds. New concerns about “sexting,” or the sending of sexual explicit images over mobile devices, has also raised new concerns led some lawmakers to ponder penalties.

How serious are these concerns? Is legislation or regulation needed to address them? What free speech issues are at stake? Should Congress take the lead or leave it to the States to experiment with different models? These and other issues were discussed by a panel of leading experts in the field of online safety and privacy policy.

 

Filed under: Internet Safety | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »