ProtecTeens tries hard to protect teens
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I requested the free CD, ProtecTeens, distributed by our Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa. It is meant to help Idaho parents, teachers, and teens against online sexual solicitation, exploitation, and abuse. Wasden narrates most of the 22-minute CD. I know their intentions were in the right place, but many things were lacking in the production.
The CD starts out strangely because you hear Wasden and Ysursa speaking, but instead of seeing the accompanying video we only see their official pictures.
Wasden smartly points out that unlike older people, teens have grown up with technology and the Internet is second nature to them. Several statistics are quoted regarding kids and online sexual solicitations and exposure to sexual materials, but the figures are given from 2000, 6 years ago! Why are they using such old numbers? I would think updated numbers would show an increase.
Wasden shows RateMyBody.com, where people upload their pics and all visitors can score their opinions on those bodies. You can imagine some of the pics are sexually explicit. The site does what it can to restrict picture uploads to those at least 18 years old, but all kids have to do is change the birthdate to older. Wasden demonstrated a search for “18 year-old Idaho Girls” and how many usernotes reflect user confessions that they are actually younger than 18.
A Lewiston girl is shown with her name, picture, city, and the mall she works at. The CD points out that anyone could track this girl down easily. However, Wasden fails here because they admit she is “not a minor, but still very young”. Why couldn’t he just find one actually underage?
Wasden presents sample components of website profiles, where users can optionally fill in (which is then accessible publicly) personal information like their real name, location, marital status, school, occupation, email address, and other websites the user has.
The other websites the user has can be just as dangerous to publish, because it enables predators to start collecting a dossier on their targets. MySpace teens are particularly susceptible to this problem due to the linked ‘friends’ and comments. Teens often drop their phone numbers in the comments, and anyone can click a few links and connect a lot of personal dots in the target’s life.
Wasden then points out all the information clues that can be dropped innocently enough in blogs (teens are provided blogs all over the Internet). They follow a scenario whereby someone could find twelve critical indentifiers of a Boise high school cheerleader, and using the information someone could approach the cheerleader’s car at home or school, call her by full name, and strike up a conversation of the cheerleader’s interests.
Then Wasden has the Ada County Sheriff’s office set him up with an online profile of a 15 year old Idaho girl. He admonishes how dangerous chat rooms are, and demonstrates going into one and how quickly he gets accosted by several guys pushing sexual chat.
I think the CD provides good information all kids should know, like the online information dots that can be connected and lead to a stranger stalking or accosting anyone when the least expect it. However Wasden demonizes online technology too much, and many statements come off as trying to scare the viewer.
Wasden suggests parents keep up with their kids online, but many parents unfortunately don’t understand a lot of online technologies. Wasden suggests parents know whom their kids are chatting with online, but predators will just pop up suddenly, and kids need to know how to evade them on their own. Wasden suggests setting up computers in high traffic areas of the house, but I would refine that suggestion to high visibility areas of the house. It is not enough if parents are breezing past the computer but are not able to keep watch over the contents that scroll the screen.
Wasden suggests the personal information that should never be disclosed online includes first and last names, address, phone numbers, school name, sports, activities, or especially pictures of themselves. Pics are the most difficult, because teens like to be expressive. I would encourage teens to at least apply some Photoshop magic to artistically alter their image (and so it is less recognizable).
It is funny Wasden suggests parents have their kids report every time they receive offensive messages or materials, especially after Wasden hypes parents into believing everything online is dangerous. I doubt many kids would report any offensive messages or materials, because then their parents might freak out and restrict the computer and online connection.
I would suggest installing parental controls from your service provider. MSN has some good ones and lots of kids like the MSN messenger tools. AOL has tight controls, but restricts too much authentic good stuff from the Internet. CableONE has their own proprietary controls but parents can’t control the settings and they must pay to get the controls?!?! Earthlink has their own controls provided free with their service. Qwest uses MSN as their content provider, so you get the great MSN stuff free with the service.
If you think your kids are getting innappropriately solicited online, Wasden and I strongly recommend you call the police. I suggest not closing any windows out, since forensic evidence is sometimes only stored in each session.
You can request the free CD here, or watch the 42-MB file online here (yes, you need DSL or cable high speed Internet to do watch online). You can get the Parental Technology Controls Instructions here, and get the Family Internet Use Contract here.
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0 I think they should educate parents about software that actualy will create history and everything the child visits or types and what they recieve from other users online and then the parents can secretly look at what children do online. and report anything offensive or illegal to the police.
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0 0 That sounds good in some ways. There is plenty of personal use free “spyware” out there that can do any of that. Especially logging chats and saving them. I don’t know about automated police contacting, that could get messy. Groups like Perverted Justice might not find the IF police so accommodating if there are hundereds of emails a day to sort through. There would be a lot of automated crying wolf. Think of every note passed in school with something offensive going to the principal. Also, kids are growing up with computers as second nature. (as noted.) Exept for really savvy parents, it’s going to be tough to outwit them.
An example is a friend of mine who works with internet security and had created a restricted account for a teenager. The simple story is that the kid just started creating new accounts to use to surf whatever. They caught them, but it took a while. They took measures but the fact is it’s going to take raising the child and communication ,not more software, to help.
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This article was written back in May, and the ProtecTeens CD was freely available for months before that. I wonder why the PR made it seem like this was the first release of it? Maybe I just read it wrong.
I’m glad they’re releasing it in Wal-Marts, the previous way was through their website. It was not difficult, but parents are more likely to stop by Wal-Mart than to surf over the the Idaho Attorney General’s website.
I think the title was lame: “Making the Internet a safe place” ? with a picture of Lawrence Wasden, as if he were going online to battle Internet dangers?
A more accurate title would have reflected teaching parents and teens to act safer online, not that the CD makes the Internet safer.
I mentioned to Wasden someone had written an article on his CD when I interviewed him this summer at the Republican convention. I saw a few days later Wasden searched for the article and visited the site, so it’s nice to know he was open to the constructive criticism.
Re-reading the article, the criticism was using old data, unnecessarily demonizing technology with scare statements, suggesting not sharing any pictures online instead of just altering them so as not to be so recognizable.
The most ironic was after scaring parents of online dangers, the suggestion is made that teenagers should report every offensive encounter. If parents demonstrate they’re freaked out about the Internet, teens won’t report offensive encounters because their parents might cut it off altogether.
The better way is to learn to deal with the dangers.
This CD is a great first start, and I think if Wasden uses updated data and focuses on more rational ways to deal with the dangers, this could be a great product other states may want to license.
In fact, I would most like to see Wasden update this CD annually with new dangers that emerged in the past year. That would demonstrate he is really staying on top of it, and the product would be most effective with the updates.