Parents Concerned About Cyberbullying

There were some very interesting numbers embedded in the recent article below on Care.com. It discussed how many parents are very concerned about monitoring their kids on social networks. One of the more interesting numbers was that 75% of parents monitor their kids' pages on social networks. This is the good news. My instinct tells me that most of these 75% are performing this task using an occasional manual method instead of a consistent 'always-on' automated approach such as YouDiligence. See the article.

Addiction to Facebook

It seems that Facebook has truly relegated MySpace to the wilderness. Social Networking essentially means Facebook at this point. MySpace is an afterthought for the great majority of people.

One of Facebook's important strategic decisions was to early on promote Facebook applications, that gave users the ability to perform a multitude of activities that was in a constant state of growth, but that didn't require growing Facebook resources. All they had to do was oversee and manage the process.

There was an article in Naperville Sun-Times today that explored the concept of addiction to Facebook. There are no similar discussions surrounding MySpace, in part because the activities on MySpace are still fairly limited.

One of the better quotes from the article:
"Oswego High School freshman Sara Rozhon told me she spends about two hours a day on Facebook. 'I'm addicted. (Without Facebook), I probably would have straight A's in all of my classes, and more of a life.' Rozhon does admit, 'I honestly think that without the distraction, my life would be easier.'"

Boston Girl, 12, Duped by MySpace Predator into Thinking She was going to Hollywood to be a Movie Star

Chaulk one up for the MA State Police who were able to save a Boston girl, 12, who was lured to purchase a ticket to fly to Hollywood to become a movie star by someone posing as a 16 year old girl on MySpace.

http://ydurl.com/nr9p

Anyone who thinks that MySpace and Facebook are safe from creeps who prey on children needs to wake up. Parents need to protect their children and teach them about internet safety and using socal networks responsibly.

This story could have ended much worse. I am relieved for this girl and her parents that she is safe at home tonight.

YouDiligence helps parents protect their children from online predators and cyber-bullies.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Posting On Social Networking Sites Creates a Permanent Record

Remember when you were in junior high and the principal used to scare you into believing that if you didn't behave that it would go down on some all powerful "permanent record"? Well now that permanent record actually exists -- and worse, it's a public forumn. Internet safety is something all parents should teach their kids from the very beginning of internet use.

Social Networking can be a great tool and a harmless way to interact with friends. But there are dangers, not the least of which is that everything you post, is now there for posterity as this article highlights.

http://ydurl.com/ggvs

Whether it's MySpace, Facebook, or any other site, if you post it, someone can find it, access it, and expose it.

YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) helps protect kids futures, hopefully keeping their "permanent record" as clean as possible in the internet era.

2 Purdue Fraternities & a Sorority Post Hazing Photos on Facebook & Get Suspended

I'm sure there are many stories out there about hazing incidents that have been posted on Facebook, but this one struck close to home -- 4 miles to be exact.

http://ydurl.com/f5n6

This is certainly not the first, nor will it be the last story about fraternity hazing. Aside from the obvious stupidity of the hazing activity itself (and I am a proud fraternity alum -- at Purdue no less), but what strikes me is the lack of concern by these students for their long-term reputations. If those photos made it to the Dean of Students' office, how hard will it be for a potential employer to find them at some point in the future?

Now that President O'Bama has opened the door, making it acceptable to review private Facebook and MySpace pages of applicants, parents of high school and college kids everywhere need to warn their children about the long-term consequences of posting what might seem like silly, fun, or innocuous things, as they can come back to haunt you. The Internet IS the "permanent record" that your junior high principal used threaten to put something down on to keep you in line.

All those "friends" they think they have -- yeah right. All it takes is to right-click-save and whatever mistakes might have been posted by a child on their page are now saved by someone that can use them later on. No one knows if another person will remain their friend for a week, a month, or ten years. However, once they allow access to their private social networking pages, they are exposing themselves to potential problems down the road.

The answer is educating our children about responsible social networking use, and yes, monitoring their activity to make sure they are following your rules and aren't getting into trouble. Trust but verify.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

2,116 Convicted North Carolina Sexual Predators had MySpace Accounts

Parents in North Carolina can rest a little easier as their attorney general struck a blow for internet safety by identifying 2,116 sexual predators in NC that had MySpace accounts -- and MySpace shut them down.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/10/nc.sex.offenders/index.html

In the last month there have been almost 100,000 sexual predators' accounts shut down on MySpace and Facebook combined. But that's out of nearly 400 million accounts -- uh, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this represents a very incomplete accounting for the likely actual number of predators on those sites. These were just the predators dumb enough to use their real names -- and finally someone decided to run a check comparing the MySpace and Facebook roster against the convicted sexual predator database. It's not just the names that need to be checked. It couldn't be more clear, for the safety of their kids, parents need to consider monitoring their kids' pages.

Studies show kids spend over 30 hours per week online, mostly unsupervised. How likely is it that they come into contact with a predator or are bullied by their peers? That's a question parents must ask themselves.

Fortunately parents now have help. YouDiligence (http://www.youdiligence.com)/sends email alerts to parents when questionable material is posted on their kids' sites -- providing some peace of mind.

5600 -- Really? Facebook Only Identifies 5600 Sexual Predators' Accounts

The sincerity of social networking sites regarding Internet safety can be questioned after the latest news from Facebook. See this TechDirt post:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090220/1017023844.shtml#comments

During a week of taking a public relations beating and a subsequent user rebellion over claiming perpetual ownership rights to the content posted by its users, Facebook followed MySpace's lead to identify and remove known, convicted sexual predators from its site. What's curious is that out of Facebook's 100+ million subscribers only 5600 were registered sexual predators. By contrast, MySpace found over 90,000 -- this also seems really low when compared to their number of subscribers, which they put at 200+ million.

5600 -- Really? That's about as believable as Alex Rodriguez's partial-kind-of-not-so-much-yeah-I-was-young-and-dumb (hey it worked for Michael Phelps) explanation of his steroid use. One has to ask several questions:

• How hard did Facebook really look?


• How committed is Facebook to Internet safety?


• Is Facebook really concerned about the safety of their users?

We should probably commend the social networks for however reluctantly beginning to take small steps towards making their product safer. However it clearly further identifies the need for parents to protect their kids online.

YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) helps parents with this daunting task. YouDiligence doesn't rely on the honesty of sexual deviants to identify themselves. It works even if false identities are being used. YouDiligence scans the content itself of what is posted on kids pages, helping parents identify suspicious and troubling posts. Parents have the control to customize the search criteria that's used to alert them to troubling posts by their children and others on their children's sites. Once an issue is identified, YouDiligence emails the parent an alert in real-time.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Parents Should be Concerned about Internet Safety for Kids

This item from Indiana today where police arrested a 28 year old man who had repeatedly had sex with a 14 year old girl he met on MySpace.

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/18688318/detail.html

This news only reinforces the fact that sexual predators troll social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace looking for unsuspecting victims, especially children. It is a parents' right to protect their children from harm, and many parents need help to make the internet safer for their kids.

YouDiligence makes it easier for parents to know who their kids are interacting with online, and alerting them to risky internet activity on their children's social networking accounts.

Facebook Impostors Raise Internet Safety Concerns

Here is another story about the dangers of social networking and Internet safety. People posing as someone else, and then getting the real person's friends to send money to the impostor. This is the ultimate cyber-bullying.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

At UDiligence, (YouDiligence's product for college athletic departments) we have run into this problem when protecting the online reputations of student-athletes. We have found a number of "poser" pages that were put up in malice, intending to damage the reputations of the athletes.

Two of the instances involved female soccer players, who had MySpace pages that they didn't create, but that said very graphic and sexually explicit things about them. UDiligence notified the school and helped get the pages taken down, saving the long term reputation issues for the athletes, who were graduating and looking for jobs.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

A group of State Attorney General's offices release MySpace Sex Offender Report: Are they moving to Facebook?

A group of State Attorney General's offices released a report the other day stating MySpace had purged 90,000 accounts of people who are in the sex offender database.

http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?A=3673&Q=433228

It is good that MySpace is tring to be proactive in this regard. Tech Crunch has a blogger, Erick Schonfeld, that has been covering this topic for the last month. He wrote a very interesting post that suggests many of these booted MySpace predators might have migrated to Facebook.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/03/thousands-of-myspace-sex-offender-refugees-found-on-facebook/

This makes perfect sense for the predators. What predators want is a large population, because there is a larger pool of potential victims to choose from and it is easier to not stand out when there is a crowd. When we started YouDiligence, we recognized that MySpace and Facebook were the two dominant players in the social networking space, and that our service would be most beneficial on these two sites.

Wisconsin Sexual Predator on Facebook

The day after MySpace announced that they had removed more than 90,000 sexual predators with accounts from trolling their social network, this story appears out of Wisconsin. An 18 year old male faked being a girl and then solicited and blackmailed teenage boys into having sex with him by claiming he would expose nude photos of them if they didn't comply.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihOT1uPILQwicwpDuJO4bLWFdnRAD965CPNO0
If ever there was a case that shows how YouDiligence could have helped parents protect children, this is it. YouDiligence searches kids pages for words that predators and cyber-bullies use, and alerts parents by email when it finds a match on their kids' MySpace or Facebook pages.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Social Networking & College Athletic Scholarships a Double Edged Sword

This story in February 1's Rocky Mountain News suggests there are a number of specialized college athletic recruiting social networking sites that are popping up across the country that are selling themselves as a way for high school athletes to connect with college coaches -- and maybe more importantly it signifies a trend where creative athletic programs and coaches are embracing social networking as a viable mechanism to reach high school athletes. One of the sites that isn't mentioned in the article, but is gaining traction nationally is: http://www.globalsports.net/.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/feb/01/social-networking-new-face-high-school-recruiting/

It has always been a challenge for high school athletes who are not in the "revenue" sports of football and men's/women's basketball to get noticed if they are not in the top 200 recruits nationally of their sports. Likewise it has always been a challenge for the coaches at small colleges and in non-revenue sports at Division I schools to get to the far corners of the country to see athletes on very small recruiting budgets.

In years past, parents have tried to fill this void by spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars putting together DVD highlight reels of their kids' athletic performances. They sent these tapes to dozens or even hundreds of coaches in hope they might look at their video over the 1000+ other vidoes that had come in.

With the economy shredding recruiting budgets for almost every level of college sports, it has hit smaller colleges and non-revenue sports even harder. This has forced coaches to seek out and even embrace technology as their friend - learning about and using the technology like social networking that is available -- within NCAA and NAIA guidelines -- to connect to the lesser-known athletes from small to previously unheardof high schools.

It is a win-win for the athlete and the coach. There are a lot of talented high school athletes who never played beyond the 12th grade because they never had the chance to be seen by a recruiter or a coach. Now they can, and it seems so far, everyone wins.

Now, while these recruiting social networking sites are designed to specifically enhance a high school athlete's chance to connect with college coaches, other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are being used by college admissions offices as a litmus test as to whether or not they want to accept some students into their freshman class. Parents, don't be fooled, most high schoolers have a MySpace and/or Facebook page.

For the parents of athletes who are working so hard to get your kids recruited, don't let the latter happen to you. YouDiligence is a service that alerts you by email to potentially troubling posts on your kid's MySpace and Facebook pages -- the very things that college admissions offices are looking for. Now you can protect your kids' reputation by having them remove potentially problematic posts before collegiate admissions officers get to see them. The first month is free -- http://www.youdiligence.com.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Using Facebook to Apologize & YouDiligence to Protect

For those who have yet to see the photo that surfaced in the London tabloids of American Olympic hero Michael Phelps taking a hit off of a marijuana bong, here is the link to the story and the photo.

http://snipr.com/b35fo

It's amazing that this took place in November and it is just now getting out. Phelps has quickly admitted his mistake, apologized and said it would never happen again. Interestingly, he chose his Facebook page as the primary release point for his apology. This is a real sign of the times, and since he has nearly 2 million fans on Facebook, it was a sure way to reach his most loyal supporters quickly, and a testament to the efficacy of social networking.

Here is what his agent at Octagon came up with for him, and is posted on his Facebook page:

I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23-years-old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public – it will not happen again.

Parents of tweens and teens across the country are shaking their heads right now because this, on a much smaller scale -- but a more important one to them -- is the very thing they are afraid of happening to their child. They are worried about what their kids are doing and are worried that someone may post similarly damaging party photos of their kids on a MySpace or Facebook page for the entire world to see and the subsequent damage to the reputations such photos might have on their kids.

We developed YouDiligence to help parents protect their kids from negative exposure on social networking sites -- exposure that can ruin the kid's reputation.

If you are worried about what your kid is posting to a social networking site, you should subscribe: http://www.youdiligence.com/. The first month is free and it may just keep your kid from posting things -- like the photo of Michael Phelps -- which might impact the decision of an admissions officer at the college they hope to attend.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Another College Athlete Arrested

One more typical weekend on a college campus where yet another athlete does something to negatively impact his future.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/11323487/rss

This is not even really news any more and that's unfortunate. The only part that is news: who it was and what did they do -- this time?

In my role running MVP Sports Media Training (http://www.sportsmediatraining.com/), I educate collegiate athletes all across the country that they are more accountable than the average student and thus more vulnerable to scrutiny by the public, media and alumni of thier schools -- whether it be for their real or virtual activities on and off the field.

Why, they often ask, does my name appear in the paper when there were 100 other people arrested for doing the same thing? The answer is simple -- you are in the public's eye because you are an athlete. When you make a mistake it is magnified and exposed. Is it fair? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. The fact remains the 100 other kids who got arrested for the same thing aren't on an athletic scholarship and don't publicly represent the school.

Much like posting something on a social networking site and having it exposed, compromising behavior can have a negative impact on your future as well. Many employers will not hire someone with a DUI or an arrest record, and just like potential employers do internet searches for information on applicants' character, many of them also do background checks where actions that lead to arrest will be readily available.

Once the arrest has been reported, the media will likely do a quick search of social networking pages to see if the athlete has posted anything that they can expose to add to the controversy. Many athletes don't think about the fact that posting something controversial on their Facebook and/or MySpace pages can be exposed for reasons other than the content of those posts...it can be a secondary consequence, compunding an already difficult situation.

I try to get the athletes to think about their actions this way. It's called "The Mother Rule" -- If you are fine with having your mother or grandmother read about what you are about to do, or post online, then you are probably OK to do it.

BSOT...Be Safe Online Tonight

Attorneys General, Social Networking Companies and Internet Predators

New study challenges attorneys general on predator danger and the link below describes the debate on this issue:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10151959-238.html

This debate will continue, but what is necessary no matter the danger, is that parents have technologies to counter the risks and realities that may come with social networking.

It may seem simplistic but parents would not allow their 10 year olds to spend hours at the park unsupervised with no knowledge of the scope and nature of their activities. Yet who can expect a parent to want to -- or have the time to -- read through all the content, posts and links of a kid's social networking site?

We created YouDiligence to bridge the gap, raise awareness and help parents and kids have collaborative discussions about the boundaries of on line social networking.

Social Network Monitoring and YouDiligence

YouDiligence founder Kevin Long was interviewed yesterday on the33tv.com station. Kevin was interviewed via phone as part of the story. The piece featured interviews of college and high school students, as well as parents and administrators. It focused on how college admissions offices are using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as a determining factor in their admission decision making process. Kevin shed some light on how YouDiligence helps parents protect their kids' reputations. The piece is interesting in hearing both students and administrators take on the topic of students online activity and how it can impact their futures.