Larry Magid, the Internet Safety Guru, Discusses State Attorneys' MySpace Report

Larry Magid who is connected to the organization ConnectSafely.Org has written an interesting response to the State Attorneys General report about MySpace kicking 90,000 sexual predators off their site. Check it out: Magid Article

One of Magid's comments that sticks out is:

"Online safety groups and public officials should be spending our time educating families on how to avoid real risks that affect most kids-- like bullying, harassment and unwanted exposure to inappropriate material."

He says we should focus on the above issues and points out:

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is one of several safety organizations that no longer condone the use of the phrase "stranger danger."

Fallout Continues From Michael Phelps' Multi-Million Dollar Bong Photo

The second and third tier consequences are flowing in from Michael Phelps now famous pot smoking lapse of judgement. The latest? As reported in this New York Times article, he has been suspended for 3 months from competition and he is losing one of his primary sponsors because he did not project the image that Kellogg's wanted for its kids cereals.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/05/sports/AP-SWM-Phelps-Suspended.html

Parents, kids, and college athletes all have a lot to lose if their indiscretions are posted online or in the paper as it was in this case. Parents have the added responsibility of helping protect their kids from posting similarly damaging photos, videos or comments on the Internet for anyone in the world to see. It can impact their futures, and they need to look no further than the most recent American sports hero to see how quickly the tide can turn. YouDiligence helps parents protect and manage the online reputations of their kids.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

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