As technology advances, children are becoming quite adept at using smart phones, surfing the web, posting pictures, etc. So it may be important to sit your child down and teach them one quick lesson about the Internet:

What happens on the Internet, Stays on the Internet FOREVER

And as parents, before you hand over that phone to provide some extra entertainment when you get stuck in line at a restaurant, you may want to make sure all other applications are locked down, you have signed out of your email and other social networking sites, and that before anything can be sent a passwords must be entered.

(Source: Infosec Island)

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Infosec Island

INTERPOL has launched an international initiative which will see the world police body provide a list of Internet domains containing severe child sexual abuse content to Internet Access Service Providers (ASPs) voluntarily participating in the scheme to reduce the availability of such material on the Web. Under the scheme, Internet users attempting to access severe child abuse material on the web will be re-directed away, either to an INTERPOL stop page or to an error page.

INTERPOL’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit, which steers the world police body’s combat against child sexual exploitation, will work with the Organization’s National Central Bureaus and international police forces amongst its 188 member countries in updating and enlarging this “Worst of” list of domains containing severe child sexual abuse material, according to criteria defined in collaboration with the pan-European police project CIRCAMP – the COSPOL (Comprehensive Operational Strategic Planning for the Police) Internet Related Child Abusive Material Project.

(Source: Interpol)

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Interpol

PRE-TEENS should not be on Facebook, insists Queensland Premier Anna Bligh - and the social networking site needs to work harder at enforcing the 13-year age limit. "I think that parents are right when they say that primary school children should not be on Facebook and I support Queensland parents when they say that Facebook needs to do more to address their legitimate fears," Ms Bligh said. "Vigilant parents can email the company if their child is under 13 and the child's site will be shut down.

''Unfortunately, there really is nothing to stop their child setting up another site." Sandy White from Norman Park in Brisbane's inner east is the mother of Thomas, 13, and Ryan, 12. She believes the number of primary school children using Facebook is growing. "I do not allow my boys to have a Facebook account, even though they would love to. It seems the norm these days is for children as young as 10 or 11 to join up but I believe that children of that young age are defenceless to predators.

(Source: Queensland Newspapers)

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Queensland Newspapers

Adult websites and applications are too easily accessible to adolescent smartphone users, with the Korean government unable to censor materials uploaded from foreign soil, a lawmaker said Monday. Rep. Han Sun-kyo of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) said that smartphone users, including minors, can access many applications containing sex-related material and games. “Internet users cannot search sites containing adult materials by typing in sex-related words. But if you do that in the App Store and Google-backed Android market, you get up to 900 X-rated applications,” he said during the National Assembly’s audit of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sports. In particular, those who are over 17 can download adult content from the App Store, Han said. “Even if they are minors, they can have access to adult content as long as they type in passwords and click the approve button.” Among the most downloaded applications, one involving sex acts ranked 40th, he said, stressing there are even applications allowing smartphone users to view adult video clips by providing their uniform resource locators (URL).

“The Korea Communication Standards Commission (KOCSC) has recently decided to tighten applications on App Store and other online open application markets, believing there is too much sex-related material. But it is not certain that the commission will be able to apply local regulations to foreign companies,” the lawmaker said.

(Source: The Korea Times)

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The Korea Times

Addiction counsellors have told Newsbeat they're seeing more cases of people worried about being hooked on playing video games. There are now calls for the gaming industry to offer more support to people who can't switch off. Technology or computer addiction isn't officially recognised as a clinical condition. But the group representing games companies admits there needs to be more research into the problem.

"Most of the people that are getting into difficulties tend to be in their teenage years and early 20s. "As that generation moves through and others come on behind, I think the problem is going to get bigger."

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

500 million users worldwide and still growing, Facebook is now ubiquitous. Because of its popularity, minors have jumped onto the social media bandwagon, too, and they use networking the same way adults do--to share pictures, connect with friends, organize events, and play social games. And that can be a problem.

For the most part, Facebook provides a fun and safe way for users of all ages to communicate with their pals. But because kids and teens are, well, kids and teens, they're the ones most at risk of falling victim to the dangers of Facebook. With a bit of strategic parental guidance, you can educate your kids about the potential hazards of social media and give them the tools they need to protect themselves from online predators, guard their personal information, preserve their online reputation, and avoid suspicious downloads that could harm your PC.

(Source: PC World)

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PC World

Students awaiting loans and grants should watch out for scam emails asking for bank details, Student Finance England warns Students were today warned to beware of scam emails purporting to be about loans and grants, after it emerged that 50 phishing websites targeting young people have been shut down during the last year.

Hundreds of thousands of people are starting university in the coming weeks, and Student Finance England, which processes English students' loans and grants, today urged students to "remain vigilant" and not disclose any personal or bank details in response to email requests that look like they are from either itself or its parent company, the Student Loans Company. Student Finance England expects to make payments to more than 600,000 students this week, and fraudsters are taking advantage of the timing to target students who are waiting for money to arrive. Heather Laing, its fraud manager, said: "Students are likely to receive a great deal of correspondence from Student Finance England at this time, with payment schedule letters or letters requesting further information coming through the door. Some students may fall victim to an email request that looks to be from Student Finance England or the Student Loans Company asking for confirmation of bank details. However, we will never ask students to confirm their bank details via email. If they do receive such a request, they should forward it on to us to investigate."

(Source: Guardian)

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Guardian

For the 10th eLearning Awards, European Schoolnet and ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, announce a new prize category called "Teaching online safety and citizenship".

The rapid spread of internet use among young people is making it essential to address eSafety and ePrivacy, in order to protect young people from online risks and threats and to prepare them to use digital technologies in a secure and responsible way. As a major European actor for eSafety and ePrivacy, ENISA highly encourages all teachers to address these issues with their young students. “Young people and children are today amongst the biggest user groups of online technologies in Europe. It is important to equip them with the skills and knowledge to stay safe online,” said Dr Udo Helmbrecht, Executive Director of ENISA.

(Source: ENISA)

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ENISA

Harrisburg University has banned these social media sites, as well as MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger, for one week on the Pennsylvania campus, starting September 13.

The ban is not because of any security or privacy issue. Rather, it is an experiment to make students and faculty members think about the significance of social media and how best to benefit from this channel in its absence. "We're not trying to stop all access to these sites," says Charles Palmer, executive director of the Center for Advanced Entertainment and Learning Technologies. "We're trying to enhance people's ability to reflect on how technology impacts their daily lives and really generate valuable conversations." According to Jeffery Mechling, a prominent author and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, "People depend a lot on those they trust. Making those connections easier is powerful, as social media have demonstrated. But this is a new phenomenon, so studying and understanding better is valuable."

(Source: Bank Info Security)

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Bank Info Security

Sometimes it's a story of a grown woman who has chosen prostitution as a path to a better life. More often, it's a story of a woman being forced to sell her body by a pimp. And then there are the children, and the mothers that miss them.

"They told me to look on Craigslist and it almost blew my mind," the mother of one missing 12-year-old told CNN. "She was there with a wig on. She was there in a purple negligee. The same day the woman spoke to CNN, her daughter was rescued by police at a seedy hotel near Washington where she was being sold for sex. And she's not alone. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website contains thousands of posters of missing children. Many are girls, classified as "endangered runaways," and the center says more than fifty of them have been pushed into the sex trade. But that's just a snapshot, a tiny indicator of the true scale of the problem.

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

With its millions of users, the world’s most popular social network has become a perfect target for hackers exploiting such a dense concentration of potential victims. Apart from phishing attacks or spam, which are now easily recognized by many Internet users, hackers are employing new methods, which for the moment at least, are proving to be successful. What to do if your Facebook profile has been hacked

Step 1: Firstly, remove all permissions that have been given to the malicious application. This is a simple process: from Account > Application settings in the top-right corner of your Facebook profile. This ensures that the application will not continue to have access to your profile once the password is changed.

Step 2: Change the login password! To keep your identity safe, it is advisable to change your password and the user name (it’s a good idea to do this from time to time anyway). This is also easy: Go to Account > and Account Settings in the menu in the top left corner of your Facebook profile. It is also advisable to use strong passwords that cannot easily be guessed.

(Source: Panda Security)

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Panda Security

The Safer Internet Forum has been organized by the Safer Internet Programme as an annual conference on safer internet issues since 2004. It brings together representatives of industry, law enforcement authorities, child welfare organizations and policy makers. The past editions of the Safer Internet Forum have welcomed guests not only from Europe, but also from countries such as Australia, Brazil or the Russian Federation.

The 2010 edition of the Safer Internet Forum will take place in Luxembourg on the 21-22 October. This year the Safer Internet Forum will focus on the results of two major research projects funded by the Safer Internet Programme: EUKidsOnline II, which surveyed children and parents in 25 European countries about internet use, and European Online Grooming Project, the first European research project that studies the characteristics and behaviour of sexual offenders who have used the internet to groom young people.

(Source: Europe's Information Society)

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Europe's Information Society

New Zealand has joined a global taskforce to fight online child exploitation. Police Superintendent Win Van Der Velde today signed an agreement with the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) board in Rome. VGT is made up of international law enforcement agencies, and Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope said joining strengthened an already firm resolve to tackle the online abuse of children. Police will collaborate with VGT through its Online Child Abuse Exploitation Squad (OCEANZ). VGT is chaired by the Australian Federal Police.

(Source: New Zealand Herald)

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New Zealand Herald

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

(Source: Baltimore FBI)

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Baltimore FBI

Internet security firm Sophos has warned Facebook users to be on the alert for a scam which sends a spam message to all of their friends on the social network. Sophos, in a pair of blog posts late Monday, said "hundreds of thousands" of Facebook users have fallen for the scam which it dubbed "likejacking." It said some Facebook users had received a message such as "This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!" and were encouraged to click on a link. "This of course posts a message to your newsfeed, your friends see it and click on it, and so it spreads," Sophos said.

That followed a similar scam that spread on Facebook the week before involving a fake posting tagged as the "sexiest video ever," according to Sophos.

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

"People that play these fast-paced games have better vision, better attention and better cognition," said Daphne Bavelier, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester. Bavelier was being a presenter at Games for Learning, a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video games and computer games. The event, the first of its kind, was an indication that electronic games are gaining legitimacy in the classroom.

President Barack Obama recently identified the creation of good educational software as one of the "grand challenges for American innovation," and the federal Department of Education's assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Jim Shelton, was to attend Thursday's conference. Panelists were to discuss how people learn and how games can be engineered to be even more educational. "People do learn from games,"

(Source: AP)

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AP

It might go against conventional wisdom, but a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is adding fuel to the argument that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites. Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online — and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, 21, is among those young adults. On the job hunt since graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts, she's been "scouring" her Facebook page, removing photos that contain beer cups and any other signs of college exploits. She's also dropped Twitter altogether. "I have to present a public face that doesn't have the potential to hurt my image," McManus says.

(Source: AP)

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AP

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the Internet social network will roll out new privacy settings for its more than 400 million users, amid growing concerns that the company is pushing users to make more of their personal data public. "Many of you thought our controls were too complex," said Zuckerberg in an opinion piece published on Monday in The Washington Post.

"Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark," said the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. In the coming weeks, Zuckerberg promised, Facebook will add privacy controls that he said would be much simpler to use. Facebook will also give users an easy way to turn off all third-party services, Zuckerberg said.

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

Thousands of people have paid tribute on Facebook to an Australian teenager allegedly lured to her death by a man she met on the social networking site. The body of Nona Belomesoff was found two days after she went on a trip with the man, who told her they were going to rescue injured animals, police say. A 20-year-old man has been charged with Ms Belomesoff's murder at a creek south of Sydney.

Detectives say the case reinforces the need for vigilance when using Facebook. Ms Belomesoff, 18, is believed to have befriended Christopher James Dannevig, who police say set up a fake Facebook profile in which he claimed to work for an animal welfare group.

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

As much heat as Facebook has taken recently for its privacy policies and the freedom with which it shares data across the Web and around the world, Facebook is still not the biggest threat to online privacy--you are. A study by Consumer Reports illustrates that users are really their own worst enemy when it comes to online privacy.

Here are some of the key findings of the Consumer Reports survey: • A projected 1.7 million online households had experienced online identity theft in the past year. • An estimated 5.4 million online consumers submitted personal information to e-mail (phishing) scammers during the past two years. • Among adult social network users, 38 percent had posted their full birth date, including year. Forty-five percent of those with children had posted their children's photos. And 8% had posted their own street address. • An estimated 5.1 million online households had experienced some type of abuse on a social network in the past year, including malware infections, scams, and harassment.

(Source: PC World)

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PC World

Facebook brings families closer together. But as with any medium, Facebook is sometimes abused, occasionally to damaging effect. The Facebook Privacy Settings options let you control who has access to your personal information. The page includes a Block List that prevents contact with the people and e-mail addresses you specify without their knowledge.

The Safety for Parents section of the Safety Center describes what to do if your child views inappropriate content on a Facebook page, how to help a child report abusive conduct, and how to delete an account of a child under the age of 13. Much of the information in this section parrots the entries on the Safety for Teens page, but it does include links to in-depth articles by Common Sense Media on security for teens online.

(Source: CNet News)

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CNet News

Text messaging rises sharply among teens and is now their most frequent form of communication with friends. 72% of those ages 12-17 now are texters and the average young text user exchanges 1,500 texts per month.

Cell phones are mixed blessing to American families, bringing safety and connection along with disruption and irritation. Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008, to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. In fact, text messaging has become the most frequent way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face meetings, email, instant messaging and voice calling as a daily communications tool. However, cell phone calling is still the preferred mode that teens use to connect with their parents.

(Source: Pew Research Center)

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Pew Research Center

Police hunting a hacker who had attacked a US school's systems found themselves cornering a "very intelligent" 9 year old instead, it has emerged. When passwords for teachers at Spring Hill Elementary, Virginia, were changed without authorisation the school board initially thought a hacker had broken into the school district's Blackboard system. Police were called in to investigate in mid-March and were quickly able to trace the incident back to a PC at the home of a 9 year-old school student.

The youngster's mother was initially chief suspect in the hack but after speaking to her and and her son police came to the surprising conclusion that they were dealing with a 'kindergarden' hacker.

(Source: The Register)

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The Register

Is it cyberbullying if kids post mean comments and then say they were “just joking”? Is it wrong for a boy to pressure his girlfriend to send racy text messages? For teenagers, these questions don’t necessarily have clear answers. Associated Press MTV is trying to get teens themselves to support each other in standing up to behavior that crosses over into “digital abuse” — use of technologies such as texting and social networking to bully, harass and intimidate people.

The network introduced a new online tool called Over the Line this week that allows young people to post about their problem and have peers say whether the behavior is acceptable. The posts and comments are moderated, to make sure bullying doesn’t become a problem in the tool itself.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

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The Wall Street Journal