NetFamilyNews.orgI am delighted to announce the release of our new parents’ guides to two of the most popular social apps among teens, Instagram and Snapchat. You can read or download and print the free guides at ConnectSafely.org. Just 6 pages – including the “Top 5 Questions” parents have about each app right up front – [...]
It’d be an exaggeration to say that tech companies are falling over themselves to protect our privacy, but you might say that it’s becoming a “social norm” for US businesses. At least, that’s what the New York Times reports, and that must be at least a sign that it’s true because it’s far from normative [...]
We care about our online privacy, but we also like convenience a whole lot. And not only convenience, but often a good deal or discount beats out any worry about data security. What do deals and convenience have to do with privacy? A whole lot. An article by Somini Sengupta at the New York Times [...]
It’s interesting that Daily Beast writer Caitlin Dixon precedes her question “When did we let our guard down?” with the story of sleeping on strangers’ couch in Italy after finding them in a couch-surfing site. Yes, she let her guard down (but the people were great hosts). What’s interesting, though, is that she compared couch-surfing [...]
One thing we all need to teach our kids now is that the privacy spectrum we really need to be aware of isn’t so much private-to-public as private-to-convenient – or, from kids’ perspective, private-to-social (or just to-spontaneous-&-fun). The more convenience we want (e.g., not bothering with password-protecting our phones or giving services all kinds of [...]
The overall message from the Federal Trade Commission to mobile app developers has moved from guidance to what I’d call guidance+. The guidance appears to be growing teeth. The commission, which enforces COPPA (the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), reached a settlement with Path, a social network site and mobile app that agreed to pay [...]
Snapchat, the little app that came out of nowhere – well, Stanford University, but launched with no media fanfare by a couple of students whose service now supports 50 million snaps a day – has been joined by a similar “ephemeral messaging” app by Facebook: Poke. But now that perishable photo-sharing (the photos disappear in [...]
It’s no wonder parents and schools aren’t sure where their policies start and stop when it comes to online interaction among young people who could be in any home, any school, any community or even country. Governments – whether local, state, or national – aren’t sure either. More than ever, “jurisdiction” and “regulation,” whether a [...]
The US Federal Trade Commission’s revisions to the COPPA Rule announced today (12/19/12), are aimed at syncing up a rule mandated by a 1998 law with today’s technology and with “the way children use the Internet, mobile devices and social networking,” the FTC says in its press release. For example, the personal information that services [...]
Facebook’s announcement about its latest privacy tweaks this week was a bit of a non-story. The site has been steadily improving users’ experience with privacy controls, making settings less complex and more on-the-spot, or as-you-post over several iterations. This week’s was just another such iteration. For example, a helpful little “privacy shortcut” that will shortly [...]
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