toolbar
Search this site!
 


April 18, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this second week of April:


~~~~~~~~~~Support the Newsletter!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Help support Net Family News and take a free, 7-day trial of eLibrary -
100s of newspapers, magazines, reference books, maps, transcripts...
a real reference library online, completely child-safe. Try a search now:

eLibrary Logo

Or make a tax-deductible donation to our free public service, via...
Network for Good's online fundraising system for nonprofit organizations
or NetFamilyNews.org's page at Amazon.com's Honor System.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


'Over the transom' resources for parents, educators, kids

We get lots of email from makers and publishers of resources for online kids and parents. We can't endorse products and software because we don't have the resources to test them properly, but we occasionally mention them in the newsletter in case you're looking for something like them (we hope someday there will be funding available for independent review of online-safety products and services). As for Web sites, we do check out every one - and only pass along the ones we feel are very worthy of parents' attention.

  1. ATFAL.org, in English, Arabic, and French, is about "joining hands to create an Arab world fit for our children." Having "grown up" from being an online agenda and info source for a conference held two years ago, its mission now is "to provide space for networking between Arab partners in the Global Movement for Children, including governments, regional organizations, civil society, media, private sector and children." It's also teeming with information and resources for people elsewhere in the world who want to learn about issues concerning children in the Middle East and North Africa. Resources include UNICEF news and info; country profiles; and a useful calendar of forthcoming events concerning children. For an important perspective, see the section "Children Speak Out". See also "Iraq 101" at YouthNOISE.com (YouthNOISE is affiliated with the Save the Children Foundation). The people behind ATFAL.org are the Cairo-based Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to "accelerate the Arab Region and Africa's development in information technology and software engineering."

  2. Bullying.org. Parent, educator, and Bullying.org creator Bill Belsey in Cochrane, Alberta, launched this online community in February 2000 to create a place where people can help each other deal with bullying. The award-winning site now has 500,000 visitors a month from all over the world and is recommended by the school board for Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, as well as a number of children's services and government and educational programs in Canada. It aims to show people that "they are NOT alone in being bullied and teased, that being bullied and teased is NOT their fault, and that they CAN do many positive things in order to deal with these issues successfully," Bill Belsey says. Bill has received a great deal of international recognition for his work, now expanded to include these remarkable projects (some on the Web, some not quite ready yet): ChildSoldiers.org (with an organization in Sierra Leone, "giving voice to children affected by war"), Netizenship.org ("developing citizenship among the 'NET-Generation'" - an important subject), and CommunityNetworkers.org (not yet on the Web, it will challenge schools to build Web sites with/for local community nonprofit groups).

  3. Gundams, anime, and manga. Many of you have or know children who are into Gundams and other Japanese-style animated action figures now very popular in the US (we know a 5-year-old who wants little else for his next birthday). "The Librarian's Guide to Anime and Manga" is an informative site on Japanese animation, comic books, and the forms they take - with culturally sensitive background and level-headed information on sex and violence in manga and animated video which put these into perspective. The site was created for librarians, who need to be informed about the latest trendy material their patrons seek, but it's just as useful to parents. It's also one of those valuable "fan sites" that illustrate the positive power of the Net - how it gets the in-depth knowledge of one low-key individual out to a global audience at very low cost. The site is by Gilles Poitras, California-based librarian, publisher of a newsletter on amine, and author of "The Anime Companion: What's Japanese in Japanese Animation," among other books. Our thanks to Marylaine Block's "Neat New Stuff" for pointing this site out.

  4. KidAuthors.com. Developed by parents and software engineers Shash and Nupur Chokshi, the site encourages children 5-13 to "explore their creativity and develop their writing and reading skills." Children submit stories via a form in the Web site that also allows them to customize how their stories are displayed by choosing font and background and text colors. The site is free to use, as well as protective of kids' privacy in several ways: The Chokshis screen all stories (for appropriate language, topic, and content) before they're posted, and the site collects no information from its young contributors except first name and age. So not even the site's publishers can contact writers. Cookies (Web technology that tracks site visitors' surfing habits) are not used either.

  5. iProtectYou allows parents to, among other things, filter, monitor, set online time limits, and control what software a child uses on the family PC (not available for Apple computers) for free. The "pro" version of the product, which costs $29.95, adds multi-user configuration (meaning parents can set different restriction levels for different family members), emails to parents when kids try to access blocked sites, and free updates of the database's some 20,000 "bad sites" the software blocks (the database grows by 100-200 sites a week, iProtectYou's makers tell us). Neither version makes the database of blocked sites available for viewing, but parents can add sites to both the black list and their "white list" of good Web sites for kids.

  6. PpGuard and ParentPresent.org. Parent and publisher of the child-friendly links list at ParentPresent.org Vern Marsden announced that he "joined forces with another concerned parent, Mike Berg [presumably creator of the filtering software]" to offer PpGuard. The software product, which can be downloaded at ParentPresent.org, appears to be a simple filter based on white list technology. It blocks everything not in a Web site database called the "TrustFile" - the list of URLs compiled by (and presented at) ParentPresent.org. Parents can use the default list, add their own family's favorites to it, or "start from scratch" and build their own TrustFile of sites they select. White list updates are free, Marsden tells us.

* * * *

Google: Family privacy fix

Last week we published subscriber Bob Williams's heads-up about how typing a phone number into the Google search box can not only turn up a family's address but also a map showing how to get to their house. This week Bob wrote back with a solution, as did another thoughtful subscriber, Joe in Arizona. Here are their comments:

Bob: "I did some checking and came up with a solution to the Google dilemma that you reported in last week's issue. Go to Google.com. Type in the 10-digit telephone number (including area code). If your telephone number information appears, an icon resembling a blue telephone will appear to the left of the entry on the results page. Click the remove button and enter the info that was listed for you (you may have to use your back button to review the info). Do this for all the telephone numbers that are listed to you (children's line, fax, etc.). Hope this is some help to your readers. Take care."

Joe: "I am new to the list and would like to take the opportunity to add to [your] article on 4/11/03, 'Google & kids' privacy.' The article points out a very interesting tip about online privacy, but I thought that I would share that it is possible to have that information removed. It is our responsibility as parents, and in my case a computer industry professional to be diligent in making sure there are avenues to maintain our individual privacy. We should be holding these outlets responsible for making sure they provide a way for individuals to 'scrub' their information from sites. It would be interesting to see how many subscribers to this list have their telephone number listed on Google and to ask the subscribers it they found removing their information difficult. [Here is the] Google Phone Book Removal link."

* *

Editor's Note: To Joe's point, it looks like Google has been fairly responsible about helping people "scrub" their information - unless they were to let us know up front (in a Privacy Policy linked to from their home page) that our phone numbers are available through the search engine and we can opt to remove them. We couldn't find a Privacy Policy on Google's home page, but there's a link to one at the bottom of "All About Google". However, the Policy doesn't mention the Google Phone Book or a page where phone numbers can be deleted. Between the URL Joe provides and Bob's step-by-step instructions, you shouldn't have any trouble deleting your personal data, but - Joe's right - it would be interesting to hear from anyone who does have a problem. We'll pass any comments along to Google if you'd like us to.

* *

Google in the news (a lot):

If any of you use filtered searching as a primary online-safety measure at home (along with a rule that only filtered search engines may be used), we'd like to hear your thinking on how well this works - positive or negative.

* * * *

Web News Briefs

  1. Helping Iraqi kids online

    The US Fund for UNICEF has created an Internet location for making donations to support Iraqi children. The page also links to frequently updated "Reports from the Field" on UNICEF activities in and around Iraq.

  2. Who uses the Net anyway?

    Actually, 42% of Americans do not (use the Net), and more than half of those "unconnected" individuals don't think they ever will - as ubiquitous as the Internet seems in the US. Of that 42%, according to just-released research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 20% are "Net Evaders" (some of whom let friends and relatives who are Net users do their online research and print out emails for them, some of whom just "proudly reject the Internet"); 17% are "Net Dropouts" (former Net users), up from 13% in April 2000; and 24% are "Truly Disconnected" (no direct or indirect experience with the Internet). Pew also sees a "leveling trend" in US Net use, rather than steady growth, with Internet penetration rates hovering between 57% and 61% since October 2001 - a possible explanation being that "the number of people dropping offline roughly equals the number of newcomers who come online each month."

    Here are other, very interesting, key findings about the social side of Net use:

    • People who are "socially content - trust others, have lots of people to draw on for support, and believe others are generally fair" - are more likely to be Net users than those who are less content socially.
    • There is "modest evidence" that people "with positive and outward orientation toward the world are more wired than those who are worried about American and more focused inward."
    • People who feel they have control over their lives are more likely to be connected than those who feel they do not.
    • People who read newspapers, watch TV, and use cell phones and other technologies are more likely to use the Internet than those who don't.

    The report got considerable coverage this week, with the Washington Post pointing out that half of the people not using the Net are over 50 years of age; the New York Times leading with the 74% of non-users who are close to Net enthusiasts, and Wired News focusing on the part about the "yawning gap between those who are comfortable using technology and those who fear or despise it."

  3. FTC sues porn spam operator

    It looks like those porn-spam-complaint emails to the Federal Trade Commission's uce@ftc.gov are paying off. The Commission is cracking down on an operator in Missouri who has made more than $1 million on sending sexually explicit email with deceptive subject lines, CNET reports. The FTC says 46,000 copies of these emails have been forwarded to its complaint email box (uce@ftc.gov). This suit is one of nearly 50 spam-related complaints the FTC has filed in US courts, CNET adds, and its second involving "spoofing." What that means is, the defendant's email, the FTC alleges, contains "false sender information": He made the emails look like they were sent by "innocent bystanders,... often resulting in their receiving hundreds of angry emails from those that had been spammed." So this insidious type of spam has at least two victims: recipients and the innocent third parties made to look like spammers. Here's the FTC's news release on the case and the Washington Post's roundup of reports on the battle against spam.

  4. Iraq museum: 'Barn-raising for civilization'

    In his blog (which claims 60,000 visitors a day), tech writer and speaker Doc Searls departed from his usual topic (linux and "the continuing end of Business as Usual") to propose an international virtual barn-raising for the devastatingly looted Iraq's National Museum. For reportage on the looting and its effects, see Salon.com's "The end of civilization" and archeologist Francis Deblauwe's own log of "articles and information about the impact of the war on the archaeological and historical remains in Iraq." Our thanks to "Neat New Stuff I Found This Week" for pointing Doc Searls's barn-raising idea out.

* * * *

Share with a Friend! If you find the newsletter useful, won't you tell your friends and colleagues? We would much appreciate your referral. To subscribe, they can just click here.

We are always happy to hear from potential sponsors and distribution partners as well. If you'd like to make a tax-deductible contribution or become a sponsor, please email us or send a check payable to:

Net Family News, Inc.
P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 


HOME | newsletter | subscribe | links | supporters | about | feedback


Copyright 2003 Net Family News, Inc. | Our Privacy Policy | Kindly supported by the UK Domain Name Registration.