Anne

As if family computer use wasn't enough of a minefield already, two new risks have recently emerged - ones that kids can easily encounter. This week we'll look at the first one: Web sites! (Next week: multiplayer games.) These are Web sites that put malicious code or spyware on the PCs of average surfers who simply click to them. At least one professional techie was telling his family late last … [Read more...] about New family PC risk: Web sites!

To teens who snap and email on-the-fly photos of themselves and friends, they're just fun. But concerns about everything from children's privacy to industrial espionage are now being raised wherever "phone snappers" flock, and they're certainly not just kids. "Worldwide, more camera phones were sold last year than digital cameras - a first," the BBC reports, adding that "sales went up almost … [Read more...] about ‘Camera phone backlash’ already

For anyone interested in more than the Supreme Court justices' thinking on protecting kids from online porn (and the Child Online Protection Act they just sent back again to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia for deliberation, this time on how filtering tech has improved since the Philadelphia court blocked the new law's enforcment in early '99), the Washington Post this week held … [Read more...] about COPA counterpoint

A 9-year-old girl receiving porn on her cell phone, a 12-year-old being text-stalked (harassed via text messages) on his. Of course, cyberbullying also happens in chat, IM, and email. What has become fairly common in the UK - especially via cell phones - is now hitting radar screens in Australia. "A 2002 UK study found that one in four children has been bullied by computer or cell phone," … [Read more...] about Cyberbullying on the rise in Oz

Some 25% of undergraduates had plagiarized using the Internet, according to an unnamed survey cited by the BBC. And that's a conservative figure, one university student is quoted as saying. So Northumbria University's Plagiarism Advisory Service is testing a plagiarism detection system that scans students' work against 4.5 billion Web pages. The candid student makes a good point about the need to … [Read more...] about Brits tackle Net plagiarism