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Dear Subscribers:

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


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All about chat

Given that…

  1. Even for the most Web-literate parent or teacher, chat can be the Great Unknown in cyberspace.
  2. For many teenagers, on the other hand, chat is the No. 1 reason to go online.
  3. Chat is the part of cyberspace where kids are more likely to run into trouble if they haven't been given a few simple pointers.
  4. Many of you asked for info on chat in your responses to our Subscriber Survey.

It's time for a focus on online chat (i.e., real-time communicating by typing text into a Web page/"chatroom"). For perspective, we called on Childnet International, a London-based nonprofit organization that educates kids and parents worldwide about the Internet.

Until early this year Childnet was probably best known for its annual international children's Web design awards. But in February, when they received an email from a father asking for help for his family, the organization's staff quickly became some of Britain's foremost experts on online chat and chat safety. The parents were dealing with the impact of a case involving their 13-year-old daughter, who had been sexually assaulted by a pedophile she'd met in a chatroom. The pedophile, who had lured her into meeting him offline, pleaded guilty and this fall was convicted (details here). Childnet helped the family in two ways: by handling for the family the considerable media attention the case got and helping them channel their own tragedy into a public education campaign - by creating ChatDanger.com. If this is a new subject to you (and you're not alone), a great place to start is ChatDanger.com's "Parent's Guide." Click on "What is Chat?" in the Guide's pull-down menu (we can't give you the exact Web address because of the way the site's designed).

We asked Stephen Carrick-Davies, the Childnet person responsible for ChatDanger.com, what it is about chat that attracts kids. "I think the key thing is that children love to assume a false identity - it's the idea of role-playing…. When encouraged to take on a wonderful persona, they clearly enjoy that." Chat, he added, is a kind of electronic playground where anybody can be anybody, whether they're children or adults.

"By and large, playgrounds in the offline world have some kind of care and supervision - they're not generally inhabited by strangers." E-playgrounds, on the other hand, aren't places where kids or parents have the benefit of all the sensory clues about people and situations (sight, sound, etc.) that they'd have on a physical playground. That requires some basic wisdom on the part of chatters of any age, and - in the case of children - alertness on the part of parents. It helps if the chatroom is monitored by responsible adults (examples below), but there's no substitute for parental awareness.

We asked Stephen for specifics on what people of any age, especially kids, need to be alert to in chat. Here are the "five indications of inappropriate contact" he gave us:

As for parents, trouble signs can include a child being unusually secretive about online activity or minimizing what's on his/her computer screen whenever you come into the room. Solutions include keeping computers in high-traffic places in the house, taking as much interest in the people a child is meeting online as at school and in other social settings, and - best of all - generally being involved in a child's online experience.

Though in many cases it's easy to be intimidated by kids' fluency with chat, IM, and other Net technologies, don't be. Just ask your child in a very positive way to show you how to use chat, Stephen suggested. It can be a wonderful opportunity for parent-child communication of a mutually respectful sort.

Now the only thing missing in this discussion is Web sites offering safe chat for kids (i.e., monitored by responsible adults) and the less reliable software option. For child-safe chat and other resources, Childnet publishes another great Web site that's uniquely international: the multilingual LaunchSite.org, "providing interesting ways children can link together around the world using technology."

In the Meeting section every site with safe chat and discussion boards includes a list of the countries involved, as well as details on the site's online safety practices.

Here are some other great Web resources this week's international research has pointed to:

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A president-elect & the Internet

With the US presidential election finally decided and as a new administration forms, some Netizens are curious about potential Bush administration Internet policy. The US Internet Industry Association was curious about that long ago, researched it, and has just released a clearly written white paper, "Internet Policy in a Bush Administration." It details Bush's "Technology Plan," formulated by "a 440-member Information Technology Council. Interestingly, the USIIA points out, "conspicuously missing from the list are any companies engaged in the management of the Internet" - no Internet service providers or telecommunications, satellite, or cable companies - which means that the Internet won't be top-priority (the focus will be more on issues like biotech, technology export rules, etc.). "This does not mean that there will be no Internet issues addressed in 2001," the USIIA adds, "only that these issues will be driven by the Congress and the regulatory agencies rather than the administration." The paper goes on to detail the state of Texas's record with tech issues, the Bush Technology Plan, and Internet issues we've all been following for some time (e.g., online privacy and mandatory school filtering).

Here's CNET on the USIIA's report. Educators, you might be interested in the section on Bush plans for the e-rate.

* * * *

Family Tech: Holiday surfing

One fun way to fuel holiday spirits is for parents and kids to surf Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or interfaith Web sites together - offering recipes, greetings, or holiday culture and history. In his Family Tech column for the San Jose Mercury News this week - "Sites offer holiday spirit whatever your faith", SafeKids.com's Larry Magid has a fund of links to such sites. For those of you who observe or are interested in Ramadan (the month-long observance for this year started November 27 in North America), a very complete resource is the Ramadan page at Islam.com.

* * * *

A subscriber writes: Firewalls

Referring to Larry Magid's Family Tech column on "Computer Security & kids", subscriber Will in Iowa emailed us about his own software prefs (it's always good to hear what fellow parents find useful):

"I enjoyed reading Larry's article on protecting your computers from viruses and hacking attempts. I would like to add on to his mention of firewalls, and how he also likes to use the free ZoneAlarm software for protection from hackers. Not only do I use ZoneAlarm to protect my computers (I'm on a DSL line), but I also have BlackICE (another firewall that does cost $39.95) running alongside it. The good thing about BlackICE is that if someone is running a scan on the thousands of ports on my computer (an explanation of that will have to be given at a later date) looking for an open way in, BlackICE will normally let me know the IP address of the computer doing the scanning. I can then take the IP address and, using the free program Network Tracer, I can narrow down who to send a complaint email to. I'll send the date/time this port scan happened, the IP address, and what exactly happened (along with the exact listings from BlackICE). I've only had to do this twice. Even though I was ignored the first time, the second complaint I sent off to a company resulted in an employee of that company losing his Internet privileges and almost losing his job (he was doing this for fun from his work computer). Thanks for the interesting articles."

* * * *

Web News Briefs

  1. Parent sued in Internet case

    If your child defames or otherwise harms another child using the Internet, should you be sued for negligence? In an unprecedented case in Illinois, a judge seems to think so. According to the New York Times, the judge ruled that the father of a high school student accused of placing the picture of a female classmate's face in a pornographic photo on a public Web page can be sued for "negligent supervision of a child and negligent entrustment to a child of a dangerous article [a computer]." In court, the father had asked that those and several other claims against him be dismissed and the judge let the negligence claims stand. A separate case was brought against the son for, among other things, defamation. So both cases will go to trial.

    One issue that will be argued is whether or not a computer is a "dangerous article." Another is whether the father "had sufficient notice" that his computer could be used by his son to harm a classmate. One Times source said this won't be the last suit to be brought against parents for the online activities of children. Whether or not it is, the case is certainly a wakeup call for parents to stay in touch with kids' activities, online as much as off, as well as for more education of two sorts: Internet ed for parents and ethics ed for kids.

  2. Great time to buy a PC

    Not since the free-PC craze of summer 1999 have consumers seen deals on computers like this season's, CNET reports. In North America, Circuit City and Best Buy are at the forefront in pushing rebates and packages, CNET says, with CompUSA and Radio Shack close behind. CNET provides an example from last weekend: Circuit City's promotion of a Compaq Presario with 750-MHz AMD Athlon processor and 15-inch monitor for $249, after $850 in rebates from CompuServe, Compaq, and the store itself. If anyone's actually looking for high-end models, FamilyPC offers "The PC Dream Team," rating the "top seven" desktop systems (with all components) at a glance.

  3. How online health is changing

    Some 52 million Americans seek out health information online at least once a month, but they're not paying for that information. Until recently venture capital and advertising were, but those forms of funding are going away. Interest in using the Internet for healthcare information, however, is decidedly not going away. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, with the Internet, "we no longer had to rely on a sentence or two from a doctor rushing to the next appointment. We had our own reservoir of knowledge, our own online advocate." To keep that "reservoir of knowledge full," hospitals, insurers, and drug companies, maybe even the government, will probably have to support online health information - "with the same possible conflicts of interest, the same mixed record in communicating to consumers, the L.A. Times suggests. Meanwhile, Hi-Ethics, Inc., a coalition of 18 healthcare Web sites, has launched a seal-of-approval program that "marks a major step ward self-regulation in the sensitive area of providing and collecting online health-care information," reports Wired News.

  4. Net numbers reality check

    Internationally, Internet use is not exactly going through the roof. According to ComputerUser.com, "the reality is that only 5% of the world's adult population is an active Internet user." It cites eMarketer research showing that there are now 229.8 million people aged 14 and over actively using the Net worldwide and that the number of active users will rise to 640.2 million by 2004. "Even then, however, only 14 percent of the world's adults will be actively using the Internet," eMarketer reported.

  5. No more free lunch?

    It's no big surprise: The days of free Internet service may be over. USAToday points to some examples: AltaVista dropping free service; Spinway's demise; and the end of WorldSpy, FreeInternet.com, and Freewwweb. Some analysts say these just suggest a temporary downturn, that the concept is no more dead than free cell phones. Holdouts so far are NetZero and Juno Online Services, with 2.3 million and 2.5 million customers respectively.

  6. Really big picture

    An astrophysicist and early Internet visionary in California thinks of the Net as a vast global supercomputer with billions of "microprocessors." The processors are all those PCs in everybody's home and/or office. That's according to a long look by the New York Times at Dr. Larry Smarr's vision for the future of Earth with the Internet. Dr. Smarr, whom the Times calls "one of the world's most respected computer technologists," is just opening a new state-funded research institute in the San Diego area. And, perhaps because a new year is rapidly approaching, a Times essay looks back at the history of the Web to date: "In a remarkably short period the World Wide Web has touched or has promised to alter - some would say threaten - virtually every aspect of modern life." Times tech writer John Markoff tackles how that came to be and what might be coming next. His essay is part of a turn-o'-the-year tech special, "Coming to Grips with the World Wide Web". And later this week the Times put this past year's dot-com boom and bust into historical context. "It is hardly unprecedented," economics writer Hal Varian writes, citing railroads in the 1880s, the auto industry between 1904 and '08, and other periods. To this history lesson, USAToday adds that, of course, "not all dot-coms bomb," then gives examples.

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

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

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