Facebook has launched a revamped internal site designed to help people stay safe and report threats while on the popular online hangout, reports the Associated Press. Facebook’s “Safety Center,” which features new tools for parents, educators, teens, and law-enforcement officials, is the first major endeavor from the social networking site and its four-month-old global safety advisory board. The company unveiled its Safety Center a day after meeting with child advocacy officials in the U.K., who had been pushing the company to install a so-called “panic button” on the site for some time, following the kidnapping and murder there of a teenager by a man she encountered on Facebook. In a statement on April 13, Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center called Facebook’s move “long overdue” and “nothing more than we would expect from any responsible social network provider.” But it added that “critical issues remain unresolved” because Facebook did not actually install a panic button. Facebook’s board is composed of internet safety groups Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International, and the Family Online Safety Institute. Some new features of the safety center include more content on staying safe, such as dealing with bullying online, as well as an interactive portal and a simpler design…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
9 charged with bullying Mass. teen who killed self
Nine teens have been charged in the “unrelenting” bullying of a teenage girl from Ireland who killed herself after being raped and enduring months of torment by classmates in person and online, a prosecutor said March 29.
Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley was stalked and harassed nearly constantly from September until she killed herself Jan. 14. The freshman had recently moved to western Massachusetts from Ireland.
“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school. The bullying for her was intolerable,” Scheibel said.…Read More
Student loan company: Data on 3.3M people stolen
A company that guarantees federal student loans said March 26 that personal data on about 3.3 million people nationwide have been stolen from its headquarters in Minnesota, reports the Associated Press. Educational Credit Management Corp. (ECMC) said the data included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth of borrowers, but no financial or bank account information. The data were on “portable media” that were stolen sometime last weekend, ECMC said in a statement. Company spokesman Paul Kelash wouldn’t specify what was taken but said there were no indications of any misuse of the data. The St. Paul-based nonprofit said it discovered the theft March 21 and immediately contacted law-enforcement officials, making the theft public when it received permission from authorities. ECMC said it has arranged with credit protection agency Experian to provide affected borrowers with free credit monitoring and protection services. Borrowers will be receiving letters from ECMC soon on how to sign up, gain access to fraud resolution representatives, and receive identity theft insurance coverage. ECMC is a contractor for the U.S. Department of Education to provide collection and document management services. It guarantees student loans through the Federal Family Education Loan program and provides support services for student loans that are in default or bankruptcy…
…Read MoreWeb slurs target teen suicide victim
A community reeling from the suicide of a popular high school senior turned its sorrow to outrage March 26 over a practice known as “trolling,” in which derogatory, hurtful comments are posted online against a person.
In this instance, a tribute site created for Alexis Pilkington, 17, of West Islip High School in New York was the target of insulting messages after her death.
“I think it’s horrible. It’s vicious. It’s cruel. It upsets me as a parent,” Lorraine Kolar said as she left a memorial service for Pilkington.…Read More
How should Facebook and MySpace handle cyber bullying?
What’s fair to expect of Facebook, or any social networking site, when kids use the site as a weapon against each other? That’s the question explored by this story in Slate magazine, which begins by describing the experience of a 13-year-old boy who was questioned by school administrators about insulting comments he’d made about his classmates on his Facebook page. Trouble was, he didn’t have a Facebook page; someone else had created the page using his name. Facebook took down the fake page after the mother sent eMails to the site’s inbox for reporting abusive content, but Facebook “does not have a contact number where you can talk to anyone,” she complained. “They did not answer any of the eMailed questions, they only took down the page.” She is most upset that Facebook wouldn’t tell her who the impersonator was. “In my mind I feel unresolved, because we don’t know who did this. It’s like the perfect crime. You can wreck someone’s life or future, certainly impact their relationships, with impunity.” Some parents are frustrated at a federal law that prevents the sites from identifying their users, unless you have a subpoena in hand. Given that law, the main remedy Facebook and other social network sites can offer is taking down an offending post or page and punishing the person who put it up, either with a warning or by deleting their whole profile. How and when social networking sites go about such policing of their users, however, is up to them…
…Read MoreA simple fix for internet censorship in schools
Schools and libraries are hurting students by setting up heavy-handed web filtering policies that block access to potentially educational sites, writes Computerworld blogger Mitch Wagner. Instead, educators should trust teachers and librarians to oversee schools’ internet access. So says Craig Cunningham, a professor at National-Louis University, with whom Wagner talked about internet filtering in schools. Web filtering software should be configured so that, when a student stumbles across a site that is blocked, the teacher or librarian can make a judgment whether the content is appropriate for study, and if it is, the teacher or librarian can let the site through, Cunningham said. “If a student tries to show something that’s part of a presentation and it’s blocked, the teacher types a password and everyone sees it,” he said. “Why should teachers not be in charge of what to teach?” Ultimately, the purpose of schools should be to teach students to live in a democratic society, and that means teaching critical thinking and showing students controversial web sites, Cunningham said. That includes sites that web filters might classify as hate speech, or sites discussing same-sex marriage—both for and against. Students need to access this information under the guidance of teachers and librarians, in the process of learning how to think about these issues…
…Read MorePrivacy battle looms for Facebook, Google
European regulators are investigating whether the practice of posting photos, videos, and other information about people on sites such as Facebook without their consent is a breach of privacy laws, reports the Associated Press. The Swiss and German probes go to the heart of a debate that has gained momentum in Europe amid high-profile privacy cases: To what extent are social networking platforms responsible for the content their members upload? The actions set the stage for a fresh battle between American web giants and European authorities a month after an Italian court held three Google executives criminally responsible for a user-posted video (http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/02/24/google-executives-convicted-over-online-bullying-video/). Any changes resulting from the investigation could dramatically alter the way Facebook, Google’s YouTube, and others operate—shifting the responsibility for ensuring personal privacy from users to the company…
…Read MoreSchools beef up security for web applications
K-12 schools and colleges are adding extra layers of security to web applications that are being used for everything from eMail service to group assignments. The extra security is particularly desired as administrators use the applications to store sensitive information that could compromise student and faculty privacy.
Google Apps has risen to prominence in education’s move toward web-based tools that store massive amounts of data and allow for collaboration. Google announced in February that 7 million students—about half of all college students in the U.S.—now use the company’s applications, such as Google Sites, Google Docs, and Gmail.
With invaluable information stored online and vulnerable to any hacker who can figure out a single password, administrators are looking for ways to ensure that student and educator data are kept safe with more complex security methods.…Read More
Virtual PC hole could lead to attacks, security firm says
An unpatched weakness in Microsoft’s Virtual PC could leave organizations using the virtualization software vulnerable to attack, CNET reports. An exploit writer at Core Security Technologies discovered the vulnerability in Virtual PC hypervisor and reported it to Microsoft in August 2009, Core Security said in an advisory. Microsoft said it plans to solve the problem in future updates to the vulnerable products: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Windows Virtual PC, and Virtual Server 2005. Microsoft Hyper-V technology is not affected by the problem, Core Security said. Virtual PC hypervisor is part of the Windows Virtual PC package, which allows customers to run multiple Windows environments on a single computer. The hypervisor is a key component of Windows 7 XP Mode, a feature designed to ease the migration to Windows 7 for customers who need to run Windows XP on the native operating system. Core Security recommends that affected users run all mission-critical Windows applications on the native hardware or use virtualization technologies that aren’t affected by the bug…
…Read MoreHow privacy vanishes online
Using bits of data from social-networking web sites, researchers have gleaned people’s names, ages, and even Social Security numbers, reports the New York Times—raising concerns that people are doling out too much personal information on the internet. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae, such as birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched. Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number. “Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.” So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers. But the FTC is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening the third of three workshops on the issue on March 17…
…Read MoreInternet safety video could win young filmmakers $10,000
Computer security company Trend Micro has an offer for any teen or adult who cares about internet safety and security and wants to become an award-winning filmmaker, CNET blogger Larry Magid reports. The company has launched a contest called “What’s Your Story?” where the person who submits the best short video (no more than 2 minutes long) can win $10,000. There are also four $500 prizes. The deadline is April 30, and only residents of the U.S. and Canada who are 13 or older are eligible to win. Entries must be about one of these four topics: keeping a good reputation online, staying clear of unwanted contact, accessing legal content that is age-appropriate, or keeping the cyber-criminals out…
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