Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
AT&T and iKeepSafe Promote New Privacy Initiatives in Florida
AT&T and iKeepSafe Promote New Privacy Initiatives in Florida
In recognition of Data Privacy Day, AT&T Services introduced The Privacy and Online Reputation Project in an effort to increase consumer awareness of privacy issues on the Internet. Working with partner iKeepSafe and the Florida School Guidance Counselor Association, this new pilot program will provide school counselors with a handbook of guidelines on what students are posting on the Internet and provide guidelines on existing cyber-ethics tools for social networking. The handbook will inform students how to protect themselves and will include a Parent’s Primer with information about how to connect with industry for assistance when needed.
“Students, parents, and educators need to understand the importance of privacy and reputation in today’s rapidly changing digital world. Guidance counselors especially need to understand that the rules applied to the offline world also apply to the online world when it comes to future academic and employment opportunities,” said Marsali Hancock, president of iKeepSafe who spoke at the Data Privacy Day event. “AT&T has played an integral role in helping to provide school counselors and parents with insightful information and necessary tools to keep them up to speed on what kids are doing online. We are thrilled to work with AT&T on this initiative.”
Data Privacy Day was created in 2008 to promote privacy awareness and education among teens in the United States and now provides the opportunity to further international collaboration and cooperation on privacy issues. “Data Privacy Day is an especially important time to take a look at the issues we are facing with online privacy, particularly when it comes to the students in our schools who are on social networks,” said Dorothy Attwood, chief privacy officer of AT&T Services. “We look forward to working with school counselors and iKeepSafe to give these important educators the materials they need to protect students’ identities online.”
To read more about AT&T’s The Privacy and Online Reputation Project and get information on their library of Internet safety and security tips, click HERE.
NetFamilyNews: Teens best adults on privacy
At Facebook, 60% of teens use privacy controls compared to 25-30% of adults, a sitepoint blog cites Facebook numbers as showing. Computer Associates offers some confirmation with a recent study finding that "79% of teens aged 13-17 who are members of a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook protect their profiles from the general Internet in some way (i.e., only allow friends or friends of friends to view their information), according to the blog. The study also found something not so surprising: that teens "are very likely" to post photos of themselves online. That may be why they're more careful about privacy. Good news!
http://www.netfamilynews.org/2009/02/teens-best-adults-on-privacy.html
Thursday, February 12, 2009
CyberPatrol Releases Free Web-Surfing Safety Toolkit
CyberPatrol Releases Free Web-Surfing Safety Toolkit
by Dian Schaffhauser
CyberPatrol, a company that sells parental controls and Web filtering technologies, announced a free online Web-surfing safety assessment toolkit. The toolkit is intended to help parents and educators review online surfing habits and determine what safety measures should be implemented.
It includes the company's Threat Detector tool, released in beta at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and now available in full release. Threat Detector specifically helps users determine the number and kind of inappropriate and unsafe sites found on a PC that CyberPatrol's Parental Controls software would block. Also available in the Toolkit is Web site lookup. This lets the user to enter a URL to determine how CyberPatrol categorizes the Web site.