It’s official! The Task Force to focus on identifying effective online safety tools and technologies, including age and identity verification has been created and was announced today. If you recall, this Task Force was an important element in the MySpace and Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group announced last month.
The Task Force is being led by John Palfrey who is the Executive Director at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. And among its members are organizations concerned with this issue including Non-Profits, Academics, Prominent Internet Businesses and Technology Companies, of which IDology is one of the appointed members. Other member names you will recognize are AOL, Symantec, Microsoft, Verizon, Google, Facebook, Xanga, Yahoo, WiredSafety.org and more.
Personally I’m excited about this opportunity. In the press release issued by the Berkman Center today, Palfrey says:
“We should work together – private firms, technologists, experts from the non-profit world and leaders in government – to solve online safety issues as a joint effort.”
I couldn’t agree more with Palfrey. The task force faces a very difficult issue where there are differing opinions. I believe all of its members need to keep an open mind and a team approach if we are going to make headway in solving this problem to create a safe online environment for our children.
I look forward to having healthy, productive discussions on the issues at hand.
4 Comments
April 4, 2008 at 7:00 pm
[...] next task force meeting will be later this month and I’m looking forward to seeing how the conversation [...]
July 1, 2008 at 2:25 pm
[...] the amount of personal data (name, address, email, etc.) required to access a website. Because of our involvement with the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, we felt this was an easy and applicable way to show [...]
July 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm
[...] last week to present to the Technical Advisory Board Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. The Technical Advisory Board members are going to evaluate technologies and the ways they address [...]
September 20, 2008 at 3:12 pm
For a fun way to teach internet and social networking safety, here’s a unit that includes an instructional video and a quiz. It’s aimed at middle school and up.
http://www.auntlee.com/safety/
The video is a selection of silly clips supposedly posted to the MySpace pages of the famous auntlee.com puppy and some of her friends. The clips demonstrate mistakes kids can make – the clips and the quiz serve as a jumpstart to further discussions.
Kids can take the interactive Flash version online, or you can download a .pdf document and print it as a handout. The 10 question quiz covers the topics of cyber-bullying, privacy, safety, dangers of spyware and malware, etc.
The quiz doesn’t really focus on stranger-danger type concerns but rather gently and humorously reminds the reader that it’s possible to hurt people’s feelings, to mislead people who don’t realize you’re joking, to remember that online postings can be seen by anybody and that postings are often impossible to remove once posted.