I sometimes wonder if web safety should be something that is brought up in P.S.H.E/Citizenship classes, because I think staying safe on the web is important.
I personally have broken most of the web safety rules, so I'm probably being hypocritical, but there are some simple things you can do to ensure you're safe on the web.
Facebook do have their own safety centre, but I wonder how many people have even seen it before?
There's uproar over a few cases, yet what about all the positives, there's plenty of people that use Facebook to campaign for good causes or for seeking help which can help reach thousands maybe millions of people.
There's uproar over a few cases, yet what about all the positives, there's plenty of people that use Facebook to campaign for good causes or for seeking help which can help reach thousands maybe millions of people.
Those stories don't sell papers though.It's like the video game/violence link.If that was true then surely people would be copying good things in games too.It's weird that there always something else to blame rather than the person doing it.It's time people took responsibility for their actions.My kids have been taught in school for years about the dangers of the internet.If people are going to ignore all the safety precautions then there really is nothing more anyone can do to help them.
The cases mentioned are sad and shocking, what's worse is that my cynicsm of print media leads me to believe attacking FB has more to do with harming a rival advertiser than about the actual events.
Those stories don't sell papers though.It's like the video game/violence link.If that was true then surely people would be copying good things in games too.It's weird that there always something else to blame rather than the person doing it.It's time people took responsibility for their actions.My kids have been taught in school for years about the dangers of the internet.If people are going to ignore all the safety precautions then there really is nothing more anyone can do to help them.
That seems to be quite common people not taking repsonsibilty for own actions.
Many adults seem to forget as well that youngsters (not all) can tend to rebel, tell them one thing and they'll do the opposite, after all youngsters know best!!
I sometimes wonder if web safety should be something that is brought up in P.S.H.E/Citizenship classes, because I think staying safe on the web is important.
I personally have broken most of the web safety rules, so I'm probably being hypocritical, but there are some simple things you can do to ensure you're safe on the web.
Facebook do have their own safety centre, but I wonder how many people have even seen it before?
I don't know exactly what these things are but I can guess. How did we get to a pont we need these things? :rolleyes:
I've hit the point where if I read adults get hurt, raped or murdered after meeting someone they met online I think good! You're a moron and it serves you right.
These people are on the same level as people that smoke and then complain they get cancer, or go skiing and fall down and break their leg. You knew the risks, you chose to ignore them. It went wrong. Too bad!
I don't know exactly what these things are but I can guess. How did we get to a pont we need these things? :rolleyes:
I volunteer for an anti-bullying charity working with kids/teens, and they don't really think about web safety at all, it just doesn't occur to them, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to point out to kids that they shouldn't be giving out personal information, and they should be careful about what photos they put on-line and so on..
I've hit the point where if I read adults get hurt, raped or murdered after meeting someone they met online I think good! You're a moron and it serves you right.
I've met people I only initially knew on-line, does that make me a moron?
These people are on the same level as people that smoke and then complain they get cancer, or go skiing and fall down and break their leg. You knew the risks, you chose to ignore them. It went wrong. Too bad!
I don't think a lot of people realise the risks, maybe they're naive, maybe they're just unaware, who knows, but I know that a lot of kids don't really think much about what they say or do on-line.
Rory Cellan-Jones | 09:11 UK time, Wednesday, 10 March 2010 Blog on BBC Website
On the one hand, you have what many regard as Britain's most influential daily newspaper; on the other, a social network with more than 400 million members and global reach. The Daily Mail and Facebook are at war, with new media accused of failing to protect children - and old media in the dock for shoddy journalism.
The Mail has never been a great fan - "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer" was one headline last year - but it was an article on Wednesday that brought relations to a new low. The network has been having a terrible week in PR terms, following a high-profile murder case with a Facebook connection and its refusal to put the Child Exploitation and Online Protection panic button on its site.
The Mail's coverage of this story featured a front-page report, an editorial and a big spread which included an article by a former child-protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas. The opening paragraph read:
"Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me."
He went on to describe how a series of men approached him and made sexual suggestions, painting a chilling picture of the dangers for teenagers using Facebook.
It has to be said the story never sounded very convincing - unlike some other networks or instant messaging services, Facebook is actually place where it's rather difficult to conduct random chats. If you were to set up a profile and just wait for "friends" to arrive, you would be likely to have to wait for days, not minutes. What's more, the company says that its privacy settings mean that a 14-year-old girl could not receive a message from someone unless they were a friend or at least shared a school network.
Facebook says when it contacted Mark Williams-Thomas, he had a rather different story. He had been contacted by the Mail which had provided him with the material about the fake profile, but he had corrected it to make it clear that it involved not Facebook but another social network. By late yesterday, the story on the Mail's website had been amended; although it still featured a Facebook picture, it included this apology:
"In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight."
I contacted Mr Williams-Thomas to check a few facts, and he confirmed that the story had indeed been "ghosted" by a Mail reporter. He says he got back to the paper with a number of changes before publication, but although they acknowledged receipt of his alterations, they were not acted on.
This morning the newspaper carried a apology on page 4, quite a rare occurrence for the Daily Mail. So does the matter end there? I've seen a very strongly-worded letter from Facebook's lawyers saying their clients are considering what further action to take in relation to the "false and defamatory statements in the article".
Somehow, though, I get the feeling that after a week of battling Ceop, ministers, and the media over its child protection policy, Facebook may decide that it does not really want to go to war with the Daily Mail.
I volunteer for an anti-bullying charity working with kids/teens, and they don't really think about web safety at all, it just doesn't occur to them, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to point out to kids that they shouldn't be giving out personal information, and they should be careful about what photos they put on-line and so on..
I wasn't specifically talking about the internet. I'm 45 aand managed to get through life without citizenship classes. Do we really need specific classes created in schools to teach people to respect others etc?
If we have got to the point where we need special classes to be taught respect, politeness, manners etc. then the quicker they blow the planet up the better or even better the human race is wiped out the better.
I've met people I only initially knew on-line, does that make me a moron?
I don't think a lot of people realise the risks, maybe they're naive, maybe they're just unaware, who knows, but I know that a lot of kids don't really think much about what they say or do on-line.
Right lets start with the first bit. No you're not a moron because you've met people you've initially only knew online.
Before I go on I'll point out that again you said about kids and I said adults not kids.
The morons are the people that give out details about themselves on trust to someone they really don't know even if they have been communicating online for months and then it goes wrong. They start getting nuisance calls for example. These people are as stupid as the people that give out their bank details to the "Chuggers" in the street.
Why would anyone with half a brain do that?
The morons are the ones that meet up with a person, it goes wrong then they say "I didn't realise the dangers, or that he/she was like that.
There is a difference between knowing something and choosing to ignore it and then saying I made an error of judgement and accept what I did was wrong or foolish and a person saying I didn't know that would/could happen.
I gave the example of the smokers that get cancer and thn complain and want pity. It's on the box, there's millions spent on advertising. Everyone else knew but you didn't. You're a moron!
You mentioned kids online. What about their parents? Up pops an adult saying my son/daughter was talking to someone who was pretending to be someone else etc.
When you watch the shows or read the article and the familiar pattern emerges. The comuter was in the bedroom, they wasn't keeping an eye on what he/she was doing. They had a cam set up on it (which is a bad idea for kids) and so fourth. Like the quit smokings. There has been lots of media exposure of the risks, the government spend millions advertising saying about computers in public rooms not bedrooms, parental controls etc. But nope these moronic adults don't see any of it and when something goes wrong it's huh? I didn't know.
A friend of mine has a terror of a 13 year old daughter. She was being bad and my friend said there's no pound grounding her because she'll just go onto the computer in her room and go online or just play games on it she dont care about being grounded. I said that's easily fixed put a password on her computer. She won't be able to use it unless you put the password in for her. If she doesn't know how I'll tell her or do it for her.
My friend replies with, but then she will just use mine. I couldn't even be bothered saying you can put a password on both. She's a moron!
Whether it's to do with stuff online or general day-to-day stuff I'm at the point where if people are the victim of something that obviously has/had an element of risk to their health or wellbeing that they didn't take proper precautions to avoid or they are they are upset, unhappy or in pain as a result of something bad happening through their own stupidity I can't be bothered with them and just think... good!
Whereas one must (on DS anyway) appear "net savvy" and a "wo/man of the world" [teasing], I still think it fair to say that the default behaviour of Facebook DOES encourage significant private information sharing, even if the victims are deemed "stupid" as a result. And perhaps to a degree greater than "chance meetings in a nightclubs" etc. The information is also there, for DETAILED and lengthy perusal, by sober (LOL) dodgy types. When I decided FB was, for me personally, a total bore, it took me AGES to remove all trace of my personal details. Even then, the (basic) ruddy thing is still but a button click from reinstatement. :rolleyes:
I sense that (totalitarian?) governments must envy the facility with which these social networking sites produce users who will defend their product to the death. <G> I was never "afraid" of Facebook, it just seemed a tedious and never ending task to protect oneself from the possibility of loopholes, viruses, sundry nutters etc. etc.
Firstly the girl that was abducted's main mistake was to get in to a car with a much older man, who was a complete stranger. That's how Fred West uses to get his victims. It could have happened in the 1970's long before Facebook.
The woman who was murdered by her jealous ex lover, could have dropped him as a friend and set her profile to private, or started another one with him not included.
Finally the with the last one, the only difference is instead of the rumour spreading through a close nit community, it spreading on-line. I gather their are text messages too, which have nothing to do width face book.
Of course these are all terrible cases and it is no way the victims fault for making a mistake, but just to blame Facebook is not really fair.
I agree completely.
Its horrible when these things happen, but I still find that even the most tech savvy of my contacts will do things that make no sense and know bugger all about working with the FB privacy settings.
I know of parents that have set up pages for their underaged kids on FB and MySpace, convinced that they can supervise their 7 year-old's usage even though law enforcement agencies strongly advise against minors being on social networks! :eek: The terms of service states that you are supposed to be over the age of 13.... One mom likes FB games and got her 7 and 4 year olds interested in them - and then set up pages for both boys so she could use their accounts along with her own...
FB isn't responsible for the mistakes of its users and too often parents really do have a lot to be held accountable for.
Comments
I personally have broken most of the web safety rules, so I'm probably being hypocritical, but there are some simple things you can do to ensure you're safe on the web.
Facebook do have their own safety centre, but I wonder how many people have even seen it before?
http://www.facebook.com/help/?safety
Those stories don't sell papers though.It's like the video game/violence link.If that was true then surely people would be copying good things in games too.It's weird that there always something else to blame rather than the person doing it.It's time people took responsibility for their actions.My kids have been taught in school for years about the dangers of the internet.If people are going to ignore all the safety precautions then there really is nothing more anyone can do to help them.
That seems to be quite common people not taking repsonsibilty for own actions.
Many adults seem to forget as well that youngsters (not all) can tend to rebel, tell them one thing and they'll do the opposite, after all youngsters know best!!
Which is what they want us older people to believe.;):rolleyes:
Well said.
I don't know exactly what these things are but I can guess. How did we get to a pont we need these things? :rolleyes:
I've hit the point where if I read adults get hurt, raped or murdered after meeting someone they met online I think good! You're a moron and it serves you right.
These people are on the same level as people that smoke and then complain they get cancer, or go skiing and fall down and break their leg. You knew the risks, you chose to ignore them. It went wrong. Too bad!
actualy its core purpose was for it be be just college/university students only.
and with facebook have millions of users its a goldmine for news stories.
I volunteer for an anti-bullying charity working with kids/teens, and they don't really think about web safety at all, it just doesn't occur to them, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to point out to kids that they shouldn't be giving out personal information, and they should be careful about what photos they put on-line and so on..
I've met people I only initially knew on-line, does that make me a moron
I don't think a lot of people realise the risks, maybe they're naive, maybe they're just unaware, who knows, but I know that a lot of kids don't really think much about what they say or do on-line.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/03/facebook_v_daily_mail.html
Rory Cellan-Jones | 09:11 UK time, Wednesday, 10 March 2010 Blog on BBC Website
On the one hand, you have what many regard as Britain's most influential daily newspaper; on the other, a social network with more than 400 million members and global reach. The Daily Mail and Facebook are at war, with new media accused of failing to protect children - and old media in the dock for shoddy journalism.
The Mail has never been a great fan - "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer" was one headline last year - but it was an article on Wednesday that brought relations to a new low. The network has been having a terrible week in PR terms, following a high-profile murder case with a Facebook connection and its refusal to put the Child Exploitation and Online Protection panic button on its site.
The Mail's coverage of this story featured a front-page report, an editorial and a big spread which included an article by a former child-protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas. The opening paragraph read:
"Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me."
He went on to describe how a series of men approached him and made sexual suggestions, painting a chilling picture of the dangers for teenagers using Facebook.
It has to be said the story never sounded very convincing - unlike some other networks or instant messaging services, Facebook is actually place where it's rather difficult to conduct random chats. If you were to set up a profile and just wait for "friends" to arrive, you would be likely to have to wait for days, not minutes. What's more, the company says that its privacy settings mean that a 14-year-old girl could not receive a message from someone unless they were a friend or at least shared a school network.
Facebook says when it contacted Mark Williams-Thomas, he had a rather different story. He had been contacted by the Mail which had provided him with the material about the fake profile, but he had corrected it to make it clear that it involved not Facebook but another social network. By late yesterday, the story on the Mail's website had been amended; although it still featured a Facebook picture, it included this apology:
"In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight."
I contacted Mr Williams-Thomas to check a few facts, and he confirmed that the story had indeed been "ghosted" by a Mail reporter. He says he got back to the paper with a number of changes before publication, but although they acknowledged receipt of his alterations, they were not acted on.
This morning the newspaper carried a apology on page 4, quite a rare occurrence for the Daily Mail. So does the matter end there? I've seen a very strongly-worded letter from Facebook's lawyers saying their clients are considering what further action to take in relation to the "false and defamatory statements in the article".
Somehow, though, I get the feeling that after a week of battling Ceop, ministers, and the media over its child protection policy, Facebook may decide that it does not really want to go to war with the Daily Mail.
DONT EVER meet people off the t'internet kids
Not always who they say they are and if you do at least take a good few people with you.
Good grief... such shoddy standards of journalism.
They really are giving the Express a run for their money in the lame non-story department, aren't they?.
I wasn't specifically talking about the internet. I'm 45 aand managed to get through life without citizenship classes. Do we really need specific classes created in schools to teach people to respect others etc?
If we have got to the point where we need special classes to be taught respect, politeness, manners etc. then the quicker they blow the planet up the better or even better the human race is wiped out the better.
Right lets start with the first bit. No you're not a moron because you've met people you've initially only knew online.
Before I go on I'll point out that again you said about kids and I said adults not kids.
The morons are the people that give out details about themselves on trust to someone they really don't know even if they have been communicating online for months and then it goes wrong. They start getting nuisance calls for example. These people are as stupid as the people that give out their bank details to the "Chuggers" in the street.
Why would anyone with half a brain do that?
The morons are the ones that meet up with a person, it goes wrong then they say "I didn't realise the dangers, or that he/she was like that.
There is a difference between knowing something and choosing to ignore it and then saying I made an error of judgement and accept what I did was wrong or foolish and a person saying I didn't know that would/could happen.
I gave the example of the smokers that get cancer and thn complain and want pity. It's on the box, there's millions spent on advertising. Everyone else knew but you didn't. You're a moron!
You mentioned kids online. What about their parents? Up pops an adult saying my son/daughter was talking to someone who was pretending to be someone else etc.
When you watch the shows or read the article and the familiar pattern emerges. The comuter was in the bedroom, they wasn't keeping an eye on what he/she was doing. They had a cam set up on it (which is a bad idea for kids) and so fourth. Like the quit smokings. There has been lots of media exposure of the risks, the government spend millions advertising saying about computers in public rooms not bedrooms, parental controls etc. But nope these moronic adults don't see any of it and when something goes wrong it's huh? I didn't know.
A friend of mine has a terror of a 13 year old daughter. She was being bad and my friend said there's no pound grounding her because she'll just go onto the computer in her room and go online or just play games on it she dont care about being grounded. I said that's easily fixed put a password on her computer. She won't be able to use it unless you put the password in for her. If she doesn't know how I'll tell her or do it for her.
My friend replies with, but then she will just use mine. I couldn't even be bothered saying you can put a password on both. She's a moron!
Whether it's to do with stuff online or general day-to-day stuff I'm at the point where if people are the victim of something that obviously has/had an element of risk to their health or wellbeing that they didn't take proper precautions to avoid or they are they are upset, unhappy or in pain as a result of something bad happening through their own stupidity I can't be bothered with them and just think... good!
I sense that (totalitarian?) governments must envy the facility with which these social networking sites produce users who will defend their product to the death. <G> I was never "afraid" of Facebook, it just seemed a tedious and never ending task to protect oneself from the possibility of loopholes, viruses, sundry nutters etc. etc.
I agree completely.
Its horrible when these things happen, but I still find that even the most tech savvy of my contacts will do things that make no sense and know bugger all about working with the FB privacy settings.
I know of parents that have set up pages for their underaged kids on FB and MySpace, convinced that they can supervise their 7 year-old's usage even though law enforcement agencies strongly advise against minors being on social networks! :eek: The terms of service states that you are supposed to be over the age of 13.... One mom likes FB games and got her 7 and 4 year olds interested in them - and then set up pages for both boys so she could use their accounts along with her own...
FB isn't responsible for the mistakes of its users and too often parents really do have a lot to be held accountable for.
http://newsanchormom.blogspot.com/2010/03/facebook-age-limit.html