Sites let preteens network online
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This past spring, 10-year-old Adam Young joined other tweens on Club Penguin, playing games, throwing virtual snowballs and chatting with fellow kids who appear onscreen as plump cartoon penguins. A few weeks later, Adam asked Mom to pay $5 a month for extra features, such as decorating his online persona's igloo.
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By Kelly Proctor, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.  Jun. 23--Social networking sites such as MySpace aren't restricted to teenagers or to hard-wired computer users anymore.
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NEARLY half of all young web surfers reveal all about their lives on social networking websites such as MySpace, researchers say.  They found 44 per cent of 16-34-year-olds share their innermost thoughts online.
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Secure USB tokens used to verify a child's age before allowing him to chat.
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The online community is introducing tools for developing games, media-sharing features and other programs that better integrate with the Internetâs leading social-networking site.
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By Melissa Vargas Sanchez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas  Sep. 24--Making sure your kids are staying safe in cyberspace just got a little less tedious.   Many parents and grandparents of teens are mystified when it comes to things like friends lists, comment sections and blogs.
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Many parents unaware of their nippers' online jaunts Children under the age of 16 are regularly visiting websites that have been prohibited by their parents, divulge personal details to strangers, and meet up with people they met online, according to research published today.â¦
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In its third presidential election, the Internet has finally reached political adolescence. Candidates use it to raise millions and rally their followers.
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By Joanne Clodfelter Contributing Writer  DAYTON -- The class of 2007 has grown up using computers in ways that were yet unheard of in their parents' generation. Computers connect them to their communities and to their world.
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By Thomas J. Morgan; Journal Staff Writer  Lawrence P. Filippelli talks to area students and parents about MySpace and other youth-oriented Web sites.
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Blog: A Silicon Valley upstart caters to time-pressed parents with a new reference Web site that's all about child-age schooling.
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The Web site Meetup.com helps people in suburbs form social groups around anything they have in common.
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Looking for a way of reaching young voters, candidates have discovered the social networking sites.
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NEW YORK -- Lecterns are so 2004. In the latest chapter of new Web-empowered debates and interaction with presidential candidates, social networking site MySpace and MTV will bring together 2008 hopefuls and young voters for real-time online conversations.
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NEW YORK -- A Web site that enables its users to store photos and video for inclusion in MySpace profiles will become a part of the popular online hangout.
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By GARY GENTILE LOS ANGELES - A home-schooled teenager named Bree is heating up the internet like few others today.
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(InfoWorld) - Parents with children who love to chat on the Internet are familiar with the problem of how to keep their kids safe from online predators. NetIDme is a virtual ID card service designed to encourage children to check the identity of people they communicate with online in chat rooms and social networks or when exchanging instant messages. For each ID they check or issue, kids are awarded points, which they can exchange for music downloads and ring tones. The service is the brainchild of Alex Hewitt, a veteran in the online security industry, who saw a need to protect his own children -- and an opportunity to launch a new business. "I was particularly concerned about one of my daughters, who liked to chat and was receiving lots of messages from strangers," Hewitt said. "When I looked around for some technology to control this communication, I really couldn't find anything. I installed monitoring software but my daughter's chat friends didn't like that, and because I didn't want to restrict access altogether, I came up with the idea of developing a virtual ID card." The service, first tested in NetIDme Ltd.'s home base in Glasgow, is now available in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., and will be rolled out at the start of next year in eight European countries. It costs Â£9.99 in the U.K. or $18.99 in the U.S. NetIDme requires both participants to be registered NetIDme users. To register, users sign up online and are sent a document, which they must complete and return. The document must be signed by the user and, if under 18 years of age, by a parent or guardian. It must also be signed by a professional person, including a teacher or doctor, to vouch for authenticity. The service is relatively easy to use. Say, a stranger approaches you in a chat room or by instant message. Before you chat, you ask the person to view his or her virtual ID card. To do this, you provide your NetIDme user name. Then the person who wants to chat with you logs in to the NetIDme Web site with name and password, clicks a tab to create a Net-ID and adds your user name. The system encrypts your name together with details from the new chat friend's account, logging a record of the new Net-ID. It then creates a hyperlink, which the new chat friend can paste directly into the chat window. When you click on the hyperlink, a browser window opens and takes you to the unlock screen on the NetIDme Web site. Only you can unlock the new chat friend's Net-ID by entering your e-mail, screen name and password. When you've finished entering this data, the friend's Net-ID card is instantly shown on the screen, displaying only the person's first name, age, gender and general location. A button on the screen allows you to repeat the process by sending your own hyperlink back to the new chat friend, displaying your details. The system automatically stores newly created IDs. NetIDme is not without its critics, however. Bloggers have attacked the service, claiming it falls short on security. "Contrary to what many bloggers claim, our site uses encryption technology, and we pay a security company a lot of money to make sure we are secure," Hewitt said in defense of the service. As for assurance against insider attacks, Hewitt points out that all NetIDme employees must consent to a police check, which includes police records and employment history. Also, at the request of police, the ID service has installed IP (Internet Protocol) tracking technology, which allows messages to be traced back to individual PCs. "Police asked us to have some sort of traceability in the event of abuse," he said. For parents concerned about the security of their kids on the Internet, NetIDme may not be the perfect solution, but the protection it offers is better than none.