WhosHere is about “creating a new network for yourself that’s detached from the social graph.” Smith also said, “You’re completely in control of your personal information, your identity, and your location.”

In other words, users can customize their profiles and determine how much and how little information is available to others. Users can then communicate with one another through free VoIP calls and text and image messages. All this communication can be done with or without any personal identification being revealed as well.

WhosHere was also recently used in helping to put a sex offender behind bars. The company was contacted by law enforcement and was able to provide them with information to put the criminal in jail.

“You put 3 million users into a room, and there’s going to be the occasional bad actor,” said Smith.

Why is it that some people take a good idea and abuse it? Let us know your thoughts.

If you recall, there have also been incidents involving sexual predators on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. In fact, former Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal was one of the leaders that pushed for stronger protections on these sites including preventing convicted sex offenders from using the sites and limiting older users in their searches of members under the age of 18.

While it’s never a good idea for an offender to strike, in this case, in particular, it was really not smart at all, given the site is a location-aware app… ☺

“If you’re going to commit a crime… the worst place you could do it is on a location-aware application,” Smith said.

WhosHere has since been praised for its assistance in the case and was even asked to contribute to a series of best practice tips that the FBI presents to schools. Smith also gave us some “common sense” tips that users should apply with all social networking apps and sites:

-    Don’t give out personal information
-    Don’t tell where you are
-    Be sensible about what you share about yourself (e.g. phone number)

At this point, WhosHere is only available on the iOS platform, but thanks to some recent changes to Android, Smith said we could expect the app on Android and other platforms in the near future.

It’s hard being first and one might imagine all 49 pairs of eyes (assuming one set of eyes per state, of course) will be on Virginia to see how educators implement the program, the messages used, and the methods by which the program is evaluated.

According to Virginia-based WDBJ7.com, the state attorney general warned a group of high school students by showing what appeared to be the social networking profile of a 15 year-old girl, but was actually a 31-year-old serial child molester currently serving a 45-year prison term.

A half century in jail maybe fine in Virginia, but down on the bayou they’re considering castration as an option for dealing with guys like that. It’ll be fun to see who complains.

Otherwise, it seems pretty clear that other states will follow Virginia’s educational objectives, if not exactly their sentencing protocols. One day, Internet safety classes will be as normal as driver’s ed and drug abuse counseling, complete with state cops (and attorney generals these days) telling the most gruesome stories they can pull from their lemon squeezers.

(In my day, after watching a video reel where Pinocchio becomes unstrung by sniffing glue, a state trooper regaled us destined for delinquency 10-year-olds with tales of corroded nostrils and PCP-fueled bare-knuckles jail-cell brick removal. And then there was the little boy that got his head cut off….Sort of makes you long for the days when adults tried to scare you with fairy tales instead of actual events.)
 

 The survey found that 6 percent of parents believed their children had had an online encounter with a stranger but 16 percent of U.S. children reported being contacted while online by a stranger.

When it comes to time spent online parents think their kids are using the Internet two hours a month, but kids said they are spending twenty hours a month online. Forty-one percent of teens said their parents are unaware of what sites they are visiting online. In addition 42 percent of teens have received an online request for personal information.

Time spent online by children in China is even higher than in the U.S. Chinese kids report spending 40 hours a month online, while their parents believe they are spending just 2 hours. Forty-four percent of kids in China have been approached by strangers online and 57 percent have given away personal information.

"This report clearly demonstrates a global digital divide between parents and their cyber-savvy children. We’ve always taught our children not to talk to strangers in the offline world, and now we must teach our children how to safely exist in an online world filled with strangers," said Marian Merritt, Internet Safety Advocate, Symantec.
 

Naturally, MySpace’s Internet safety announcement is about increasing privacy and safety for its minor members. ReadWriteWeb reports that the updated features will include:

• For users 16 and 17 years of age, the default profile setting will now be private — previously this was a default only for 14 and 15 year old users (14 years old is the minimum age for site membership).
• MySpace will look into the creation of a “children’s email registry that will empower parents to prevent their children from having access to MySpace or any other social networking site.”
• The creation of an “Online Safety Task Force” that would develop and review online safety tools (such as those used for age verification).
• The launch of an “online safety public service campaign” to teach parents how to keep their children safe on the Internet.
• No user can browse for users under 16.
• Users under 18 are restricted from age-inappropriate areas such as Romance and Relationship, or Mature chat, forums and groups, nor can those users browse based on categories such as relationship status, smoker, drinker, or income
• Users over 18 can only search the school section for high school students graduating in the current or upcoming year.

Nice ideas . . . but my minor sister’s profile says she’s 100 years old. . . . Will these new guidelines automatically go into effect for her?

The guidelines, called the “Principles of Social Networking” (although what I think they meant to say the “Principles of Privacy for Minors in Social Networking”), were drafted by MySpace and 49 US state attorneys general.

For those of you in the know, you’ll note that number that means one state’s attorney general didn’t sign on for the project. So who is this renegade AG? Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Now, of course, it’s not that Mr. Abbott thinks that child predators have rights, too—he doesn’t. In fact, according to a CNET blog, he objects because he thinks these principles don’t go far enough:

Although we believe that MySpace.com, along with other state attorneys general, is working to protect social-network users, we cannot endorse any initiative that fails to implement a reliable age verification system. Doing so would give Texas parents and their children a false sense of security.

Abbott has a point. The principles proposed are a step in the right direction, but nothing prevents minors from lying about their age when they sign up. MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam says “that more research and development is necessary” on the age verification technology.

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