Part I: Social Shield Provides Online Protection for Children
A few years ago, Sun Microsystem’s CEO Scott McNealy sparked the online privacy debate with the statement: “You have no privacy. Get over it.”
Since then, social networking sites like Facebook have come under fire for disregarding users’ privacy concerns. Recently, both Facebook and Google were under intense scrutiny from the public over privacy issues and the use of unsecured Wi-Fi networks to collect data. Both sites have changed their privacy policies to prevent future indiscretions.
Online Privacy and Children
Many adult users are tired of the great privacy debates and thankful that they’ve cooled down in recent months. While the crusade for stricter privacy regulations raises red flags, it seems many have forgotten those most vulnerable to online predators and bullies: our children.
Children as young as 13 can create Facebook profiles – though it’s easy enough for any child to create a page, as long as they’re sly enough to get away with lying about their age. According to Facebook, 50 million teens aged 13 to 17 have Facebook pages, and many of them also have accounts on other social networking sites, like Twitter and MySpace.
“50 million teens aged 13 to 17 have Facebook pages.”
What’s alarming is how high the statistics are for cyber bullying – which is defined as “when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person,” according to the National Crime Prevention Council. Unlike regular bullying, which ends once the victims reaches the comfort of home, cyber bullying is an endless cycle of 24 hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week taunting via electronic devices. Facebook and MySpace accounts, where young users can express themselves for others, including bullies or predators to see, have become synonymous with cyber bullying.
ISafe, an organization dedicated to promoting awareness and prevention of cyberbullying, reported that 42 percent of children have been bullied online, and 58 percent of those children have not told their parents about it. There have been cases in the past of children who were bullied to the point of suicide – and no one saw it coming because it all happened virtually.
“42 percent of children have been bullied online; 58 percent of those children have not told their parents about it.”
Let’s not forget the endless possibilities of cyberstalking or cyberharrassment, when adults harass each other or 
prey on children who may unknowingly be giving out identifying information about themselves and their whereabouts.
SocialShield and Parental Intervention
SocialShield, which launched on June 16, is a new online software program to help parents keep track of their children’s accounts on social networking sites. For just $10 a month or $99 for a year’s subscription, parents can get regular reports on their children’s account activities on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The alternative – parents creating their own accounts, adding their children as friends and then monitoring every detail themselves – can be time-consuming and painstaking, especially for parents who are not tech-savvy.
How It Works
After registering both the parents and the children in question on SocialShield, the tool will scan the child’s accounts for inappropriate or disturbing content – like talk of sex, drugs, violence or suicide, or questionable photos. SocialShield then e-mails a summary report to the parents’ registered e-mail.
The summary report alerts the parent of the alarming content while preserving some of the child’s privacy. While the software does not give parents word-for-word descriptions of what was said, it alerts them that such content was present in the profile.
Reputation Management and Cyberbullying
While scanning for aforementioned topics, SocialShield also sets up a Reputation Management report. The software will e-mail parents whenever photos are posted – regardless of whether they are inappropriate or not. It is up to parents to look at the photos and deem what should stay up or be taken down. The intent is to prevent children, who may not be thinking too far into the future, from posting anything they may regret when the time comes to apply to college or for a job.
SocialShield also remains on the lookout for signs of cyberbullying. Whether the child is the victim or the bully, SocialShield will e-mail parents of cyberbullying evidence and keep it documented. In severe cases, the program will send the evidence to school or law enforcement officials.
Friends Engine and Knowledge Center
Another of SocialShield’s features is its Friends Engine. The program will check a child’s friends list on any social networking site against LinkedIn’s list of users, Costco.com’s list of customers, registered sex offender lists and other sites. This is a way to find out if all of his or her friends are who they say they are, and are actually the age they state in their profiles. If there is a 13 year-old boy on Facebook whose identification matches someone on LinkedIn, a site for networking adults, then you know that Facebook profile is probably not legitimate.
Parents who are having trouble negotiating both SocialShield and the networking sites it works with can visit SocialShield’s Knowledge Center, which will connect them with chats and contact information for experts, psychologists and law enforcement officials.
This concludes Part I of this blog series. Be on the lookout for Part II, when consumers take a better look at the usability of SocialShield.
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