Parents To Block Kids From Joining MySpace

Reservoir Hill writes "A New York Times blog notes that attorneys general of 49 states are announcing a partnership with MySpace to fight sexual predators on social networks by letting parents submit the e-mail addresses of their children, so the company can prevent anyone from using that address to set up a profile. MySpace will also set up a 'closed' section for users under age 18 so only their established online friends can visit their pages. MySpace also promises to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site. 'This set of principles is a landmark and milestone because it involves an acknowledgment of the importance of age and identity authentication,' said Connecticut attorney General Richard Blumenthal." Blumenthal also actually said "If we can put a man on the moon..."

Blocking email addresses?

[Kelson (129150)]

With a half-zillion free email providers out there, blocking a kid's email address will last all of two minutes. All they have to do is create an alias at Gmail, Yahoo, etc.

It reminds me of the early days of Hotmail, when they "verified" that you were a US resident by having you enter a matching city and ZIP code. Which just meant that all their overseas users lived in Beverly Hills, 90210.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[CastrTroy (595695)]

You think 90210 is fun? Well I'm from Canada, so whenever I need a fake address, I use the postal code H0H 0H0. Looks like I'm getting some coal in my stocking.

Re:

[Fyre2012 (762907)]

you live in the north pole?

I live in Canada and when I was a kid my parents used to get us to write letters to Santa, and they were sent to 1 Candy Cane Lane, North Pole, H0H 0H0.
Back in the day when people wrote letters to santa instead of just calling him [google.com]

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[jorghis (1000092)]

This isnt about providing real security. Its about myspace getting some publicity and paying lip service to doing the right thing. Its more symbolic than anything. Sure, people will still get around it, but myspace will be able to say "hey, we are doing our best to stop them".

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

I think people are missing the opportunity here. Instead of thinking about how idiotic this idea is and how it's just MySpace getting "free publicity" (they need any?), consider this: If we all start registering random email addresses with MySpace's "do not call list", maybe we can save someone from the horrible horrible slip of sane judgment of getting a MySpace account in the first place.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[Max Threshold (540114)]

So? Fake problem, fake solution, everybody's happy.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[The Ultimate Fartkno (756456)]

Scoff if you want, as long as my little xXxSmileyMileyCheerGirl95xXx is protected by the combined powers of MySpace and the U.S. Government then I can sleep better at night knowing that nothing illegal or unsavory can happen to her person.

Re:

[gnick (1211984)]

...but myspace will be able to say "hey, we are doing our best to stop them".

I'm assuming that I'm one of a million of /.ers that has witnessed this, but this is incredibly common in my arena. There's a safety/security problem in a related facility, so we do something nonsensical but somewhat related. Productivity and morale go down, but we can say we responded to a potential problem proactively. Considering the litigious society we live in, it makes a sick kind of sense. Once you combine a half a dozen facilities all doing the same thing, the issue compounds exponentially.

On

They win by barriers to entry

[alexhmit01 (104757)]

So Myspace built itself up to be a massive site for people looking at pictures of young and/or underage girls. It started with the 20-something crowd, but the teenagers made it explode. Now Myspace is a huge site, and cuts a deal with the AG to stop things. Now, if an upstart site starts bringing in Myspace's target customers, who wants to bet that Myspace can sic those same AG's on the upstart competition.

The teenage market is REALLY important to getting a new social technology adopted, and Myspace basically agreed to reduce their service a bit, in return for defacto preventing any competition from targeting them at all.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[JimBobJoe (2758)]

Its about myspace getting some publicity and paying lip service to doing the right thing.

I disagree. This was all about elected politicians getting publicity and paying lip service to make it appear they are doing something about a "problem" that was way overblown by the media to begin with.

Myspace is going along with it because they have to--but the horse and pony show belongs to the state attorney generals, not Myspace.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[rucs_hack (784150)]

well I don't know about you, but in my house, everyones email login and password is saved locally on every machine in the house.

My son could bypass any system to verify parental consent easily. However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy. It's all about trust really, and that has to be taught, it can't be either assumed or enforced by stupid schemes like this one.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[Rogerborg (306625)]

That takes me back. I used to scam my parents all the time too, and it won't be long until my kids are old enough to look me in the eye with a straight face and lie through their teeth. They grow up so fast. :(

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[KermodeBear (738243)]

I bet your parents weren't capable of putting a sniffer on the network and recording all of your traffic, either.

You, on the other hand... ...and don't give me crap about "kids have a right to privacy." They don't, especially when it comes to communication with strangers.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[Mr. Freeman (933986)]

Considering the fact that there was no such thing as a "home network" to monitor until sometime in the last 20 years, not having the skills to do so actually seems quite reasonable.

But I don't know why you think that kids don't have a right to privacy. If you seriously expect your kids to share everything with you, then you're a moron of the highest degree. If you try to invade what privacy kids attempt to make for themselves (I.E. "tell me what Janie said or you're grounded") then you're setting yourself up for one hell of a rebellion later in their life. It will not be pretty, to think it might turn out all right is naive.

I can understand not wanting your kids to not talk to strangers, but that's better handled by teaching your children not to talk to strangers than attempting to monitor their communication. You can either punish a kid every time they talk to strangers, or you can teach them that bad things can happen because there are bad people out there.

Why not?

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

Why do kids not have a right to privacy?

And why would such a right magically turn on at 18?

Tell you what -- before I had a computer entirely my own, I was certainly allowed to have a pencil and paper. And I was allowed to keep it in a secret place, if I wanted to. And my parents did not read my various diaries (though there weren't many attempts).

When I went out, I could go pretty much anywhere, I just had to tell them where I was going, and not stay out too late (most of the time). When I got a cell phone, they didn't screen my calls, they didn't have access to my call logs.

My parents apparently did a good job teaching me mutual respect. And the process has nothing to do with the Internet. I suspect this sudden Puritanical paranoia has much more to do with the tendency of people to suspend all reason [rinkworks.com] when it comes to computers.

Re:Why not?

[sm62704 (957197)]

Why do kids not have a right to privacy?

Because they're KIDS. Kids aren't just short adults. They are uncshooled, immature, naive, easily taken advantage of. It's your job as a parent to protect them and nurture and teach them.

And why would such a right magically turn on at 18?

It doesn't. More and more privacy is granted as the child gets older. An infant has no privacy whatever; a five year old has some, a ten year old has more. You give them privacy (and responsibility) when they need and can handle it.

I just had to tell them where I was going

And as an adult I don't have to tell anybody where I'm going. Your parents obviously did it right - you didn't even realise that your privacy was limited!

-mcgrew

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[morcego (260031)]

You are right. I only wish it was possible for parents, you know, take away the kids computer privileges (or the computer itself).

Too bad it is impossible.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[torkus (1133985)]

Wow. And yeah, since drugs are available in school, from friends, etc. etc. etc. might as well give up on that argument.

In fact, let's just throw up our hands and let the children do anything they want with no limits, responsibility, or guidelines. I mean, they're just going to do it anyway. Right?

If you are a parent, I have to say you're a very bad one. If you're not, don't have kids. We don't need to protect and insulate our kids from the world, we need to educate them and raise them to be aware of what's around them.

Re:

[uhlume (597871)]

GIGO.

You're a sucker...

[raehl (609729)]

However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy.

Actually, in your house, you practice this thing called willful ignorance, where by not checking you let yourself believe he's not doing anything.

I used to be a kid, so I know the only way you can know what your kid is up to is to trust, but validate.

Re:

[hosecoat (877680)]

"With a half-zillion free email providers out there, blocking a kid's email address will last all of two minutes."

Have some faith, blocking email addresses obviously worked for spam.

Re:

[aussie_a (778472)]

Being an Australian it was double useful for me as I had no idea what any valid American postcodes were, except for that single one.

Re:Blocking email addresses?

[geminidomino (614729)]

President Scroob prefers Schenectady, NY...

(For the ZIP-code challenged, the Zip code is 12345)

Great idea.. Parents always know their kids emails

[Kahless2k (799262)]

Really.. When I was younger I told my parents what all my email addresses were, and I would never have created a new hotmail, etc address without telling them......

Someone needs a dose of reality.

Re:Great idea.. Parents always know their kids ema

[betterunixthanunix (980855)]

This is just another attempt by some politicians to claim that they are fighting to protect our children. Later on, when nobody actually remembers any of this, these politicians can tell a cheering crowd, "I worked hard to give parents the ability to limit their child's MySpace access, and help shield their children from sexual predators online." Of course it is idiotic, and children will find a way around it in less than a minute, but if this were really about protecting our children, it would be an educational program, not another pathetic attempt at technical measures to block their access.

Re:Great idea.. Parents always know their kids ema

[cbreaker (561297)]

When I was younger, I told my mother I was "chatting" with someone in Germany with a Shell account and she had no idea what I was talking about. When I'd tell people about the Internet, people would look at me cross-eyed.

Most of my e-mail was done with TeleMate over FidoNet. I could plagiarize CD Based encyclopedias and nobody knew the wiser.

It must suck to grow up in the Internet Age.

On a related note, I think sending in your kids' e-mail addresses isn't the worst idea. It would at least keep very you

This is arguably the stupidest thing ...

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

I've seen on Slashdot all month. Parents can submit email addresses all day long, and their kids will create disposable addresses all day long.

Pointless, but I suppose it makes the parents feel like they're doing something.

Re:This is arguably the stupidest thing ...

[rubycodez (864176)]

the first thing that came to my mind was, how to create a high-quality list of edresses for the nation's pedophiles to seek.

Re:This is arguably the stupidest thing ...

[TheGratefulNet (143330)]

Pointless, but I suppose it makes the parents feel like they're doing something.

you know, you can apply that answer to MUCH of what is going on with the government, today.

sad but true.

Re:This is arguably the stupidest thing ...

[cappadocius (555740)]

Pointless, but I suppose it makes the parents feel like they're doing something.

you know, you can apply that answer to MUCH of what is going on with the government, today.

1. Something must be done!
2. This is something.
3. Therefore, it must be done
4. ???
5. Regulation!

Cool

[JimboFBX (1097277)]

I'll start by submitting the e-mail addresses of everyone I dislike and claim to be their parents and say that they are lieing about their age. Another well thought out government idea.

Re:Cool

[mstahl (701501)]

Why not submit your friends' email addresses? Friends don't let friends join myspace!

Statistics

[Seumas (6865)]

And exactly how many rapes and molestations occur because of MySpace? How about we place the same restrictions on schools and churches, where you are certainly more likely to end up being molested.

Also, since when did we place the responsibility on the WEBSITE to prevent an IP address from reaching it? And what about DHCP? What about the next person that gets your IP in a few months? Why can't you filter out access on your own rather than placing the burden of your absurd paranoia on websites that have nothing to do with your ridiculous "my baby gonna get raped" fantasies?

And no, I didn't RTFA. Look at my UID. I'm old school and that's how I roll.

Contractor paid to search for porn?

[Cherveny (647444)]

What do you bet there may be a long list of people wanting that job?

Re:Contractor paid to search for porn?

[iminplaya (723125)]

Search for porn? That funny. I never have to search for it. It justs pops up, all by itself.

Only 49 states?

[EsonLinji (723693)]

I'm wondering just which state is not taking part in this scheme? And could kids just claim to be from there to avoid the list.

Re:

[BeanThere (28381)]

Seemingly Texas [chron.com]. (Saying 'agreement to protect young users against sexual predators doesn't go far enough')

Re:

[JavaManJim (946878)]

Yes its Texas. For sometimes good reasons and more often bad ones (as in the Microsoft monopoly case). This time its a good reason. The attorney general says the agreement did not go far enough about verifying ages. I don't know how an any age verification would work. Factual data like emails or birth dates can be easily faked. Perhaps name the continents? No, that would knock out a lot of college students today. Thumbprints? DNA samples anyone?
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/w [wfaa.com]

Next Up: theft of Myspace address DB

[G4from128k (686170)]

This list sounds like a perfect high-value target for every malware distributor and sicko in the net. I'd bet that most kids are worse than their parents at opening emails and clicking yes to "interesting" installs. "OOOHH! A free Pony Screen Saver!" Pwned by ponies....

So.. wouldn't this give them an alibi?

[Rinikusu (28164)]

"Your honor, I trusted myspace to verify the age of the people I met online. I know she only looks 13 your honor, but her profile said she was 19!"

Better idea

[FlyByPC (841016)]

One of the comments below TFA has it right, I think. No competent kid is going to be slowed down by more than a few seconds by these restrictions. Better to allow them to create a profile openly -- and for their parents to create a MySpace persona to keep tabs on them and see what's being posted etc.

Most of the people that I know who are old enough to have kids on MySpace know a LOT less about using the Internet than their kids do. (Yeah, I know; there will be a few /.ers reading this who have kids and who DO know what they're doing; I'm not talking about you.)

Any "security" measures designed to "protect" kids don't have a chance of working unless either:

• The kids want them to work, and/or
• The security measures take into account that the kids are very knowledgeable and their parents generally aren't.

Attack tree

[Digital_Quartz (75366)]

So, in security, we have this notion called an "attack tree". Let's suppose you want to stop someone from stealing your family jewels. You put the in a safe, and all is well, right? Well... maybe not. We create this tree, where the root is "steal the jewels", and the children under the root are various ways you might accomplish this ("Use a key to open the safe", "Drill out the hinges on the safe", "Create hole in safe"). And each of these nodes can be divided out further into more children, so to use a key for example, you either need to steal a key, or be one of the people who has a legitimate use for the key, or be the locksmith who installed the lock.

Similarly, if the attackers goal is "molest my children", then you have an attack tree that might have "hang out by the school", or "give candy full of drugs", and so forth. "Lure children on the internet" is one child of that tree, and "lure children using MySpace" would be a subchild.

For each of these nodes, there's a cost associated with fixing the problem. Ideally, you fix the problem right at the top of the tree, so for example we could make sure our keys are only given to a select group of people whom we trust, that our keys are locked securely in other safes (excepting the obvious recursion problem), and kill the locksmith. OR, we could go up one node in the tree, and eliminate the key altogether, and use an electronic keypad with a user definable code, which neatly solves the entire problems of keys.

Similarly, we can do some sort of bizzare and flawed attempt to do age verification using email addresses to stop pervs on MySpace (How do we stop kids from creating multiple accounts? How do we know the parents are the ones submitting the email address and not a malicious party intent on removing a MySpace page?), and we can implement the same system on all the social networking sites, and all the online games, and all the other online communications systems in the world, effectively black-holing our children and removing them from this filthy online world... Or, we could go up one node in the tree, and tell our kids "Don't go visit weirdos on the internet without telling us first", just like we tell our kids "Don't take candy from strangers", and "Don't get into cars with people you don't know".

Not to say that we can't take steps at multiple levels in the tree; I just think there are steps we could take which are more effective.

I'm going to go ahead and fix this story

[Fortunato_NC (736786)]

Today, the Attorneys General of 49 states took another step towards running for governor by knocking down yet another straw-man.

There, fixed that story for you. No need to thank me.

In other news...

[bhmit1 (2270)]

children everywhere are being hospitalized due to uncontrolled fits of laughter.

And later, nerds who read news want to create a blacklist to block stupid politicians and law makers from being able to make new laws.

It could be possible at the ISP level

[Billly Gates (198444)]

Infact I could see why not?

Maybe as a CEO of a major telecom I could charge an extra $5 a month to firewall sites. ... oh wait proxies. Nevermind unless there is a way to block them too.

Or I could just charge $5 a month more and have the kids still find free proxies to go around it.

In the meantime a simple fix in the /system32/etc/host file by adding the I.P. for www.barneythedinosaur.com for www.myspace.com scares my kids quite well and blocks myspace. Good thing they haven't figured out that one yet.

My way worked

[rossz (67331)]

I had the home network running through a transparent proxy which blocked certain websites. MySpace was on the block list (because the kid broke the rules about posting personal information, such as phone numbers).

She could still get to MySpace if she went to a friend's house, but the inconvenience of doing that made it "not a fun thing."

The blocking by email system is nothing but a feel-good bandaid that does nothing.

Real problems

[pedrop357 (681672)]

So rather then deal with many times a day actual sexual abuse of young people AGAINST THEIR WILL by adults, they're choosing to put all attention, and diverting everyone else's attention, to a problem that is at least 50% the fault of the young person and happens maybe twice a month at the most.

Occasionally, adults 18-25 "lure" young girls 14-17 into sexual encounters. What usually happens is some socially inept 18-22 year old spends several weeks/months talking to a 14-16 year old online, the usually talk on the phone a bit, sometimes talk via web cam, etc. then they meet. If the older person isnt' arrested before the meeting, they sometimes have sex and everything blows up.

Despite shows like "Catch a Predator", 13-15 year old girls who have casual sex with 40 year olds they've talked to for a few hours online don't show up in news articles or in victimization reports-I'm betting they're rare to the point of extinction. More importantly, I SERIOUSLY doubt that 13-15 year olds are inviting strangers they've never talked to over the phone or seen via web cam to their homes for sex. Even the dumbest teen girls seem to have some ability to read body language and facial expressions via video and/or hear tone, inflection over audio. I don't think they're inviting total strangers to their house.

BUT, this is what we've been led to believe. We've been told there's a problem based solely on the existence of demand. We know there's no shortage of adult men willing to engage in casual sex with 13 year old girls, but we haven't been shown that there's even 1 girl willing to reciprocate for every 1000 guys.

Everybody goes nuts over this manufactured problem and take attention away from real victimization-that is young people being sexually abused against their will and without their consent. Real abuse is ignored in favor of virtually non-existent abuse.
Even worse is the fact that any teen girls meeting men online for sex is going of her own free will, whether her consent is informed or not is another issue. It seem that she would bear at least 40% of the blame for anything that happens.

The persons most likely to sexually abuse young people are the same people being constantly implored to monitor their teens every move-parents, step parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents, teachers, priests, coaches, neighbors. Strange guy on the internet is somewhere above that guy that works the 7-11 on Tuesdays and Thursdays between noon and 5pm.

Re:Sign up for another address

[Seumas (6865)]

I'd like to see the parents asking their twelve year old girl what her email address is so they can lock down her myspace account and see where they went wrong when their child responds with "sweetltlhottie69@hotmail".

Re:Sign up for another address

[exley (221867)]

I'd like to see the parents asking their twelve year old girl what her email address is so they can lock down her myspace account and see where they went wrong when their child responds with "sweetltlhottie69@hotmail".

With an e-mail address like that they're going to be even more surprised to find out that their 12-year-old daughter is actually a lonely 40-year-old man.

Re:Censorship? Really?

[betterunixthanunix (980855)]

Except that this isn't parents trying to provide a good environment, it is just parents trying to bar their children from access to a certain website. Parents trying to provide a good environment would sit down and talk about the dangers of sexual predators on MySpace and similar websites, and instruct their children to immediately contact mommy or daddy if someone starts propositioning them for sex (not that we live in a culture where parents are encouraged to discuss anything pertaining to sex with their children). Growing up, the Internet was just starting to reach its current level of popularity, and my mother was very clear with me when we got our first computer about what to do if someone asked to meet me or started talking about sex, I listened, and there was never a problem with me using the computer, even if I was unsupervised.

Oh well, we haven't encouraged parents to actually speak to their kids about this stuff for a long time, opting to shield children from anything deemed harmful by anyone.