Safe and Secure

The FBI has released the FBI Child ID app, the first mobile app created by the bureau. The app is designed to help parents notify authorities in the unlikely event that their child goes missing.

It is currently available only for the iPhone but also works on the iPad and iPod Touch. (A device with a camera is required to use the app to take a photo of the child.)

Parents can use the app to record information about each of their kids and take a photo of each kid from directly within the app. There are also fields for … Read more

A new Missouri law, known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, is designed primarily to protect children against sexual abuse from teachers and other education professionals, including those who might have been previously charged with abuse at a former district. The practice, known as "passing the trash," occurs when an educator is fired or resigns from one school district and winds up being hired at another district without the new district having knowledge of the alleged sexual abuse.

And while the law mostly focuses on physical misconduct, there is also a provision that would require districts to &… Read more

Some of the children's social-networking sites that are out there make a big deal out of being for kids only, as if allowing kids and grownups to interact is inherently dangerous. It's not. If it were dangerous for kids to be around adults, they would never be around teachers, coaches, or even family members. The issue isn't who kids are hanging out with, but how they are treated by them and how they behave around them.

Of course, we don't want our young children to be hanging out online with random strangers, but I think it'… Read more

A survey published in the June issue of Consumer Reports (available now) found that "of the 20 million minors who actively use Facebook," 7.5 million were younger than 13 and more than five million were younger than 10. Facebook's terms of service require that users be at least 13.

The report tracks with other studies including a 2010 study by McAfee that found 37 percent of 10 to 12 year olds are on Facebook and a study (PDF) released in April from the London School of Economics EU Kids Online project that found that 38 percent … Read more

ZoneAlarm SocialGuard (download) from Check Point Software Technologies is a Windows program released today that allows parents to monitor children's Facebook activities to see if they're bullying, being bullied, friending strangers, or engaging in potentially dangerous online activities.

No stealth mode For parents to monitor their kid's profile, the child has to sign in once with his or her Facebook user name and password. That password is not passed on to the parent and the parent can't actually see the child's profile or what they're posting. Instead they get alerts of anything that the … Read more

Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden said Wednesday that they had found what appears to be a previously undisclosed file on iPhones that reveals where the phone has been. According to the pair, such tracking began with iOS 4, and the information is not only on the phone but also on any computer synchronized with the phone. They explained their findings in a blog post on O'Reilly Radar and in a video that's posted on YouTube.

Allan and Warden created a Mac OS X application that lets users view their own location data displayed on a map. I'… Read more

When I recently screened the new movie "Trust," my reaction was similar to watching films about hijackings and airline crashes that depict events that, while possible, are both rare and horrendous.

"Trust," in limited release today, is the story of Annie, a 14-year-old girl who has an online (and cell phone) relationship with someone she thinks is a 15 year-old boy she met in a teen chat room. "Charlie" later tells her that he's a college student and eventually confesses that he's a 25-year-old graduate student. When they finally meet at a … Read more

With the exception of the section on "Facebook depression," a report released Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics has some excellent advice for parents of social media users.

Clinical Report: The Impact of Social Media on Children (PDF) starts out with data showing that teen and pre-teen use of social media has "increased dramatically" over the last five years, as has use of cell phones and texting. It also points out that "because of their limited capacity for self-regulation and susceptibility to peer pressure, children and adolescents are at some risk as they navigate … Read more

As Caroline McCarthy reported in her post about the new app, Color is a provocative iPhone and Android application that lets users share photos with anyone around them. Unlike Facebook, Flickr, and other services that allow you to share pictures, Color has practically no privacy settings. As founder Bill Nguyen said in our podcast interview (scroll down to listen), "there's no password, there's no profile, there's no friending...the moment you come into contact with another person that has the Color app, you'll start to see them. You'll see their pictures; you'll see … Read more