You can post your whole life on the web now, but you can’t control who sees it and what they do with the information
Elaine O’Connor
Province
You can post personal pictures on social-networking sites, but you can’t control who sees them and what they do with them.
B.B. is 19 years old. She lives in Vancouver. Her favourite movies are Love, Actually, and Amelie. She reads Harry Potter, too.
She’s in her second year of university at Simon Fraser University studying political science and art history. She might go on to law school. Her e-mail is [email protected].
She took ENGL 104 first year and was sharing notes with classmates.
This year, you’ll likely find her in a second year class: Introduction to Political Philosophy (Wednesdays, 1:30 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. in room WMC3210) or Politics and Ethics (Mondays 10:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. in room C9000).
Her birthday is later this month. She’ll celebrate with friends (many from a Vancouver private school, which she graduated from in 2006), calling them on cell numbers they posted online, along with compromising pictures of them partying at grad and in limos. You can download all 195 of them.
When she’s not in school you may find her working at an East Vancouver Extra Foods store.
She lives nearby. You can find her complete address and home phone number on Canada411.com. You could even look up directions to her house on Mapquest.com.
If she’s not at home, you could arrange to meet her at a music show downtown: she was at Hot Hot Heat Sept. 18 at The Commodore. In the summer, you may find her at her family’s cabin in Washington.
B.B. is a complete stranger to me.
But I know all about her. (Her real name, school, birthdate, and e-mail are all online. But we’ll leave them out here, for privacy’s sake — although she chose not to use privacy settings.) I learned this and more about the pretty college student on her Facebook profile.
And she never knew a thing.
To some, this information is meaningless. But to a predator, an academic adviser or employer, a few clicks can reveal details about someone’s life that could be used against them.
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Social-networking sites are coming under scrutiny for just these reasons. Groups like the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s Cybertip.ca are trying to raise the alarm about web dangers.
“With these networking sites typically, you’re exposing everything,” says Signy Arnason, Director of Cybertip.ca.
“What’s not resonating with children is that the Internet is a public space. You’d equate it to your child going with a photo album into Safeway and allowing people who pass by to view it. You’re doing the same thing placing all this information on the Internet.”
That openness is risky. In its first year of operations, Cybertip.ca logged 5,771 reports of potential online child sexual abuse: 21,000 to date. It found 93 per cent of those lured are female, 73 per cent aged 12 to 15. Ninety-five per cent of the suspects are male.
In the most recent B.C. case, Burnaby RCMP revealed Thursday they were investigating an elementary school janitor for having online contact with a female student, though no sexual allegations have been made.
In the U.S., the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states one out of five kids online have been propositioned.
Just last week, a 15-year-old Florida girl disappeared after she snuck out of her house to meet a 24-year-old man she’d met on MySpace — a man who turned out to be a 46-year-old sex offender.
The primary fear about the safety of social networking sites (and there are dozens besides MySpace and Facebook — see sidebar) remains sexual predators. But there are other risks for kids, too. One concern is innocent photos a child or teen uploads could be used for insidious purposes.
“Kids need to know that once a picture, once anything, is posted on the Internet quite often it is there forever,” says Const. Annie Linteau of the B.C. RCMP’s E Division.
“You don’t know who at the other end of the line is seeing that photo. You don’t know what they are doing with it. It is certainly possible for children to become victims [of sexual exploitation] without knowing the adults who are looking at the photos.”
And, adds Cybertip.ca’s Arnason, pictures on social-networking sites can also be used for bullying.
“We’ve had nude photographs of kids show up in locker rooms of schools.” Because of this, she cautions,”the focus [of online education] shouldn’t be solely ‘you’re going to have sexual offenders coming after you.’ It has to resonate with them in terms of embarrassment and humiliation that can occur.”
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Adults, too, can find themselves the victim of social-networking site indiscretions.
Employers now regularly go online to Google, MySpace and Facebook to screen recruits. Suddenly, the picture of you passed out by the toilet on New Year’s is less funny.
Just last week, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day ordered an investigation after Canadian Border Services employees were caught in a YouTube video drinking and calling Prime Minister Stephen Harper a “serial killer.”
Police are using social-networking sites, too. So be aware that the YouTube graffiti-tagging video your gang embedded on your MySpace page might not be such a good idea.
In September, Penticton RCMP used YouTube to reopen an investigation of a Highway 97 crash after they found video of a street race that may have preceded it. Hamilton police have even used YouTube to distribute surveillance video to aid in a murder investigation.
Fraudsters can also take advantage of personal details in your profile. The credit report agency Equifax recently warned consumers not to put personal information on social-networking sites for just this reason.
And finally, easy access to your social calendar and personal details can also have unintended consequences.
In the U.S., there have been cases of scholarships being rescinded after unflattering details surfaced. And in April 2007, a U.K. house was destroyed by crashers who saw an invite to a party on MySpace. The 200 revellers caused $50,000 worth of damage.
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None of this has prevented Canadians from signing on to social-networking sites in droves.
An Ipsos-Reid poll this week found 37 per cent of Canadians had visited a social-networking site, and 30 per cent posted a profile. The figure rises among 18- to 34-year-olds: 63 per cent have visited a social-networking site and 55 per cent placed a profile.
Users often don’t realize the sheer number of people who have access to these profiles.
MySpace has more than 105 million registered accounts. Facebook boasts 69 million users. Nexopia, which caters to youth aged 14 to 22, has half a million registered users. Several districts — Vancouver, North Vancouver and Langley — have found it so viral they’ve banned it from school computers.
Warren Nightingale, a media education specialist with Canada‘s Media Awareness Network, admits that despite school efforts, the lure of such sites for teens remains strong.
“It’s a generation that was raised on celebrity culture, and with these sites you can create your own celebrity,” he says.
“Young people are exploring their identity and they can do so through their profiles.”
He advises the safest way to use these sites is to withhold as much as possible.
“If you use a gender-neutral nickname and avatar instead of a real name and picture you’re going to protect your privacy much more.”
Mindful of these safety concerns, some sites have taken their own precautions.
Facebook warns users that, “unless you’re prepared to attach something in your profile to a resumé or scholarship application, don’t post it.”
On MySpace, registrants must be 14 or older and every profile of a 14- or 15-year-old is automatically set to the highest level of privacy. Users 16 and older can choose their own privacy settings. Users over 18 can’t add users aged 14 or 15 as friends unless they know their full name or e-mail.
But the best way to keep your profile — and your personal details — safe might be not to post one at all.
CANADIAN INSTANCES OF LURING TEENS ONLINE
-In August, a 25-year-old Montreal man was sentenced to nine years in prison for posing as a teenager online and luring 13- and 14-year-old girls into sending him video of themselves naked. Police later found he had targeted “hundreds and hundreds of girls online.”
-In April, Langley Mountie Adam Jonathan Clarke, 23, was sentenced to one day in jail for using the Aldergrove community policing office computer to access Nexopia and chat with a 12-year-old Langley girl and a 15-year-old Richmond girl, in search of child pornography.
POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
– 43Things.com
– Bebo.com
– Buzznet.com
– Classmates.com
– Clubpenguin.com
– Couchsurfing.com
– LiveJournal.com
– Facebook.com
– Flickr.com
– Friendster.com
– Linkedin.com
– MEETin.org
– Meetup.com
– Minggl.com
– MySpace.com
– Nexopia.com
– Socialgrapes.com
– TeenSpot.com
– Tribe.net
– Twitter.com
– Wink.com
– Xanga.com
TIPS FOR PRESERVING PRIVACY ONLINE
-Never use your last name. Use a nickname or pseudonym. Remind friends not to refer to you by your first or last names in posts. Tell them to check with you before posting photos you appear in.
-Never post work, home, college dorm details or school schedules.
-Use the highest level of privacy settings on profiles. If you have to provide personal information to create a profile, use initials.
-Password-protect personal blog posts and photos and e-mail the password to friends and family.
-Remember police departments and university administrators can use these pages to check for illegal behaviour, threats or violations of student codes of conduct.
TIPS FOR PARENTS
-Parents should know where their kids are going online and either supervise their computer use or install controls. Parents can use keystroke programs that record their child’s activities or install filters to ban certain sites.
-Kids should never have web cams, because you can never be sure who’s watching.
-Don’t let your child use computers behind closed doors. Put the computer in the family room.
-Warn children never to meet online friends unless you are there.
-Test sites your child wants to use and learn how they work.
IT’S THIS EASY TO TRACK YOUR KIDS
In the August issue of The Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan stunned readers in an article on cyber safety by stalking a teenage girl. In her article, “Babes in the Woods,” she tracks a local girl she calls “Jenna” and learns about her friends, boyfriend, planned outings, even her graduation date. She even shows up at Jenna’s school at her graduation and notes the time and place of her new college classes after Jenna posts her schedule.
WHAT CANADIANS LOG ON TO
According to a recent Ipsos-Reid study, Canadian adults spend an average of over five hours a week on the sites. The most popular site for Canadians is Facebook (65 per cent), followed by Classmates.com (20 per cent), MySpace (15 per cent) and Windows LiveSpace (13 per cent).
ONLINE SAFETY RESOURCES
– Cybertip.ca
– Media-awareness.ca
– Mediafamily.org
– Kidsintheknow.ca
– Kidsrisk.harvard.edu
– WiredSafety.org
– Netsmartz.org
– ConnectSafely.org
© The Vancouver Province 2007
