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Press Release Aug. 18, 1997 |
Contact: Andy Norton |
YONKERS, NY - A 15-year-old boy who innocently responds to an online questionnaire with his e-mail address finds his computer mailbox stuffed with unwanted, obscene photographs.
A 14-year-old girl's private password - the "key" that allows her to enter cyberspace - is somehow stolen, and $500 in online time is charged to her account by an unknown user.
Computer-savvy perverts, what the FBI calls "lazy predators," forgo the electronic chat rooms where kids congregate, and instead scan the profiles these kids provide to online services - searching for information that might lead them to the vulnerable or the naive.
These examples - the first two from a survey of its 8- to 15-year-old subscribers by Zillions, the magazine for kids from Consumer Reports - are presented in "Trouble In Cyberspace?" an article in Zillions' September/October issue. They illustrate a growing threat to kids in the Information Age: the unwelcome, largely unregulated intrusion into their lives by some of the seedier and more shameless elements cruising the Internet.
For more than a year, privacy advocates and public-interest groups have argued for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) action to protect children from these intrusions, according to the September issue of Consumer Reports. In June of this year, as the U.S. Supreme Court was mulling the 1996 Communications Decency Act (the Court later struck it down), the FTC held a four-day workshop on ways to ensure privacy. There, Consumers Union - publisher of Zillions and Consumer Reports - offered cautionary views on the ability of the online industry to police itself, and on the effectiveness of new technology designed to protect children's privacy.
In the September issue of Consumer Reports, and in the September/October issue of Zillions (which, with this issue, begins a three-part series on kids and the Internet), Consumers
Union examines kids' use of the 'Net and the abuses sometimes visited upon them.
For example:
Consumers Union believes there must be a more foolproof way to protect kids from online predators, and from marketers who disguise their information gathering as entertainment, or who offer prizes to induce kids to part with personal information. Industry often points to blocking software, which lets a parent monitor and control a child's online activities, as an alternative to government intervention. But does this software protect privacy? Earlier this year, the FTC asked Consumers Union to find out. The organization tested three well-known products with privacy-protection features, each costing from $30-$40. (For its May 1997 issue, Consumer Reports tested the software to screen unacceptable web sites). The privacy tests measured how well the products prevented users from disclosing a prohibited name and address. The results:
Cybersitter performed best, withstanding most attempts to send an undisguised name and address over the Internet (although it let pass slightly modified versions in which letters were transposed, or in which one letter was substituted for another.)
Cyber Patrol (free to users of America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe) and Net Nanny were easily defeated, Consumer Reports notes. In one case, all the tester had to do was rename the Web browser on the computer's hard drive.
Given these shortcomings, Consumer Reports says, and the pervasiveness of privacy violations in cyberspace, the best way for parents to make sure their kids aren't divulging personal information online is to monitor the sites they visit and help them decide what information to give out and when. And kids, Zillions says, would be wise not to fill out those optional online profiles, since all they need to surf the 'Net is an account or user ID.
The September issue of Consumer Reports and the September/October issue of Zillions will be available Aug. 26. To order the Consumer Reports' Internet Privacy report by fax through Consumer Reports by Request, at a cost of $4 per report, call 800-419-9824 and specify code 5607. This report will also be available Aug. 26.
