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One in five of the nation's wired "tweens" -- kids ages 8 to 12 -- has posted personal information on the Internet, and more than a fourth have been contacted online by strangers, a poll released Tuesday found.

Although there are those high-profile news stories of how cyber bullying has led kids to commit suicide, most of it is much lower key. High-school-age kids tell stories of how cyber bullying has become a routine part of the world they inhabit, so pervasive that they can't imagine a time when it didn't take place.

This is great information to distribute at your next PTA meeting! The MySpace folks put control back in the hands of parents with their new ParentCare Software, a free, simple software tool designed to help parents safeguard their teens. ParentCare helps parents determine whether a child has a MySpace profile and validates the age, user name, and location listed by the teen. Currently in beta form and available for Windows users only. Both MySpace and IKeepSafe provide links to the download. The IKeepSafe site provides an additional flash video explaining the software. It is located at: http://www.ikeepsafe.org/parentcare/index.php

Pictures allegedly were uploaded to her MySpace profile, and then apparently leaked by the type of friends who make it unnecessary to have enemies. They've since made the rounds to all the typical tabloid style blogs out there, and of course all the folks posting them have made the appropriate amount of dismay and analysis on how this is going to ruin her career.

Amid all the initiatives in which Internet companies are supposed to make friends with each other-such as Facebook's Platform and Google's rival OpenSocial initiative-the announcement today by MySpace may well be the most useful to ordinary people and thus the most important: Users will be able to share their MySpace profile with other sites. MySpace has a good list of initial sites that will use some version of this feature: Yahoo, eBay, PhotoBucket, and yes Twitter.

Public Profiles Raise Questions of Propriety and Privacy. Article cites many of examples of inappropriate commentary from teachers on Facebook accounts that were not so private.

The folks at Dateline created this mock MYSPACE page to illustrate how information can become too much information. Roll your mouse over each part of the profile, to see why the information is potentially dangerous. This model could be used to open a great dialogue with students on cybersafety and privacy practices.

The concept of anytime, anywhere learning is not new to the majority of Northeastern University students. With personal Web sites, multi-functional cell phones, MP3 players, YouTube accounts, Facebook profiles, and gaming personas, students are sharing and creating knowledge at an unprecedented rate.\n\n

Many younger people have very nuanced ideas about Internet privacy. They post deeply personal information on social networking sites, but understand and use various privacy locks so only certain people can see their profiles. Good discussion points in here for a digital citizenship class.

When University of Texas researchers began studying Facebook friends, they expected that users also would exaggerate accomplishments and offer an enhanced version of themselves. To their surprise, they discovered that Facebook profiles typically gave an accurate and realistic impression of the user's real-life personality.

Law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, even going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that surfaced in a lawsuit.

You're on the Web all the time: updating profiles, blogging, texting, downloading, gaming and shopping. You've heard, read or seen things about cyberbullying, sexting, scams, spam and posting stuff you shouldn't. And maybe you've learned a thing or two about how to be online and be safe and responsible while you're there. Share your story with Trend Micro. Your video could be worth $10,000!

In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual's actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet. The FTC is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The FTC and Congress are weighing steps like tighter industry requirements and the creation of a "do not track" list, similar to the federal "do not call" list, to stop online monitoring.

College students prepping for life after graduation may want to take a closer look at their social networking profiles before they lose out on potential jobs. A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft revealed that 70 percent of hiring managers around the world have admitted to rejecting applicants due to information uncovered through online investigation.

FaceBook Safety Center - a revamped help portal featuring educational information for users, with sections dedicated to parents, teens, teachers and law enforcement professionals. The educator section contains quick and helpful advice for administrators, including advice for teachers with accounts and removing student profiles that are harmful in intent.

A quarter of UK internet users aged eight to 12 had profiles on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace last year, research has found, although the lowest minimum age set on any of the sites is 13. Ofcom's annual Children's Media Literacy Audit for 2009 also had bad news for the music industry, finding that 44% of children between 12 and 15 thought downloading shared copies of films and music for free should not be illegal.

This New Year, I resolve to Google myself regularly, delete outdated profiles and develop a cohesive online personal brand. I may be the social media professor, but my students taught me a big lesson.

Anthony Orsini sent an e-mail blast to the Benjamin Franklin Middle School community in Ridgewood, New Jersey, on Wednesday, urging parents to take down their children's online profiles on Facebook and elsewhere. "There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!," he wrote. "Let me repeat that - there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!" The main problem, he wrote, is that tweens do not have the resilience to withstand internet name-calling. "They are simply not psychologically ready for the damage that one mean person online can cause," he said.

While Facebook is adding users, MySpace is losing them. Many user profile pages on MySpace are either cluttered or neglected, resembling a strip mall with pockets of empty storefronts. The users who remain tend to be younger and poorer, putting a drag on advertising revenue from blue-chip clients.

In a ruling that could have significant ramifications for Web publishers, a federal appellate court has held that Yahoo could face liability for breach of contract for failing to delete a post that was meant to harrass a former girl friend.