Proposed Specifications for Parental Controls and Online Safety Features for MySpace

Andrew Sears (andrew@techmission.org)Executive Director, TechMission www.safefamilies.org

TechMission Safe Families Program• Safe Families Program is focused on providing

online safety for at-risk youth by:1. Distributing Free Internet Filtering Software to 100,000

families

2. Providing Training Website, Webcasts and DVD’s

3. Providing Online Safety and Recovery Manual• Versions for pastors, parents, individuals and nonprofits

4. Distributing Free Software CDs

• www.safefamilies.org• Funded by DoJ OJJDP

TechMission Programs

TechMission, Inc.

AC4(Digital Divide)

TechMission Corps (At-risk Youth)

Safe Families (Online Safety)

Volunteer Network

TechMission Network

TechMission: Who We Serve

• Goal: to reach 100,000 Families • Target Group: Under Resourced Communities

– 75% of participants are low-income– 84% are urban– 50% Black– 22% Latino

• Distribution– Online: directly to parents and community leaders– Through Faith-Based and Community

Organizations: targeting over 10,000 Black and Latino churches

Goals on Online Safety Features

• Provide parents with tools to protect their children

• Provide outward appearance of safety to deter potential perpetrators

• Provide community leaders with tools to protect children

Proposed Parent Friend Features

• Summary: Enable ability to link child account with parent account

• Ways to Link a Friend as a Parent to a Child’s Account– During account creation– Parent send friend request to child to be added as

a parent– Child send friend request to parent to be added

as parent• Once linked as a parent, parents get free

basic parental control features

Basic Parental Control Features (free for all users)• Parents page shows a quick summary of parental

controls and training– Show child’s friend list and account– Highlight any adult friends or friends on “probation” that the

child has

• Parent can choose whether to pre-approve friends• Parent can remove and ban friends• Parent can configure child’s account settings

– Provide High, Medium and Low security settings that preconfigure child’s account settings (or something similar that is easy to use)

Parent Configurable Settings (free for all users)• Parent has control over all existing

account settings for child

• Provide ability to disable E-mail, blogging, groups, forums, invites, etc.– Block viewing, block outgoing, block

incoming

• Provide ability to block categories of groups

MySpace Plus Account Features

• Parent pays for expanded features for child and gets advanced parental controls– Provide child with more music, videos, customizations, etc.– Youth trade privacy for parents paying for features

• Friend Monitoring Feature:– Provide flags to identify friends based on criteria (adults, keyword

search, individuals receiving many warnings from others)• Provide desktop widget showing child’s friends, activity

summary, etc. to act as a deterrent • Basic Message Monitoring Feature

– Monitor messages or postings to adults• “You’re on Probation” Feature

– Parents monitor all messages and activity• “You’re Grounded” Feature

– Suspend account for period determined by parent

Community Policing Features

• Goal: show potential perpetrators that other adults are in the loop– Avoid the perception that children are

unsupervised• Show icon next to parent’s name that

indicates they are parents • Add ability for adult friends to indicate other

roles (i.e. teacher, minister, etc.)– Show icon indicating role– Build in logic to avoid abuse that might make it

less useful (i.e. teens as parents of teens)

MySpace Probation Feature

• Users receiving frequent warnings or other indicators have accounts assigned probation status– Intermediate stage before dropping account

• Parents and community leaders could identify these users and monitor more closely

• Avoids perpetrators just creating another account– Enables parents to keep tabs on potential perpetrators

rather than losing ways to identify them when they create a new account

• Require IP address logging in messages from those on probation– Shown to both users as deterrent

Identifying Perpetrators

• Keep logs of IP addresses of users whose accounts are dropped– Identify IP addresses of frequent abusers– Identify IP address/domain name pools for

dynamic IP and DNS– Can identify abusers based on subnet or

subdomain even with dynamic IP address/DNS

MySpace Online Safety Section Suggestions• Create Online Safety Section with training

and features for:– Parents– Children– Community Leaders

• Provide– Online Safety Recommendations– Videos, webcasts, guidelines– Links to third party resources

TechMission Safe Families Internet Filtering Software• Building on the code base of the most

widely used Free Internet Filtering Software: We-Blocker– TechMission has taken over updates to

We-Blocker software (their last update was in 2001)

• Features– Keyword blocking, URL blocking, multiple

accounts, etc.

TechMission Proposal to MySpace• MySpace provides link in online safety

section to TechMission Safe Families Parental Controls– Builds trust of parents by providing free

filtering software– TechMission would be willing to co-brand

or re-brand the software with MySpace if desired

Appendix

TechMission Executive Director: Andrew Sears Bio

• Andrew has been working in using technology in social services since 1997. As an undergrad at the University of Missouri-Rolla, he was named the top student in Electrical Engineering in the USA for two years in a row by the Electrical Engineering Honor Society, HKN. He received his MS in Technology and Policy and MS in Computer Science at MIT. While at MIT, he co-founded the Internet and Telecoms Consortium, a research group focused on the societal implications of the Internet with an annual budget of over $1 million. He previously worked as a consultant serving as a systems analyst and new architect with St. Paul Venture Capital and Sprint. He most recently served as the co-founder and director of the PREP Community Computer Center, which served over 1,000 students.