I’m sure by now you’ve seen the news that the co-founder of MySpace has been caught faking his age on his MySpace profile. Quite ironic given the age verification issues social networks are facing these days. But now seems as good a time as any to say that age and identity verification doesn’t mean you can’t have an online persona that is or isn’t based on your true age.
While I would recommend not giving away any personally identifying information on your profile for the sake of safety (including your birthday), the point of having an age and identity verification solution within a social network is to function behind the scenes to verify someone is an adult and help us monitor what is appropriate for our kids.
Last week IDology representatives attended a forum on Internet Safety with Georgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue. This was part of the Governor’s Child Safety Internet initiative (a.k.a. CSI Georgia) and was well attended by teachers, law enforcement, child advocates, parents, and business leaders. Clearly as a community we are all concerned with keeping kids safe on the Internet.
There are two components to CSI Georgia which are prevention and enforcement. Prevention includes strong education and awareness initiatives towards caregivers, teachers and kids about the dangers of the Internet as well as how to stay safe. What I think is often overlooked in these discussions but definitely a strong component of any prevention initiative is the efforts ecommerce companies need to take to protect kids online. On the forum panel was Michael McKeehan, the Executive Director of Internet & Technology Policy from Verizon, which incidentally was the major sponsor of the event and is very committed to CSI Georgia as evident in their $25K grant announced during the event. This effort (and participation) by Verizon shows that the telecommunications industry is one of the leaders in taking proactive steps to protect kids not only in their education efforts but also their business practices as recommended through the CTIA guidelines regarding content access by minors. Boy, how I’m ready for the major social networks to follow the telecommunications industry example and adopt guidelines themselves.
In my personal efforts to further protect kids online through both promoting age verification and providing education, here are some programs you need to check out: