访谈录 2007-07-17&07-19, 网络相册的危险（在线收听）

Last week, Miss New Jersey told us how someone was trying to blackmail her, threatening to make public embarrassing photographs that she posted on her Facebook page. And you might be wondering what are your kids posting and how can you protect them from prying and potentially dangerous eyes online.

You know, they are, they are not that bad, but they were meant to be private, and that's making me feel very vulnerable that the entire country has to see them now.

Amy Polenbo may be a beauty queen, but she is no different from the average computer user who uses social networking websites to post personal photos. MySpace and Facebook collectively garner more than 90 million users posting personal information and photos. An estimated 4.7 million are under the age of 18 on MySpace and 4.3 million on Facebook. While most intend/ for the photos they post to be viewed by close friends and family. The stories of Miss New Jersey and that of American Idol contestant Antonella Barbara offer a sobering reminder. Even pictures meant to be kept private have a way of becoming public. In this new age of information, employers and school admissions councils are now using these sites to access information about job candidates and potential students. MySpace does offer privacy control for profiles in facebooks, limits access to people with the same network or groups. But there are still ways for people not connected to you to access personal information. And while devastating for her, the case of Miss New Jersey provides a valuable lesson for all Internet users.

Nothing you post on the Internet is private, even if it's in a privately accessed website.

Ruth Peters is a child psychologist, hey, Ruth, good morning. Nice to have you back. (Good morning, Matt) I, I, I look at it as the rules for photos online are a little bit like the rules for wearing a microphone around here. If you don't want someone to hear it, you don’t say while you are wearing a microphone. If you don't want someone to see the pictures, don't put them online.

There is absolutely no control once it goes online. I don't care if it says it's personal, it's private, whatever. Once it's on there, somebody can actually copy it, paste it to their own websites or into their own computers. And even if you sanitize that site afterward, those people still have it.

And if you are a parent, and you have got teenagers, daughter, sons, and, and ,and this kinda, this Facebook craze, this MySpace craze is part of their daily socialization, how do you convince them that what can seem fun at one moment can become a nightmare another moment.

Well, first of all, I think what Miss New Jersey did is, it probably did more for all of this than anybody of us could do. And so I think what you do (is) you talk to your child, you explain it to them , and then you have to supervise them. That's the key word; you have to supervise your kids online.

I'll talk about supervising them in just a second but I think a parent has(have) to say to a child, look, this is for your friends and your family. These are the people who are supposed to see these photos. (Right!) But it only takes one angry friend or one jealous friend to make these things public.

Exactly, and that's where we say you do not have control, and so if you want to send photos to your friends or families, send them an email with that on. It doesn't have to go into this public sphere.

So parents have to familiarize themselves with Facebook and MySpace and all these things, at least they can help their children.

And it’s easy, most parents think that the technology is a bafflement beyond them, but it's really very simple to start your own account, to go in, and be able to look and see what your children are doing.

Alright, so talk to me about different age groups and how much monitoring parents should be doing with their kids and these types of pages.

I think you start that with talk about who your kid is. There are some kids that are really good and really easy and all you have to do is just check it once in a while. But other kids who are squally and impulsive and you don't trust their judgement. Well, I would sit down and say, um, I'm paying for the Internet, what your site is on there is my site, it will embarrass me. I am gonna be checking it frequently and randomly.

Yeah, and parents should absolutely have the passwords, they should be able to get no matter what.

Or there is no site, I mean it's just very clear. I am paying for it, the password is mine too.

Dose the parent make the child responsible for everything on the site? In other words, you know, a friend can put something on my child’s Facebook account or what, MySpace page. So then is my child responsible for that?

Absolutely, and that's the rule I use with my kid clients. it is that I don't care what kind of language your friends are using, if it's on there and it’s bad language, you are responsible. You either have to block them or you lose the site. And your language has to be very appropriate because people will judge you by who you associate with.

And as these kids get older, they get to be of college age or at least college application age, and of job age, these accounts, these pages can come back to haunt them.

They are public, because, um, you know, the college admissions councils are now using them for grade school, and also employers, their HR departments are always going to look. So what I tell people to do is if you have to have an account, use your first name as your first name, your middle name as your last name, very difficult for other people to find out.

But again, the most important thing, it's not private. If you put it on the Internet in any way, shape or form, it's not private.

It's not private. And you wouldn't let your kid to go down the dark alley without supervision. Don't let them go into the dark alley of the Internet without supervision.

Ruth Peters, well said. Thanks very much.