The Teckki Says

I came across an online article about a Facebook fan page allegedly developed by high schoolers at a northern Chicago suburb for the purpose of posting and commenting on malicious gossip. The fan page contained posts that could be considered cyber-bullying, which is against the law in Illinois. Educators were swift in their reaction to this fan page, threatening posters who could be traced as current students with severe discipline, such as suspensions, banishment from events like proms and graduation, and possible expulsion. Criminal charges were also intimated.

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I quickly became a fan of the page in an effort to get more information on a topic I am presenting as part of a panel on Internet Security. What I found was a debate, along with comments, on free speech vs. responsibility. I even found a reporter soliciting material for a television story to be aired that evening. Access, speech, responsibility, and the subject of minors are the topics I want to focus on.

There is no reliable rating system other than the content itself that will keep minors from online sites. Devices, like cellular and smartphones, computers, PDA's, anything that has Internet access, is a channel to the Internet, and we have an appetite to see this technology proliferate to many, many more devices, such as appliances.

Many device makers brag about market penetration. Apple has sold over 30 million iPhones. Google's Android operating system is on millions of devices, and Google itself is the most popular search engine, handling well over 60% of the billions of searches performed daily. From a business standpoint, all of my clients are concerned about traffic and hit counts. How many of us ever stop to think that some of those hits are actually attributed to minors?

I remember the behavior that we displayed as kids. Anyone in school remembers incidents like a kid standing up, another kid sliding that kid's chair backward, and the first kid falls when trying to retake his seat. It always generated a laugh from virtually all but two people - the kid who fell backward, and the teacher. Embarrassment was limited to twenty to thirty other kids. Fast-forward this several decades: this same incident occurs, but someone creates a video using a smartphone with a camera. The event is then uploaded to YouTube, and goes viral. Now, that same incident is viewed by three million people. The naughty nature of kids in general has not changed, but their ability to display bad behavior to a larger audience has.

Kids' concepts of the whole world, even as high schoolers, are limited. Their world is the whole world. Television is the whole world. Their friends are the whole world. Their school is the whole world. But the big, BIG, WHOLE world? It’s almost inconceivable to them. Given that, should we really give them devices that will let them explore the BIG,WHOLE world, despite their limited understanding of it? What happened in the case of the cyber-bullying fan page is that many site posters were making malicious comments. When they got caught, they did what kids do - lie. "Someone hijacked my account and posted my picture." Really? Being kids, they don't understand that when evidence is presented that the IP address matches their cellphone or home computer, claiming that "they still didn’t do it" doesn’t cut it, but then again, they are kids.

If you've ever given your kids the keys to the house, or the keys to the car, didn’t you educate them about the responsibility of those things first, then continually refresh their knowledge, monitor their behavior, and mete out punishment for offenses? Aren’t your kids clear on the rules and the consequences of letting others borrow the house keys, or goofing off while driving? Then why do we give them souped up phones under the guise of safety, with little or no supervision? Why do we give eight-year-old's iPhones, as if they were the latest piece of new designer clothing?

I can guess why we give kids a phone but guard the house and car so carefully - it's because the phone is either cheap or free. We don't value the phone or think a lot about it, because we can afford it. We'll get mad if they lose it, of course, but it can be quickly replaced. Computers, which aren't free, are thought of just as carelessly, because the kids "need it for their education". Do we ever stop to think what other kinds of education they might be getting?

Basically, this is a call to be better parents. Since kids don't understand the scope and reach of their actions, we must intervene and stop giving them devices that are so powerful, inviting the very troubles we see. We have to do more than ask them what's on their phone. Just as we look around the house or car occasionally, checking up on them, we must look at their phones. What do you think would happen if you and your kids switched phones for a day? How about computers? How about playing those games you gave them for Christmas, birthdays or good grades? If they physically left the house, there's a good chance you would know, and would definitely ask them where they have been, but they travel all the world over on a Gameboy, and there is never as much as an accidental interruption.

Kids might cry invasion of privacy or free speech, but since when did they ever get those privileges? How about your right to enjoy services you purchased without having to account for their use to a principal, law enforcement, or a lawyer? How about your right to not lose those services because someone else abused them? How about your right to keep your name out of the newspaper because your kid did something that you are now ashamed of? How about the security of knowing that some 40-year-old is not knocking on your door in the middle of the night, looking for your 12-year-old, whom she met in a chat room while pretending to be 19? How about the right to know where your kid is at all times? I think your rights to these things trump any of their personal concerns.

It's past time to mind the store. I can tell you, you won't catch everything, just like our parents didn't catch everything. But it never meant that they weren't watching.

Every once in a while, I get an email from someone I have never heard of asking if I would put a link to their website address on my website, and in turn, they will place my website address on theirs. I never acknowledge or honor these requests, because in all most all instances, I have no idea who is making the request, nor do I understand just how what they are offering relates in the slightest to what I am doing.

My guess is that they are attempting to fool search engines by emulating popularity. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, send out automated programs, called web crawlers, all over the web to evaluate each website. Crawlers evaluate websites for the content and links on it. In the case of links, if your web address appears on several other websites, this is seen as your site being popular, because people are linking to it on their sites.

Let’s say, for example, you put out an interesting news release about your organization, that you are writing a blog, and you want to refer to the story on your website. You will link to it. If this story catches on in your blog, perhaps hundreds of other bloggers link to it as well. Search engines will measure this and assign the site of the original article with a higher popularity ranking, which helps the page get closer to the first page of a search.

Since the more links the better, some people decide it is easier to send a million emails to create these cross links. This might think this is a good idea, but it isn’t. What should you do if you are approached by email to do this? Here are some suggestions:

1. Never respond to these emails, even to tell them no thank you. Remember, these are often unsolicited, and if they are spammers, your response could verify the validity of your email address, setting you up to be a spam victim.
2. Don’t click on the links to find out who they are. Many websites contain viruses and malicious software that can infect your system by just visiting the site.
3. Don't do them any favors by adding their links to your site. If it is a malicious site, you could inadvertently subject your own visitors to spam and viruses.
4. Don't take them up the offer. They may or may not hold up their end of the deal.
5. Understand that this is an attempt at fraud. Search engine companies are always looking for fraud, and if your page continually turns up in the results of an unrelated search, the search engine companies may just decide that you are a fraud, and remove you from searches altogether.

Being first on a search appeals to a lot of people, obviously because it is free advertising. However, there are more honest ways to do this. Sending out emails blasts to people you don't know to crosslink sites is not one of those ways.