Blogger Be-A-ware

. . . Sophomore Corrine Havlin says even the modest photo of herself she's posted on her Facebook profile draws unwanted attention from male students. "It's not scandalous or anything, just a head shot, and guys I don't know are soliciting me for favors," she said.
"For some reason, a lot of students seem to think they can trust everything someone else posts on Facebook," Jones said. "But when you think about, that may not always be the case." . . .

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. . . blogs is that they are dangerous cruising grounds for sexual predators. Children have a higher chance of getting abducted on the way to or from school, it seems to me, than as a result of any of their online activity. The minuscule chance that a criminal will actually make contact with a child and locate him or her in real-time falls to zero if children promise that they will never post their last names, their addresses (home or e-mail), their phone numbers, or clear individual pictures of themselves on the Web - nor ever, under any circumstance, to agree to meet a stranger.
Kids, left largely to their own devices, are currently churning out relatively immature posts and pictures on today's social-networking sites. I won't deny it. But adults need to quit standing around and acting like a bunch of amateur plumbers who don't know how to diagnose the problem . . .

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. . . The students say they stay safe on the Internet by using common sense. They don't post pictures of themselves, don't give out phone numbers, names or private information and would never agree to meet someone from the Internet who they didn't know in person. Like many teenagers struggling for independence, they're concerned that personal privacy and first amendment rights of students are being overlooked in the name of safety . . .

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