MySpaceSafetyTips.com

Our new, freely downloadable and distributable PDF, "MySpace Primer: A Concise Guide on How to Use MySpace.com Safely and Responsibly" is now available on the Downloads page. The Primer is 38 pages long, with the pages sized small enough to permit convenient viewing on your screen using a PDF viewer. The Primer's original source is material from the How-To Primers book MySpace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens and Parents, which will be published and available at Amazon.com in late May. The Primer will be updated more frequently than the book, so while the Primer is derived from the book, it will also serve as a supplement to the book once the book is published.

The "Background & Lifestyle" tab on the "Edit Profile" page is a part of MySpace’s attempt to be a dating service. We do not recommend that teens use MySpace as a dating service, or to find a "serious relationship." The advice presented here applies to people (especially teens) who want to enjoy MySpace with friends or use it for shared interest or professional networking. For "Marital Status" the following options are available:

• In a Relationship
• Single
• Divorced
• Married
• Swinger (displayed only if you are 18 or older)

Whatever you select is displayed in the "Details" section below "Interests" on the left side of your profile page. The selection also means you’ll be in the search results when people look for the status you select. "Married" or "In a Relationship," depending on your age, are probably the safest selections (whether true or not). Either of these will ward away most malicious people who happen to browse your page. These selections will also keep you out of the search results where such a person specifies "Swinger" or "Single" as search criteria.

Immediately after joining MySpace, go to your home page and click the “Account Settings” link in the box at the upper left of the page. The “Account Settings” page is the most important page MySpace provides a user. This is the page where you can configure what access others have to your pages and posts on MySpace. From the account settings page, click “Privacy Settings.” Our recommended selections for the most critical privacy settings are as follows:

• Require email or last name to add me as a friend: if you check this, then others cannot request being your friend unless they know your last name or the email address you use for logging into MySpace; check this if your goal is to use MySpace only for contact with your real-life friends.
• Approve Comments before Posting: checking this is highly recommended; if you don’t check it, other people can post comments on your page without your awareness of what’s in the comment; checking this let’s you reject any comment that contains personal information that would let someone identify you, or content you don’t want associated with your online presence, before anyone else sees it.
• Hide Online Now: check this for safety and privacy, and to avoid some profile invasion scams; if you don’t check this, people you don’t know can see when you’re online on MySpace.
• No Pic Forwarding: for safety, this should be checked. Otherwise, people you don’t know can send emails with links to your pictures to other people you don’t know.
• Friend Only Blog Comments: if you use your blog as a kind of newsletter or online diary for sharing personal experiences with your friends, then check this option; if you use your blog for commentary on topics of general interest, like national politics or technology, it’s OK to leave this option unchecked, because in this case you are writing your blog to invite discussion from anyone interested in the topic. Most teens will want to check this option, so that only friends can post blog comments.
• Friend Only Group Invites: increasingly, people are using MySpace groups to post adult content. These people often invite MySpace members they don’t know to join the groups, in an attempt to boost the group’s membership count. Check this option to eliminate contacts of this type.

In addition, users under 18 can specify Who can view my full full profile? The choices are:

• My Friends Only
• Anyone under 18 on MySpace

If you select the "My Friends Only" option, your profile is said to be "private". This is the recommended setting for teens who are using MySpace for socializing with their real life friends—which is the only truly safe way to use MySpace if you’re a 14–17 year old. As of April 2006, the "Anyone under 18 on MySpace" setting did not work. In our testing, the teen’s profile is open to all MySpace users, regardless of age, if this option is selected. In addition, if "Anyone under 18 on MySpace" is selected, anyone on the Internet can view the profile. Being a MySpace member is not required. Therefore, we highly recommend that all 14 and 15 year-olds select "My Friends Only," thus setting their profile to private. Changes in account settings may not take effect immediately. After you change account settings, allow time, perhaps up to 30 minutes, before you conclude that your requested changes were not put into place.

The “Basic Info” tab of the MySpace “Edit Profile” screen has an entry where you respond to the prompt “I’d Like to Make Space for:” The available choices are: Dating Serious Relationship Friends Networking You can select any or all or none of these. Whatever you select is displayed in on your profile page and in search results. Someone using the MySpace browse or search functions can also use these “motive” choices as search criteria. That is, they can search only for people who have identified “Dating” as one of their reasons for joining MySpace. Before you join MySpace, it’s a good idea to know why you are joining it. If the reason is friends or networking, this guide can assist in making sure your MySpace experience is safe and secure. We highly recommend against teens using MySpace for dating or seeking a “serious relationship.” It’s too easy for people to role-play, and pretend they’re 18 when they are really 43. This is what happened in several of the most publicized incidents where contact on MySpace led to meetings that turned very bad.

When parents first discover MySpace, the initial reaction can be shock, followed by a response of “I will not allow my kids to go to this site.” Unfortunately, this type of response is not the answer, except in the case where the child is underage (13 and younger, in the case of MySpace.com). Banning MySpace isn’t an answer because the use of “social networking” Web sites like MySpace is considered a normal part of everyday life by a majority of teens. MySpace is hardly the only social networking site: there are Xanga, Friendster, FaceBook, and many others. Over 200 such sites were recently counted by one organization. These sites are very easy to start if you’ve got basic computer scripting talent, at a level that many high school teens and college students have today. Banning such sites won’t help. If something’s “normal” then young people will seek it out–when you’re not at home or not monitoring the computer, or using the computer at the home of a friend who is allowed to use MySpace, or with a computer at school or in the library. This is part of today’s normal life for teens. It doesn’t appear that things are going to change any time soon. So, what’s the appropriate response for parents? To get accustomed to the new world–to join MySpace, find out what it’s about, learn about and teach your teens about the risks, and ideally to enjoy participating with them in this new form of interaction that has become normal for the generation that is in its teens and early twenties right now. If you choose not to share these experiences with your children, then you may find yourself losing contact with them as they grow up and leave home as new adults.

Every teen remembers being told “Don’t talk to strangers” and “Never get into a car with a stranger” when they were young. If these rules are applied on MySpace, the possibility of something bad happening is minute. The risk can is much further reduced if you do not post provocative content (pictures, comments, blog entries). If you choose to do this, you’re sending a message to people you don’t know, who may interpret it in ways you don’t expect. The third level of safety comes from not posting information in your profile or elsewhere that enables a stranger to know where you live, where you go to school, where you go for fun, what your daily schedule is, what upcoming event you plan to attend, etc. Internet safety experts have recommended against posting this kind of information on public sites for a very long time. MySpace provides its own software-embedded safety with its account settings. These are discussed in Section 3 of the "MySpace Primer" document. Finally, there’s your brain. Use it when you’re online! Consciously think about the possible impact of what you’re typing into the computer. Think about who has the ability to see what you’re typing, not just about the friend or friends for whom you’re specifically writing your post. If it’s something that really only a particular friend or friends should see, then send it in an email message. Yes, email is boring, but the discussion here is about safety. Think before you publicly post!

The Internet is a very different “place” from the “real” world. Yet, in many ways, the Internet is quite similar to the natural world. People interact in both worlds. People misrepresent who they are in both worlds. However, the misrepresentation in the Internet world can be carried much farther, over a more extended period of time, because there is no way to prove the truth or falsity of how someone is representing themselves without real life contact with the person. Indeed, it is only at the moment when contact crosses over from the virtual contact of the Internet to real life when what seemed to be true online can be revealed very suddenly to have been a lie. This is the moment that must never arrive for a teen whose goal in joining MySpace is enjoyment of the unique social interaction it affords. How can this potentially terrifying and dangerous moment be avoided? It’s really not that difficult to accomplish if you stay aware and make certain that you apply online safety principles recommended by Internet safety experts. But to do that, you have to know what the safety principles are. Educate yourself before you go online.

Read the headlines, and it can sound like MySpace is the most dangerous place anyone can visit on the Internet. It’s not. Take any group of millions and millions of people, who are freely able to join and navigate a web site, and you are certainly going to have a large number of people who are a danger to other people, just as when you walk down any city street, some people you walk past who have been or will be a danger to other people. Many teens seem unaware that what they are posting can be viewed by anyone in the world who has an Internet connection, but unless they have taken specific action after joining MySpace, that is indeed the case. Meanwhile, the teens post pictures and blog away, oblivious to the likelihood that parents, teachers whom they’re ‘trashing’ or maliciously impersonating, police, and sexual predators may be reading every post. Entering information that will be displayed on an openly accessible Internet page is like posting the same information on a billboard that can be seen by all the billions of people who have an Internet connection. But is a teen who wants to get online because all his friends are doing it thinking about this? Probably not. So, is MySpace dangerous? Every open Internet site is somewhat dangerous, so yes. Can a MySpace user take steps to significantly reduce the risk involved in using the site, without losing any of the benefits the site offers? Yes, absolutely.

MySpace is one of a class of web sites that are termed “social networking” sites. People are given a web address where they can post information about themselves, and they can very conveniently contact other people on the same social networking site. Similar sites include Xanga.com, Friendster.com, and Facebook.com. The popularity of social networking sites continues to grow. For example, Yahoo! is inviting all of their Yahoo! Mail users to try out their new Yahoo! 360 (beta) service. MySpace.com is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which purchased the site for $580 million from Intermix Media July 2005. Since the News Corp buy-out, much has improved at MySpace. Enhanced technology resources are more effectively meeting the site’s ever-growing bandwidth requirements. Additional scrutiny of member sites is being applied, and the accounts of members who posting pornography or hate content are being deleted. There is a new commitment to addressing safety-related issues. And, enhanced customer service resources are making it much easier for people to contact MySpace for problems that require human intervention (such as deleting accounts of underage users and addressing identity theft).

Welcome to MySpaceSafetyTips.com. This site continues the MySpace.com related blogging that was initiated at HowToPrimers.com. HowToPrimers.com is the publisher of the soon-to-be-released book "MySpace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens and Parents" by Kevin and Dale Farnham. The book is in its final rewrite/editing phase, and should be available on Amazon.com and at the HowToPrimers.com site in late May. MySpaceSafetyTips.com will also host the "MySpace Primer" document, an introduction to MySpace.com from the point of view of safe and responsible use. This document will be available as a freely distributable PDF file. The contents of the document will also be hosted on this site as a set of web pages.