This alert for Habbo Hotel's young users is actually a heads-up for everyone on the social Web. Users need to be alert about the "tools" they download to enhance their pages. Bloggernews.net mentions an alert from WebSense computer security firm specifically about "Trojan" keylogger software buried in one of those tools for Habbo users and […]

PBSKids.com has always meant ad-free entertainment for the littlest surfers. Now the US's Public Broadcasting Service has a new educational service for children 3-6: PBS Kids Play "is a subscription-based service that lets children play animated games with characters like Curious George and learn basic skills in reading, listening comprehension, and problem solving," CNET reports. […]

Literally cellphone planet: "The human race is crossing a line. There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth. From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years," the Washington Post reports. "This is the fastest […]

For some valuable high school students' views on cyberbullying, see the Paly Voice, the students online newspaper of Palo Alto High School. For example, it tells of how "many students who use Facebook to bully each other do not leave negative comments directly on each other's profiles because their identities would be made public." Instead […]

The "world's biggest adult film studio" is calling on some of the Web's biggest sites to do more to protect children from adult content. Vivid Entertainment co-founder Steven Hirsch said he was planning to "make his case publicly" at Yale's School of Management during the university's "Sex Week," Agence France Presse reports. He told AFP […]

Ireland's Ministry of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has just published a parents' guide to social networking, technology news site ENN reports. "The guide explains what social networking Web sites are and how they operate, all in a user-friendly format." The beauty of this is how available the booklet will be and that it's free. […]

Its appeal is both local and international. USATODAY offers a snapshot of how social networking is doing around the world, and even though US-based services have been expanding internationally for some time, most are doing so in a "local" (or national and regional way) with a lot of local competition (such as Mixi.jp in Japan, […]

Bulgaria's public discussion about children's online safety just got a boost from a national roundtable on the subject, SofiaEcho.com reports. The roundtable was held by Microsoft Bulgaria, Bulgarian child portal Az-deteto.com and the Blagodeyatel Foundation. Presented at it was a survey of Sofia children 6-14, which found that all of them use the Net. Most […]

Despite all that parents hear, "sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase [children's] risk of being victimized by online predators," according to a new analysis by the Crimes Against Children Research Center. US society has been overreacting, the CACRC's article in American Psychologist, "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims," indicates. Another myth, […]

NPR aired a story about a shop owner whose security cam recorded a thief scooping up and making off with a couple of watches. "After filing a police report, [the retailer] handed out fliers with the suspects' pictures and posted the surveillance tape on YouTube." Whether the motive is public humiliation or catching the thief, […]