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FTC's Game Teaches Social Networking Skills
narramissic writes, "Your tax dollars at work. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an online quiz-show style game called Buddy Builder to test young users' abilities to spot potential threats on social networking Web sites. Naturally, the teen audience this is intended to reach is not going to go near the game except as a joke."
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It might not be good at all, but someone needs to teach kids about the threats and hazards of social networking sites. It might seem cheesy, but at least we're getting people working on solutions to help teach children.
Damn FTC - always ruining people's day. Here was me thinking xx_Sexy_Girl_99_xx was really interested in me, now I wonder why she always wanted my address.
Business Voyeur
Is this intended to be a warning for children?
It's more likely to be a how-to for perverts and pedophiles than anything else since children won't go near it.
you misspelt "shills"
[clever sig]
You'd think there'd be a link in the submission, but that's because you're new to slashdot.
Buddy Builder can be found here: http://onguardonline.gov/quiz/index.html
But whatever magic is needed to play, I don't have because it just pops up a blank window. Damn, now I'll never learn how to keep myself safe while having fun doing it!
Anyway, all I know from TFA is that this question: "Accept or Deny: Wazzup? I think I know U send me your pic (in swimsuit, pls!)?" was blatantly and may I add illegally ripped from my IM session. The worst part was that "partygrrl666", aka "Bert the middle aged FTC agent", did send me a pic of himself in a swimsuit. Okay, you got me twice now Bert!
The enemies of Democracy are
teaching social networking to someone who is sat at home on their own on a pc..
portfolio
Buddy Builder
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
http://www.onguardonline.gov/quiz/socialnetworking _quiz.html
They should be incorporating online safety into technology courses in schools, not making game-show parodies to teach kids about the dangers of the Internet. The fact that they make it a game says a lot about how serious they are about tackling this issue properly...
It's kinda funny - if you simply deny all the samples which use bad grammar and spelling, you'll get all but one right. And the one you get wrong is some guy you supposedly haven't seen for three years. All I can say is that if he can't bother putting in the effort to spell "you" and "are" out completely, he doesn't get on the friend list.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
As a teenager myself, I have to say there is little to no point in making these quizzes. How many people will go to that site who are not already computer savvy and so probably know more than the quizzes teach? I was able to easily get every answer right without trying, and could think of ways to rephrase questions to make them better. I realize people have to try to teach kids, but a poorly designed quiz on a government site is not the best way.
Naturally the teen audience is intelligent enough already to spot someone that is going to rape them. This is intended towards children.
(not too difficult), I think this was a good effort. A lot of kids or even adults do not have the required know-how about this. Personally I don't care too much [if people can identify me] but with what some people are posting they certainly should.
ISO certified == THX certified
At least the game said I did well enough to get on the Buddy All Stars list.
Of course, it didn't say how I would get on that list. Maybe they have a signup page where I can enter my name, address, social security number and a picture of myself in the bathtub. Oh, here it is.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I think the point is to get kids to go, I don't know that it will be any less effective if they think it is a joke.
Is it true that they used a similar flash-multimedia based test to determine whether Iraq had WMD's?
Look at the p2p section. It clearly was written by someone that has a clue. Their tips are: limit upload, be careful what your sharing and run antivirus. Those are the same basic tips that I would recomend to people using p2p. They don't seem to be doing any shilling for the *IAA's and the site is actually well layed out.
I could actually see it being a well rounded faq on common internet technologies for any age group. Just because its from the FCC doesnt mean its bad automatically. It does look like they did their home work on this one.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
...put my brain into "simulate teenager mode". My attention span ran out before the "Buddy Builder" splash screen had finished appearing. Sometimes I wonder if the people who make these kinds of things have any contact with teens.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's a small, simple game. It's actually noy as stupid as I was anticipating. The site also has games about identity theft and phishing, among others. Not everyone takes technology courses at school. Besides, mandating a new curriculum and either making states pay or using our tax dollars to pay is better how, exactly? Anyone can use these games. I, for one am glad that the government is spending what is no doubt a tiny fraction of our tax dollars on something which may actually help. Games are more accessible to the average joe than some dry textbook.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The questions on the quiz were pretty reasonable. However, I know plenty of adults who probably wouldn't pass. I find that there's a divide...around the age of 30 right now...between people who use social networking sites and those who don't. That means that there's a considerable need to educate parents, not just kids.
Based on the occasional hysteria over MySpace, many adults either assume that merely being on MySpace makes you a target for predators or on the other hand that kids implicitly know how to manage themselves. Like many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle - if you're reasonably careful, you can interact with people safely online. However, there are a few precautions to take.
This is all sound advice, but ultimately, better social networking software would go a long way towards privacy on the internet. MySpace is probably the worst, with basically only two options (private or public profile), and very little granular control. Livejournal has gotten better with friends filters, but for a while there, once someone was on your friends list, they had access to basically everything. I've heard facebook, with their StalkerHelper 2.0 additions can be considered one of the worst. I might want to be able to see all the comments I've posted, but I don't want other people to be able to see them.
I've been working on a distributed open source social networking software called Appleseed for a while now, and one of the big concerns I have is to make privacy controls as powerful as possible. This isn't just to keep xxhotbro34xx from chatting up 16 year old girls, although that's a nice addition. It's also because I want control of what's available to whom. If I post a blog entry, I want to be able to restrict it's viewing to only certain portions of my friends list.
What I coded in was Friends Circles, where you can categorize your friends into circles. One friend can be a member of multiple circles. Then, you can restrict your journal entries, photos, etc. according to your friends circles. Eventually everybody is going to be doing social networking, it'll be as common as email. And with that in mind, I want to be able to have my family on my friends list, while still being able to restrict their ability to see the photos of my new tattoo.
It's a simple idea, but it's really important, because for too long social networking functioned on the idea of Privacy Through Obscurity. People simply hoped that their personal information wouldn't be found by family members, employers, etc. But that day is long gone.
So it's important that social networking take the privacy of the individual strongly into consideration. I want to be able to have a social networking profile that I can show to anyone, while still being able to post pictures from that crazy party last week or journal entries about how I think my boss is an idiot.
And this stuff becomes even more important when you talk about teenagers getting on social networking sites. If I had kids, I would never let them get a myspace profile, but I wouldn't mind them getting an Appleseed profile after I explain how (and importantly, why) to use the privacy features to keep themselves safe.
Clearly, the FTC did something with a sincere intent, but /. can think of no way to present it except cynically. Is it surprising that techies have so little lobbying power and are not taken seriously by the mainstream?
A far more effective ad would be one which shows a potential employer giving a high school student/recent graduate a job interview. After the interview is over, cut to him doing a Google search for the applicant's name, and him going to the MySpace website. Then cut to him throwing his resume i the trash.
Seriously, I really fear for these kids putting so much of their lives online. They're going to regret it in 3-5 years when they graduate and find out they can't get a decent job because everyone knows all the nasty little things about their life no one should know.
That's funny. In my head I hear Parson's kid saying "You're a thought-criminal" over and over.
watch this Start at 1 hour 31 minutes. (or not)
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
http://onguardonline.gov/quiz/socialnetworking_qui z.html
Direct link to the game.
Being anonymous is not cowardice.
My god?! Did anyone actually play that game??!! It was boring and crap! I've sat through Occupational Health and Safety lectures that were more fun and exciting than that.
:) wanna chat?" is a threat?? That's never a threat, that's someone who's just found out they can message anyone in the world and say what they want without consequences.
The only thing that's good for is so the grade three students can have some "educational time on the internet" and play with the computers..
Really, I feel dumber having played that game -- seriously it says someone saying "hey baby - you look hot
If the aim is to make kids think that every educational authority wants to make piss weak applications and call them 'games' in an effort to push their conservitive views onto them... JOB WELL DONE!
As if Kismet can't detect "hidden" networks.
What we need to teach kids is how to ask questions only other kids know in order to verify the age of the person they're talking to. We should rely on the fact that the next generation will be smarter then us...questions like, "how do you program a set top box?" would eliminate most adults but I'm sure there are better ones:)
"And as we know, idle time is the devil's hands. Right?"
3 6255792191 (video above) @ 1:36:11
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-15513483
ZOMG!
Gimme gimme ... comon I know trix ...
Some of the questions are rather biased, what's wrong with giving someone your first name? I had to answer a fair few 'wrongly' to finish the game