Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on May 17, 2010 at 9:48 am
Authored by Andrea Brands, Director of Public Affairs for AT&T
Recently I talked to students who took part in the national Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day about online safety and mentioned how many of their grandparents were likely online, perhaps emailing with friends, researching second careers or even looking for love through an online dating site.
They giggled, “Noooo way! They’re dating? They’re on Facebook?” The look on their faces quickly went from amusement to disappointment: now EVERYONE is getting in on the act. Is nothing sacred?
I shouldn’t have been surprised at their response. When thinking of online safety, most adults probably think only of children and how to teach them responsible use of the Internet. While kids are a significant demographic on the Internet, especially mobile broadband, more and more seniors are turning to the Internet for professional, social and life-empowering tools – and online safety is just as important for them. Statistics show that broadband usage for seniors ages 65 and older has grown from 19 percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2009 – an increase of 58 percent in just one year. And as the FCC’s National Broadband Plan seeks to bring broadband capabilities to all Americans, online safety for seniors is more important than ever.
Like their children and grandchildren, this demographic is now communicating with friends and family via email and video chat, researching travel opportunities, paying bills, tracking financial information and even engaging in social media and online dating. But one of the most significant adaptations is older Americans’ use of telemedicine.
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Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on April 29, 2010 at 5:10 pm
The recent focus on the privacy policies of social networks reminded me of the changes to our Privacy Policies made last summer.
When we launched our revamped Privacy Policy last August – we collapsed 17 different Policies into one, plain-language, easy-to-understand set of privacy commitments (take a look at it and tell us what you think). We are proud of our new Privacy Policy, but agree with the FTC and others that privacy policies alone do not really engage consumers in decisions about how information is collected and used across the range of online services. In our Policy, we said we would continue to experiment with ways to improve transparency of our services. Last week we did just that.
We launched buzz.com, a new service linked with our popular Yellow Pages local search site. Using buzz.com, users can get and receive recommendations from friends, or the entire buzz.com community, on local services and retailers. For instance, you can search for a local dentist and find the local listings as well as get the unvarnished truth about them from the recommendations of your friends and other buzz.com users.
Obviously, this kind of service doesn’t just depend on the sharing of information — its entire point is the sharing of information. In fact, one of the most exciting prospects of this service is that you could get recommendations from people you actually know (and therefore can decide for yourself if it is good advice!). As a result, we wanted to make sure that our users understood exactly what they were signing up for. So, we took a new and innovative approach.
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Posted by: Brent Olson on February 25, 2010 at 9:46 am
If you’re not sure about what I just wrote, you’re not alone. According to Donna Rice Hughes, President of online safety organization Enough is Enough, too many parents don’t know either. That’s why she developed the Internet Safety 101SM program for parents and educators, which was officially released last week at a national press conference (AT&T was one of the sponsors of the program), and where she warned parents about the lingo predators use to entice children, like the example above.
The 101 program is a kit of sorts: a DVD teaching series, workbook and website to help educate and empower adults about online safety. Its “old school” use of technology, using DVDs and even paper, is purposeful because it’s directed at those parents and caregivers least comfortable with today’s digital world.
But its contents are anything but “old school.” The program teaches parents and caregivers not only how kids are using today’s technology, but what they are doing with it. The program uses real-life examples to personalize the issues kids are dealing with and to give parents a candid and honest assessment of the challenges they may face. While it can be uncomfortable at times, ultimately the program is not about creating new fear in parents and caregivers, but instead it’s about empowering them to help their kids be safe while still embracing all the extraordinary benefits of the Internet and 21st century technology.
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Recently I talked to students who took part in the national Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day about online safety and mentioned how many of their grandparents were likely online, perhaps emailing with friends, researching second careers or even looking for love through an online dating site.
