U B SAFE - A Hypothetical Resource for College Internet Denizens

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U B SAFE - A Hypothetical Resource for College Internet Denizens

3/25/2004

By Terry Calhoun

Some students might see it as a modern version of Reefer Madness, in that some of the behaviors it alerts parents to watch out for seem to be fairly normal and frequent behaviors of most college students. And it lacks any real assistance for dealing with viruses, worms, and the like.

From i-SAFE:

As the intro to i-safe.org notes, "Today's children (read "young adults") are the first generation to grow up with the Internet as a staple of society. They travel through cyberspace frequently - often alone - and commonly are more computer-savvy than their parents." And i-SAFE recognizes and addresses more problems than the FBI document d'es. One really good thing that it d'es it that it puts some of its learning in the form of little fact quizzes that users can take:

True or False:
· One out of every 33 kids and teens who use chat rooms have been asked to take it a step farther and meet in real life?
· Many kids and teens have been tricked by Internet predators and lured out of their homes and away from safety?
· If you download copyrighted material such as music or movies and distribute those materials, you can get into big trouble with the law?
· Someone can steal your identity using just your name, birthday, and zip code?
· A virus, worm, or Trojan Horse can destroy your computer, and that many of these types of malicious code can be found and destroyed quickly and easily before they cause any harm?
· i-SAFE has created a fun and easy way to help you and your friends, parents, schools, and communities raise awareness of Internet safety?

i-Safe then notes that the answer to all of these questions is "True."
Obvious, yes, but put to users in a non-threatening, "fun" way. Having a quiz that is self- or automatically-graded and positive in tone is a good "sneaky" way of putting useful information into young heads.

D'es this work, regarding cyber safety? One school assessed its effectiveness and found that large majorities of students said they were more careful online afterwards and make better choices about what to download. Some even changed their online name to something less self descriptive or suggestive. And most were less likely to try to meet someone face to face that they had only met on line.

i-SAFE is really well done and parallels to it would probably work for older young people, too. Imagine a short video of J-lo saying, with a snide toss of her hair, that she'd "have to be an idiot to open an unexpected e-mail attachment." Yeah, it would work.

D'es such a thing exist about safe computing for young adults? If you know of a good one, please let me know - splendid@umich.edu. My guess is that it's too large a task for any one college or university to take on, but that many attempts are made at inventing this wheel and that there are some good, campus-based resources. I think it'd be nice if some of the appropriate IT and student services organizations got together and created an online tool that mimics i-SAFE, but for college students.

Note: After this article went "to press," I had a telephone conversation with i-SAFE and learned that, although it is not obvious on the i-SAFE website, they do consider university and college staff as collaborators within the i-SAFE community, have programs tailored to them, and welcome inquiries.

About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.

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Terry Calhoun, "U B SAFE - A Hypothetical Resource for College Internet Denizens ," Campus Technology, 3/25/2004, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=39729

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