Parents Can Sign Up Kids to Not Get E-Mail

[angelize56]

I'll be among the first to sign up for this! I hope all states follow suit...it's a start to get these spammers away from our children! One drawback is the kids who fib about their ages or parents who don't know all their children's email addys! Kids can be sneaky!

Parents Can Sign Up Kids to Not Get E-Mail

Friday, July 01, 2005 4:28 a.m. ET

By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN Associated Press Writer

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Starting Friday, parents can sign up for what Michigan officials say is the nation's first registry aimed at keeping spammers from sending children inappropriate e-mail. The new law bans sending messages to children related to such things as pornography, illegal or prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms or fireworks. Parents and schools will be able to register children's e-mail addresses.

"From my perspective as a parent, I'm horrified by what comes in" to her three children's e-mail accounts, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said during a news conference Thursday. "This will put an end, we hope, to inappropriate e-mail getting to our children."

Signing up for the registry is free, and parents soon will be able to add their children's instant message IDs, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers and pager numbers.

E-mail senders must comply with the new law by Aug. 1. Violators face up to three years in jail or fines up to $30,000 if convicted of breaking the law, and could face civil penalties of up to $5,000 per message sent.

Some Internet safety experts have said anti-spam laws have been difficult to enforce and others worry the lists will give hackers a way to get access to a large database of children.

Public Service Commission Chairman Peter Lark said safeguards, including encryption of e-mail addresses and other information, will keep the Michigan registry secure.

Utah is getting ready to set up a similar registry for children there.

http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1057739

 

[angelize56]

All registered...very easy to do here in MI!

To get an idea of what you have to do to register:

https://www.protectmichild.com/registration.html

 

[Big-K]

As far as I know, an email address is useless to the medias version of the word 'hacker'.

 

[Rockn]

That make a lot o sense!! Parents can sign kids up to not get email...lemme think on that one for a while. Spammers have no idea who they are sending email to...Michigan officials must be complete morons. Nice waste of the taxpayers dollars there and have a wonderful time trying to enforce it.

 

[teengeekgrrl]

I disagree with that somewhat. It's a good idea. I will agree. But what if, for instance, I'm IMing or emailing a close friend from school, and they tell me they have a cocaine addiction? (Not likely, my friends aren'tthat type, but as an example...) If their email has the word "cocaine" in it, will it be blocked? I disagree with blockers in gneral, because you will ALWAYS have false positives. I have a little system set up for myself, as follows:

I have something like 4 or 5 email addresses: 1 POP addy from my ISP, 2 Yahoo!, 1 Gmail, and possibly one more, maybe Hotmail. LOL IDK.

I almost never give my ISP address to anyone but people I know personally or to places I know won't spam me that I will want to read as soon as I get it. (EG I gave the people at the camp I'm going to my ISP add so my roommate could email me etc.). I don't get spam at that one because I don't put it on the Internet or give it to anyone who would spam me.

My first Yahoo add was at one point my primary email, but then I got my own account with our new ISP. Now I use that one to do things like email support people about stuff I have, etc.

My second yahoo Add I use to sign up for newsletters and stuff... I rarely check it, and that's where I get most of my spam. =/

My Gmail add is new and I use it to sign up for forums like this one.

I have my email proggie set up to chek my ISP email once a minute, and I check all the rest a couple times a week. It works for me!

 

[teengeekgrrl]

Another note on blockers: About 10 of my friends online have AOL for an ISP. Most of them have parental contrrols on their accounts. Half the time, when I send one of these people a website, it is blocked. I have webspace with Geocities (run by Yahoo) and Tripod. I sent both of those to my one friend, and he couldn't access my Geocities site, (or even Yahoo.com for that matter! Yahoo is clean!!!!!! The Parental Controls were an excuse for them to not let people on their competitors' sites! x infinity). Then I sent an email to him with a link to tripod.com, and it came back saying that there was an error sanding the message because it had a link in it to a website which had generated many "complaints" from AOL customers. No joke. Riiiight. So Blockers suck in general. Popup blockers block things like poll results and new thread windows (for some other forums). You just can't "block" all your problems in life.

And it would be a list of children for some hacker to access. Encryptions are fairly easy to hack. (For some people... not me). If accessed, it would be spam hell for thousands of kids.

 

[angelize56]

Rockn: Whatever!

 

[teengeekgrrl]

Hey, Rockn had a good point!

 

[angelize56]

Rockn knows why I said "whatever"....

 

[HenryVI]

Oi agree wif Rockn

Let's use me for example (no not that way!! lol): My friend is spending the summer in Ukraine, and she emails us pics and info about what she does there. I have a friend that I met last school year cuz he was an exchange student and the only way I can talk wif him is through e-mail (he lives in Switzerland, imagine the phone bill if I called him )

 

[teengeekgrrl]

Henry, although the subject says that parents can sign kids up to not get email, It means that it's a filter which "blocks" inappropriate spam from getting to children. It isn't something that keeps kids from signing up for email accounts; not only would that be preposterous, but impossible. Many email sites don't even ask for a name or anything: it's just username, password, retype password, what's in the box?, and clicking the confirmation email. No name needed. =/

 

[Big-K]

They mean sign up not to get SPAM email.

There's absolutely no way they can keep anyone from getting email.

 

[teengeekgrrl]

lol Kevin... i beatcha to it

 

[Rockn]

The legislation has nothing to do with blocking anything. The people writing it are obvious techonomorons and have no idea about SPAM or anything else outside their little worlds.

Starting Friday, parents can sign up for what Michigan officials say is the nation's first registry aimed at keeping spammers from sending children inappropriate e-mail. The new law bans sending messages to children related to such things as pornography, illegal or prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms or fireworks. Parents and schools will be able to register children's e-mail addresses.

How is this registry going to keep a spammer form sending a message to the childs email address? How are they going to enforce it? Who will enforce it, the idiots that wrote the legislation....doubt it.

Signing up for the registry is free, and parents soon will be able to add their children's instant message IDs, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers and pager numbers.

Kids change IM addresses and free email accounts like they change underwear, so registering their information is pretty much useless. Kids shouldn't have mobile phones (unless they can afford them) and that would solve that problem. I don't know any kids that have fax numbers, rediculous!!

Violators face up to three years in jail or fines up to $30,000 if convicted of breaking the law, and could face civil penalties of up to $5,000 per message sent.

Again, who is going to enforce this? They wouldn't know an email header from their backsides. This is so stupid it is almost sad!

 

[teengeekgrrl]

Kids change IM addresses and free email accounts like they change underwear, so registering their information is pretty much useless. Kids shouldn't have mobile phones (unless they can afford them) and that would solve that problem. I don't know any kids that have fax numbers, rediculous!!

I disagree. I don't have a mobile phone, but my parents are telling me that I will probably get one very soon because I am in many afterschool activities (triple-booked some days this year! ). On several occasions, there have been mixups as to who brings me home from school those days, and If I had a cell phone I could call my parents without having to try to get inside a locked school after hours and finding a teacher with keys to the office at 4:30 so I can use that phone to locate someone. I don't know who I would talk to on my cell phone, but I can tell you not all of us kids use them to chat with our boyfriends/girlfriends 24/7. Emergencies can happen, and it helps to have a phone available for when they occur.