One of the popular tools hitting social networks lately are location applications such as FourSquare. When you register with one of these applications, it will update the social networks of your choosing with locations as you arrive at them.

I don't want to get into all the details about how to sign up and how it works. You can go to the site for those details. Instead, I wanted to share this with you in the interest of sharing knowledge of new uses for existing technology. I don't know how many teens are using this kind of technology, I only learned about it through a few of my friends (all adults).

The basics premise is that you use your cell phone to announce where you are at any given time to your friends on social networks. Here is an example of FourSquare in action when one of my friends went to a local restaurant. (His name and pictures covered for privacy).

Since my friend registered with FourSquare, he has "checked in" 103 times. This means that he posted that he was at a specific location on Facebook and Twitter 103 times.

The badges represent various things including how frequently you go to a specific location and if you have any friends that recently checked in at the same location.



Once you "check in", it shows up on the social networks that you specify. Here is what the check in looks like on Facebook.



And here is what it looks like on Twitter



While there are some benefits to using applications like FourSquare, you want to be careful how you use it. I think it is obvious that you wouldn't want to post your home address. What may not be obvious is that there is some level of risk that if you post your location and often visit the same locations at the same times.

The purpose of this article is to simply show you how existing technology is being used in new ways. It is up to you to decide if and how to use it for yourself and your family. What are some of the benefits you see in using FourSquare? What are some of the risks you see?

Recently Facebook has been under fire for a variety of reasons relating to privacy. For the record, I still have my Facebook profile. I do, however, treat Facebook like I do my personal blog, like I do any other place online where I can share a piece of myself. Anything I want to be kept private, I simply don't put online. I have posted tips on keeping yourself and your family safe while online, but I think CommonSenseMedia summed it up quite nicely:

3 Simple Rules to Keep in Mind

1. Stick with your friends. Have your teens limit their privacy settings to Only Friends. That'll restrict who sees your kids' information, including pictures, videos, and applications they use.
2. Keep private information private. When filling out their bios, teens can leave fields blank. There is no need for your teens to post their phone numbers or addresses. These features are optional and aren't required to create a Facebook account.
3. Don't let your information get away from you. If your teens haven't restricted who can share their information, their personal data can end up in the hands of marketers. Also, advise your teens to be on the lookout for personal information requests -- like their birthday or music playlist -- from third parties. And make sure your teens uncheck the public search results box so people can't find their Facebook page through a Google search.

What are some simple tips you have to keep yourself and family safe while online?

Here are 10 tips to help you surf the Web safely. Share any other tips you have in the comments.

10 - Who Wants To Know? When you are registering with web sites that ask for information that you don't think it makes sense for them to have, double check it how that informaiton could be used. For example, most of the time when you are commenting, or interacting in some way, it is normal for a site to ask for your email address. But if you are not buying anything, it is not normal to ask for payment information.

9 - Who Are You? It is important to not lie about your identity, but also not reveal too much. It is OK to tell your real first name and age. It is normally OK to share your home state. It is a bad idea to give your address, phone number, or any personally identifiable information to people you don't know in real life.

8 - Sticks and Stones: I have been called many names, by many people - some not so flattering. Many times the best way to stop a bully is to ignore them. Reputable communication tools have the ability to block or ignore users including AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM) and e-mail systems, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Twitter. Use them. Love them. It can help save your sanity.

7 - Just Say No: Kids should be taught to get an adult whenever they see something online that makes them uncomfortable. Whatever makes you uncomfortable should be reported, then you blocked so that person cannot contact you again.

An increasingly common marketing strategy for anyone looking to get the word out about something is to use social networking sites. At the moment, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are the most common vehicles for spreading messages about everything from what your favorite celebrity is eating for lunch to getting a discount on something at a retail store. Even small businesses are using this free form of marketing.

This year, a Girl Scout used You Tube to promote her cookie sale. The video started with her stating her full name, then saying that she wanted to sell 12,000 cookies and why she wanted to sell that many. On one hand, it is an innovative way to sell more cookies. On the other hand, a young girl is saying her full name in a video, doing what some could argue as potentially risky online behavior.

The Girl Scout and her father went on the Today Show with a representative of the Girl Scout organization. Watch this segment of the Today Show and let us know where you stand. Do you think Girl Scouts should be able to market themselves online in any (tasteful) way to sell the cookies? Or should they be barred from online promotion or sales for the sake of safety?

The FTC has a vested interest in making sure that we are all safe online. They would like for us to be savvy consumers. Savvy consumers don't always know every answer, but they at least know the questions to ask. What better way for the FTC to make you a savvy consumer than to provide the education themselves. And they did: FTC.gov/YouAreHere.

You Are Here is a campaign showing kids and teens how to be smarter consumers. Questions such as how to comparison shop, how to tell if a deal is too good to be true, and even how to protect your identity.

I love that the information is clear and age appropriate, but still covers everything you'd need to know. Although the site isn't 100% specific to online safety, it does cover identity protection, how to identify a scam and how to protect your privacy. Take a look at the site and share it with kids. Come back here and tell us what you think about it.

There is a debate about how or if parents should use spyware on their kids' computer to find out what their kids are doing online. This is a debate between parents, but is not a legal debate. Apparently a high school in Philadelphia took this idea to another level.

A Pennsylvania school district is being investigated by the FBI for remotely activating the web cams on the laptops they issued to students. The school district says that they were wanting to track online behavior when the students were supposed to be doing homework. The parents of these students disagree, saying it was a clear privacy violation. It is still unknown how the FBI will find, but I would not at all be surprised to find this a question posed to either the state's or the U.S. Supreme Court.

What do you think? Privacy violation or good intentions communicated poorly?

I love the Internet. I really do. It allows me to communicate with my friends and family around the world. It lets me instantly share pictures and videos of my daughter with her grand parents. It is also pretty great that the Internet provides me with a career. Even though I think the Internet is a great place, I am not foolish enough to think it is 100% perfect.

How to keep our families safe while using technology is just one of the challenges . Enough.org has some shocking statistics on their web site. This is just a small sampling:

- Every second, $3,075.64 is spent on pornography
- 79% of youth unwanted exposure to pornography occurs in the home
- Child pornography has become a $3 billion annual industry
- 20 percent of teens have engaged in cyberbullying behaviors, including posting mean or hurtful information or embarrassing pictures, spreading rumors, publicizing private communications, sending anonymous e-mails or cyberpranking someone.
- 14 percent 7th-9th grade students reported that they had communicated with someone online about sexual things
- 30 percent of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chat room. Only 7 percent, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online"

Enough Is Enough has developed a program called Internet Safety 101. Holly Hawkins, the Director of Consumer Policy & Child Safety (and one of our very own bloggers ) calls the program "a truly unique teaching series designed to bring Internet safety education into the busy lives of parents and other caregivers." She has witnessed how this program has really empowered parents and teachers regarding online safety.

I am not sure it is ever going to be possible to make the Internet 100% safe for all members of the family - but I do think that through education and empowerment, we can make it a safer place for everyone.

For Safer Internet Day, Canada is marking the occasion with a campaign by The Canadian Centre for Child Protection called The Door That's Not Locked.

One of the disconnects between kids and adults is that kids are being raised with the technology, so it is simply part of their world. Many adults have begun to use technology regularly, but in many cases there is a definitive line between online and offline. The youth are flowing easily between on and offline and in many ways, there is no difference. They are just two sides of the same coin.

The Door That's Not Locked campaign addresses the incorrect perception of some adults that the door is closed to knowing how to protect their kids because they need to know more about the tool than their kids to keep them safe. This comprehensive site is designed to educate teachers and parents with age specific tips and information, regardless of where the starting point is.

Do you feel like you know how to protect your kids and teens online?

I remember when Adam Walsh was abducted. I felt the fear of all the parents around me and it really made an impression. What made an even bigger impression on me is how his father, John Walsh, reacted. He took every parent's worst fear and turned it into an organization to help all the parents whose worst fears have been realized. He paved the path to legislative changes to help missing children and his non-profit merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where he is still on the board of directors.

While the Walsh family has my highest respect, the worst part about his story is that the services are needed. I hope that you will never have a need for these services. If I am wishing for things, I would wish that there was not a need for their services. Since there is a need – I am proud that AOL has been partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in many ways for more than 10 years.

Two services available on AOL that can help locate missing kids are:

Alerts: You can sign up to be alerted when an AMBER Alert is sent in the zip code of your choosing. These alerts notify you of a missing child in the area, so you can watch for them. As you know, the missing piece of information can come from anywhere. Alerts can come via e-mail, text message to your cell phone or via Instant Message.

Updated Notifications: You can include a widget for local missing children in your area by going to your local MapQuest page. If you can provide any information about any missing child, you can call the toll-free number 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).

The National Center's web site is full of information about protecting kids. I encourage you to check it out.

Common Sense Media recently posted a great article citing Norton's top 100 searches done by kids.

Of the top 100, I was not at all surprised by what was searched, but I have to admit that I was quite surprised how highly ranked some of the search terms were - especially 'sex' and 'porn'.

There are things you can do to help mitigate your child getting to search results that are not age appropriate. The article mentions several and AOL Parental Controls can also help.

This article made me think. Thankfully, my daughter isn't old enough for the computer, but I am not sure how I would react if I discovered she was searching on these terms. Now that you read their article - what (if anything) will you change about your online habits at home?

It's hard to believe that the past 10 years have flown by so quickly.

When looking at the Internet's road from 2000 to 2010, it is amazing how much has changed. In 2000...

• -- Google existed (it started in 1996), but was hardly a verb in the American lexicon.
• -- If you wanted to share your home videos, YouTube wasn't an option until 2005.
• -- Social Networking was happening via profiles, online chat rooms and message boards, but "Social Networking" didn't happen until the middle of the decade. Now people have multiple social networking sites.
• -- In 2000, media was defined as the newspapers, broadcast news and other forms of "news" we always knew. During this decade there was a new media created, Blogs. There are several blogs that are considered equals to the traditional media. There is even a woman named 26th most influential woman in media, who got there by blogging. That's it. Blogging. According to Wikipedia, as of 2007 there were 112,000,000 blogs.
• -- Speaking of Wikipedia - it didn't exist until 2001. It is a free encyclopedia that is created by anyone who wants to contribute to it. Because anyone can contribute or edit any article, it is hard to use it as a soul source of information - but it is generally a good place to start. In my circle of friends it is considered enough of a source to settle an argument.

With the good comes the bad. Before 2000, there was never a report of cyberbullying nor sexting. These are relatively new terms that brought online worlds crashing into our "offline" lives. We, as parents, have learned that our children don't see the distinct difference between online and offline like we do. This has changed the focus of parents slightly. Luckily the basics of parenting are still true.

Everything Internet related changed so quickly in this decade that I wonder what the world will be like in another 10 years. Do you have any predictions?

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act requires prior parental permission before a company can collect any personally identifiable information online about a child 12-years-old or younger.

The law dictates what counts as "personally identifiable" and companies work within this law. There is a recent controversy about the collection of children's chat discussions through parental control software. I will note that not all parental control software collects this information. For example, AOL's Parental Controls does not track what a child says, only where they go and with whom they communicate with via AOL mail and AIM.

Assuming the risk of exposing personally identifiable information is gone, what are your thoughts about parental controls collecting information from chat to sell to advertisers?

According to this article from examiner.com, the top five social networking sites (based on number of users) are:
MySpace (263 Million users)
Facebook (250 Million users)
Friendster (90 Million users)
Tagged (70 Million users)
Bebo ( 40 Million users)

Do you know all of these sites? Do your teens? Do they have profiles on any or all of them?

In the spirit of National Cyber Security Month, take some time to learn about the top social networking sites you don't already know about. Then talk about what you find with the whole family.

I've posted before about where education about online safety comes from, saying that it comes from all sources including schools, online, friends and parents. Here are some tips about discussing the topic of online safety with your kids.

Twitter, the 140 character long blog site, has some new tools that you might or might not know about. The one that caught my eye is Where.com's GPS Twitter. This is part of where.com, not twitter.com. When it is used, it tells you from where (via GPS in the cell phone) a tweet was posted. For use by adults, this could be useful. If your teen is likely to try something new like this, be sure they are aware what it means to be able to be found.

Having friends and family know where you are is one thing, but quite another if it is someone you don't know or don't want to know. Hopefully this is good information for you to know what is out there. Since teens aren't using Twitter as much as adults, so this may not be anything to worry about for your family. But as the Internet evolves, new functionality like this gets shared over many sites.

What do you think about this feature? Could it help your family keep track of where everyone is?

Neilsen reports that kids (age 2 - 11) are spending more time online than ever before. Parents, educators and online companies are trying to make sure that the time kids spent online is not harmful.

Schools spend a lot of time, money and effort keeping the students from freely searching the Internet. One common way to prevent kids from accessing unapproved sites at school is to use a firewall. A firewall allows or blocks certain sites from being accessed within the school's network. This article from the Washington Post suggests that the firewalls used in schools are like the Great Wall of China; much effort is put into blocking loopholes while students are busy searching for ways around them. To quote a colleague, it's like playing 'wack-a-mole'. As soon as you knock one down, another loophole is already found.

What are your thoughts about using filters in schools? Is it worth the game of 'wack-a-mole' to have the filters in place on school computers? Do you have another idea?