Face to Facebook

AT very least what the police did here violated the Terms of Agreement of Facebook, by setting up multiple false names, to talk to children. Then disclosing to the entire school private information which was gathered under false names. Was there anything else that she targeted? Usually the focus of this type of presentation is sex offenders on the Internet which wasn't mentioned but who were those humilated, and what information humilated them? As fragile as teenagers are I hope none do anything hurtful to themselves as a result of this!

3-6-2010 New Hampshire:

Opinions mixed on school’s social networking warning

LANGDON — There, on a screen in front of half of Fall Mountain Regional High School’s population, were students’ Facebook profiles. Their photos. Their writing. Their personal life for all to see.

For some students, it was an embarrassing, revealing moment.

For those who had set up Wednesday’s presentations, that was part of the desired reaction.

“I noticed students understanding the real dangers of putting their information out there,” said Fall Mountain Principal Thomas H. Ronning.

The goal was to show students how easy it could be for a stranger to get their information online, and how that information could be used against them and their families.

The presentations — one for freshmen and sophomores, one for juniors and seniors — were run by Jennifer Frank, an investigator with the Plymouth State University Police Department, who has worked on and spoken about social network safety concerns for a few years, she said.

Frank set up a Facebook account purportedly as a local teenager.

“What she does is she goes online and she befriends students,” Ronning said. “And then after that she ended up getting information that students openly divulge.”

That information includes birthdays and addresses. It includes phone numbers that can be used to find out addresses through online mapping sites.

A person, be it someone interested in finding the student or a burglar wondering when a house will be empty, could get that knowledge from a student’s Facebook page, Ronning said.

“That information can be used by anybody, and in this case Investigator Frank got the information,” Ronning said. “She could’ve opened up credit cards in their name. She could’ve been a sexual predator and found out when they were home alone.”

Steve Fortier, an Alstead resident and parent of a Fall Mountain student, said he understands why the presentation was done, his problem was with how it was done.

“I share the same concerns as the school and the intentions that they brought,” Fortier said. “But where it crossed the line for me is in the use of humiliation and degradation.”

Fortier said his daughter was not among those whose Facebook profiles were posted for all to see. But an employee of his — Fortier is executive director of the Meeting Waters YMCA in Vermont — was shown drinking a beer.

“It’s my understanding that it was not shared in context,” Fortier said. “This was an 18-year-old who went to Canada.”

Drinking ages vary in Canada, and in some places can be as low as 16 with parental guidance.

The presentation could’ve been done using fake Facebook postings “or drawing from a national pool of stupid Facebook posts made by kids and adults,” he said. “In this case, they used kids from our own school to make their point without any parental or teen approval.”

Bridgette Aumand of Walpole, a junior at the school, was one of those kids.

She says she was shocked to see a photo of herself used in the presentation — especially because she thought she was too smart for a stranger.

When Frank told the students which names she had been posing under, Bridgette said she breathed a sigh of relief: “I don’t add people I don’t know, or people who are a lot older than me, or a lot younger” to the list of people who can see what she posts, she said.

“If I don’t talk to someone (regularly) I’m not going to add them (as a friend) on my Facebook.”

But still, there she was on the screen, images that Frank had accessed because some of Bridgette’s Facebook friends weren’t as discriminating, and because her own privacy settings on the site weren’t as tight as she thought.

The site has a default setting that makes more information public than many people, including Bridgette, realize.

Immediately after school, Bridgette and her older sister, a senior at the school, sat down and tightened their Facebook security, and told their younger sister to do the same, she said.

Ronning said he heard a few complaints from parents and students about the presentation, but he also “overwhelmingly heard about the positive information that was shared.”

“I would do it again,” Ronning said.

Though she heard the message loud and clear, Bridgette agrees with Fortier that the point could have been made effectively without hurting students.

One post shown during the presentation was written by a student shortly after a breakup, she said.

“It was a really sad (entry), and to show that in front of 600, 700 students from our school ... That’s not right,” she said.

Names and faces should have been blurred so that the students would know their privacy settings weren’t strict enough, but their peers wouldn’t recognize them, she said.

“It was almost like a public punishment instead of an educational moment,” she said. ..Source.. David P. Greisman, Sentinel Staff