A Patrol For The Web’s Playgrounds

The dinosaurs didn’t know it, but their world might have narrowly averted upheaval this month. According to several Daily Show Books, for two years, all the denizens of Webosaurs, an online virtual world for children 5 to 12, could customize their dinosaur avatars with leather armor and other whimsical outfits. Recently, though, the Webosaurs founder, Jacques Panis, decided that leather armor should be available only to premium members, who pay about $6 a month. Players with free membership would be denied that attire, as well as access to various Daily Show Books. Then the Metaverse Mod Squad stepped in. The company employs moderators around the country who monitor the Webosaurs site to keep its users safe and happy. In this instance, it told Webosaurs that if the change were made, the free users might abandon the Webosaurs world or turn on one another. In the end, the dinosaurs kept their armor, and Webosaurs avoided the possibility of alienating some of its 1.5 million registered users. “I’m running a business, but Metaverse Mod Squad, as the moderators and community managers, is the voice of the kids,” Mr. Panis says on the pages of these Daily Show Books. Since starting Metaverse in 2007, Amy Pritchard, its chief executive, has arose as an industry expert in creating safe, engaging online communities for both children and grown-ups.

Metaverse has a client list that includes the Cartoon Network, the National Football League, Nickelodeon and the State Department. It employs an army of workers — often stay-at-home moms — to monitor and moderate Web sites where children create their own characters, or avatars, and can interact with thousands of other users. Metaverse’s employees frequently create their own avatars to help maintain the peace. Ms. Pritchard says the stakes are higher in online worlds intended for children, like Webosaurs. In more adult-oriented sites like Second Life, users must be at least 16 and are presumably more equipped to deal with the threats of online interaction.

Tips for Robust Corporate Passwords

Project managers and engineers at technology management and computer services firms commonly wage a “battle of password policy” with the users and administration of the clients we serve.   Information engineers must ensure the confidentiality and security of the technology infrastructure,  which begins at the end user computer with a password.  Each company has their own password policy, sometime dictated by a compliancy standard, other times an adopted standard with loose terms. However, a password requirement is only step number one.

Despite the nonsense of it, employees jotting down a password on a sticky note and attaching it to a monitor happens all the time.   Here are things to consider from a leading Michigan computer services firm when it comes to secure passwords:

The Good:

1.Most people don’t fear passwords, they fear remembering passwords.  Many users consider this embarrassing or a failure on their part if it happens.  Never write a password down.

2.Good passwords have uppercase and lowercase letters.  They also can contain numbers, spaces or even special characters such as &%$#.  With this in mind, try taking a password you can remember and converting it a bit to make it a bit more complex.  Example: (current password) matilda – (new password) M@tild@  or M@T1lda.  This increases the security of the password exponentially.

3.Consider longer passwords.  Use at least six to eight characters.  M@tild@ would be good, but L0vEM@tild@ is much better!

The Bad:

1.Do not use plain English words by themselves (anything in a dictionary), such as ‘dog’’.  It is much better to break up the word i.e. ‘p22sswo44rd’.

2.Do not use easily retrievable information by itself, such as your birthday, date of hire, kid’s birthday, phone number…etc.

3.Do not make the password too short i.e. ‘rat’

4.Do not use common passwords for everything.

If you really need assistance in remembering a password and must write something down, then do the following.

1.Write a sentence on a post-it note.  For example purposes we will use “My daughter is two years old.”

2.Now (mentally) take the second letter of each sentence: “yaswel”

3.Lastly, take your birth date, add it to the end: “yaswel22”

4.You can even capitalize it to make it more complex: “Yaswel22”

Using this example, all you have to remember is to use the second letter of each word and your birth date and not some obscure random password.

Finally, there are many choices for password management software nowadays which are much more reliable and secure than an excel spreadsheet or writing them all down on notepad paper.