On Thursday, March 12 members of the GetNetWise Advisory Board were given an advanced tour of the parental controls on Microsoft Windows 7, the next iteration of the Windows operating system. The tour included previews of how the new operating system would provide parents with choices for who their children contact and what content they view, among other things. Members of the GetNetWise Advisory Board routinely get together to share ideas about youth online safety and provide feedback to industry on how better to protect youth online.

Washington, DC - We were thrilled to hear on our evening commute that local radio personality Chilli Amar for Mix 107.3 lists GetNetWise.org as one of her favorite sites for “all you need to know about keeping the net safe.” Chilli also posted a blog about it on her blog.

The GetNetWise Blog is a new, periodic instructional blog dedicated to helping families and computer users make their Internet use safer and more rewarding. The GNW Blog will draw from the tremendous encyclopedic resources available at GetNetWise and provide actionable tips on Internet safety and security. The Blog will also present the many instructional Internet safety “how-to” video tutorials featured on GetNetWise with additional notes and context.

The Internet has transformed our lives and the lives of our children. The core mission of the GNW Blog is to empower users to harness the power of the Internet and provide them the basic literacy skills need to do so safely, privately and securely. The GNW Blog offers only help and instruction, not value judgments. We hope you will become regular readers and refer your friends, families and colleagues to the blog.

Please visit the GetNetWise Blog at http://www.getnetwise.org/blog/ that already contains two entries complete with video tutorials: the first one on using password protection in Apple OS X, and another on making social networking sites more private. Be sure to add our RSS feed to your preferred RSS reader.

We are pleased that the Telegraph, one of the UK’s leading news papers, has listed GetNetWise.org as one of it’s “101 Most Useful Web sites” this past week. In fact, GetNetWise comes in as number seven. This honor is similar to past acknowledgments by PC Magazine listing GetNetWise as one of the “Top 100 Classic Web sites“. We are delighted to share this recognition with our supporters, friends and colleagues.

On the policymaker education side of IEF Tim Lordan was asked by Federal Trade Commission staff to participate in a “roundtable discussion on phishing education” today, April 1, 2008. The FTC drew in experts on cyber security and consumer education for the event at their New Jersey Avenue meeting space.

Later in the month Tim Lordan will address the FTC’s “Mobile Marketing” Town Hall meeting on the topic of location privacy and safety. The Internet Caucus Advisory Committee has developed significant expertise in this area by looking at location issues since 2001. The ICAC hosted a major summit on the topic last year and is planning a follow-up location privacy and safety event this coming year.