Anne’s Diary - an ultra secure network for young girls

Posted on November 24, 2007 in Social
9 comments 

Keeping a diary is a great way to jot down those intimate thoughts and treasure past experiences. I’m actually talking about those thoughts and experiences you want nobody else to know ! I don’t keep a diary but if I ever have to write down something, I e-mail it to myself and store it in the archives.

Now that more and more diaries are going online thanks to MySpace, Xanga and Blogger; and that owners of those diaries are getting younger and younger, there is a growing concern of security of such children online.

One may argue that they take all necessary measures by monitoring activity, making sure that profiles can be viewed only by certain people and updating their firewalls and antivirus etc; but they can still make themselves vulnerable through entirely their own doing. Young children innocently do it all the time ! For example, when you were a kid, how many tiimes did you talk to strangers even when your parents told you not to !

There are hundreds of social networks out there designed fo children like Club Penguin, and imbee but one of them, Anne’s Diary really stands out when it comes to security, privacy and who it’s geared to.

Anne’s diary, launched only a couple of weeks back, is a Canadian social network designed exclusively for girls between the ages of 6 and 14. It was inspired by Anne of Green Gables, written by Lucy Montgomery of PEI. I too became a fan after watching the 2000 animated series on TVO.

I first heard of Anne’s diary when Cassie Campbell promoted it on CH At Home. Campbell was captain of the 2002 women’s hockey team in Salt Lake City and also of the 2006 team in Turin. The team won the gold medal both times. Now in retirement, she is known as a role model by being actively involved in communities and charities.

On Anne’s Diary, girls can manage their diaries, share specific contents with their friends and post pictures - which eventually gets them to be creative and stay connected.

What’s quite interesting about Anne’s diary is the security (or red tape) implemented. When parents sign-up their daughter, they need to provide details of a professional (besides them) who would be able to verify the name and age of the child. That’s like applying for a Canadian Passport !
They are then mailed a letter containing a username and password (for the parents) and a biometric-fingerprint reader (for the girl).

The Ontario Provincial Police also involved with Anne’s Diary to educate parents about online security and monitor unauthorised activity. You may think this all is about being over-protective, but think again about the horror-stories of online predators as reported by the media in the past !

All of this ofcourse comes at a price tag of $120 a year. But if your little girl really must go online, is this worthy of investment ?