Security for underage users

Funzionalità
1

I’m excited about your take on forums structure and organization of online communities.

I’m considering using it in the near future for an educational community for children, where children aged 6-17 would be the main users, perhaps a few thousand of them.
Naturally I worry about their online safety, and how Discourse could be used to an advantage over existing forums.
For simplicity considering an all-private discourse forum, what security features are there to keep dangerous people away? Such as requiring an approval or invitation from X number of people before signing in, or the absence of private messages all-around.

I know about the 4 levels of trust already, but this is not enough to protect children, I think.

Thanks

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2

Firstly, IANAL. This is solely based on what I’ve heard and what I could find in the last n minutes.

If you’re doing anything with children under the age of 13, you need to read up on and comply with COPPA.

http://www.coppa.org/

From reading this page, here are some first steps: http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm

  • Make a custom Privacy Policy page at /admin/site_contents/privacy_policy
  • Place it somewhere prominent with /admin/site_contents/top and CSS
  • You also need to obtain ‘parental consent’. Consider making that part of your membership approval process.
  • Consider forgoing advertising and GA, as that will make compliance easier

I would also consult with a lawyer, as this stuff may be hard to get right.

This is not feasible, the flagging dialogue automatically creates PMs.

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3

We did add a “agreed to the terms and conditions” checkbox to new signups for a customer. You would definitely want that here – @neil how can they turn it on?

4

http://forum.example.com/admin/site_settings/category/legal

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5

What @riking said. tos_accept_required is one thing you’ll want to turn on.

Having some parents as moderators, or at least trusted members of the forum, could help too (unless it would stifle conversation to know that parents are reading everything). Education about flagging and how to spot suspicious activity can go a long way.

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6

Are there any updates on this issue?
Any new features?

Is it possible to block all private messaging among a certain class of users?

7

This would be really good.
Just messages to and from Admins and Mods.
One less thing to worry about if your forum’s a little wild and free to sign up.

I’m also very uncomfortable about the messages being read by admins. The topic was closed I wish it could be reopened.
A Boolean to salt and obfuscate?

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8

As I understand it, mods, and definitely administrators have the means to view private messages between other users. Coupled with some sort of homegrown reporting tool using the API, it should at least be easy to monitor for suspicious activity, particularly if PMs are expected to be a rarity.

Making it clear that you are doing this, or have the ability to do this may very well be enough to make troublemakers reconsider.

9

Mods can view flagged PMs only. Admins can view all PMs.

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10

I’m not seeing this in my setup. I’m on version 2.7.0.beta5. How do I enable this?

11

Hi,

This isn’t a setting anymore AFAIK

You can create a user field for this by going to admin > Customise > User Fields

Result:

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There is also a notice at the bottom reminding users about ToS and privacy etc.

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12

Noted with many thanks.

13

Ciao, hai trovato una risposta a questo? Stiamo pensando di disabilitare i messaggi privati tra i nostri under 18, ma consentire ai nostri over 18 di inviare messaggi privati.

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14

Al momento, a meno che qualcuno non mi corregga, è impostare U18 su TL1, ad esempio. Impostalo in modo che TL1 non possa inviare messaggi e TL2 (maggiorenni) possa inviare messaggi. Tuttavia, le persone potrebbero mentire. Nel mio esempio, cosa impedisce a qualcuno di semplicemente selezionare una casella?

Mi piace l’idea di consentire/non consentire i PM a livello di singolo utente.

15

Grazie a @martin qualche tempo fa abbiamo introdotto i “gruppi con messaggi personali abilitati” e i “gruppi con messaggi diretti abilitati”. Questo dovrebbe soddisfare le tue esigenze! Puoi creare un gruppo “maggiorenni” e usarlo qui.

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16

La stessa cosa che impedisce a chiunque di mentire in qualsiasi controllo a qualsiasi livello tu stia facendo, semplicemente dicendo “sì, ho 18 anni”.

Non c’è letteralmente nulla che tu possa fare per dimostrare che qualcuno sia un bambino che non richiederebbe uno sforzo straordinario e che non dovrebbe essere utilizzato su ogni singola persona. Anche questo è semplicistico da aggirare, a meno che tu non utilizzi un tale livello di intrusività che nessuno si preoccuperà di farlo per il tuo forum web.

Le tue uniche vere opzioni sono essere incredibilmente intrusivi nei confronti dell’intera comunità (ad esempio, controlliamo casualmente tutti i messaggi privati e blocchiamo qualsiasi riferimento a comunicazioni esterne) o fidarti che le persone non mentiranno e seguiranno i tuoi ambienti nel modo ideale.