Posted by Jacqueline BeauchereDirector, Trustworthy Computing Communications, Microsoft
Just more than half of U.S. parents say they’ve used family safety software to limit or monitor their child’s Internet use, according to a new study. Parents not using such features, meanwhile, say they have their own household rules in place, or they trust their children to act appropriately when going online.
The Family Online Safety Institute, a global, non-profit organization focused on making the Internet a safer place for children and families, released its first-ever report entitled “Parents’ Views of Online Safety.” The U.S.-wide study, sponsored by Microsoft and other FOSI partners Google, Verizon and AT&T, was released Wednesday during a special presentation in Washington, D.C. focused on online parental controls.
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Posted by Lili ChengGeneral Manager, FUSE Labs, Microsoft
This summer, my research team had six incredible interns, four women and two men. As they head back to college, and as I look at my own two high school aged children, I find myself wondering, what motivates young folks to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) degrees and careers, and what can we do to make STEM and computer science more appealing to more people?
Getting the facts, according to the Aug. 2011 study on the Gender Gap of Women in STEM from the U.S. Department of Commerce, of 44 million college graduates with jobs in the US; there were only 6.7 million males and 2.5 million females with STEM degrees.
Posted by Peter NeupertCorporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group, Microsoft
Today, I had the honor of participating in a Consumer Health IT Summit at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. It was great to see health IT stakeholders coming together to help drive the industry toward a more patient-centric health system, and I applaud the leadership at HHS and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology – particularly folks like Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and Farzad Mostashari – for drawing attention to the need for patient engagement and ‘data liberation.’
At the event, HHS announced that they are releasing a PHR Model Privacy Notice for PHR vendors – or personal health platforms like HealthVault – to use to communicate to consumers their data sharing and security policies. We intend to post our PHR Notice on HealthVault.com as soon as the HHS Web tool goes live later this week. We have been very focused on transparency and making it easy to understand how we approach privacy and security since we started working on HealthVault – because we know that transparency is required to enable trust. This notice offers another way to communicate our privacy and security practices, so we will use it and encourage our partners who build HealthVault apps to use it also.
Posted by Kim SanchezDirector, Trustworthy Computing Communications, Microsoft
A new Microsoft study shows that before posting personal information online, more than half of U.S. teens and parents don’t truly consider the potential consequences of their actions. Teens recognize the importance of limiting what they share online, yet they still reveal more personal data than their parents. Six in 10 teens also say they have “friends” in their social networks whom they’ve never met in person.
Chances are, you already have a “digital reputation,” and you may not even know it. On the Internet, we create an image of ourselves through the information we share in blogs, comments, tweets, photos, videos and the like. Others add their opinions – both good and bad – and contribute to our online reputations. Anyone can find this information and make judgments. Accordingly, everyone needs to be cognizant of what they’re posting online, and how that aggregated information can tell one’s personal story and shape their digital impression.
Posted by Brad SmithGeneral Counsel and Senior Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft
With Washington students heading back to school, September will see Microsoft build upon the many education-related investments the company has made to date in Washington state, and consider ways of taking them even farther as we move forward.
Microsoft is committed to the future prosperity of Washington, a state where 40,000 of our employees make their homes and many raise their families. Many of our employees have children who attend our public schools and universities, providing us with a daily appreciation for the importance of public education in the state. Central to the company’s commitment to education is our belief that every child in the state should have the opportunity to build the skills needed to compete in the 21st century economy and share in Washington’s future prosperity.
However, the state faces a number of challenges.