On Q Professional Investigations

Are you reading this story on your phone via a link on Twitter, Facebook or some other social network? You’re not alone.

A new study by research firm comScore says 64.2 million U.S. citizens use their mobile devices for social networking, with more than half of them doing so “almost every day.”

A full 38.2 million people use social networks on their phones or tablets on a “near daily” basis, according to the report. What exactly are they doing? Reading updates from friends, the study says, with 84.6% of mobile social networkers checking out “posts from people known personally.” Posting status updates was the second most popular activity, with 73.6% of users partaking. It’s important to note comScore counts reading blogs as social networking.

While the study found users are most likely to read posts from friends, it also says people are increasingly using their social networks to interact with brands and organizations. Almost 58% of U.S. users read posts from companies or brands, and about 32% are said to be likely to click on ads while social networking.

The overall number of people experiencing social networks through their phones or tablets is surging. That 64 million figure is up 77% from the year before, and daily users are up 88%. That growth is tied directly to smartphone adoption, which comScore says is up to 41.8% of the phone-owning audience — up from 27% just a year ago.

The top app that people use to get their social on is Facebook. On both iOS (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) as well as Android, Facebook is the top social-networking app on mobile. Twitter is a distant second, much lower in the ranks than Facebook and even placing behind the social game Words With Friends on both platforms. (The list of top apps on iOS and Android is below.)

Although mobile social networking is rising rapidly, it’s not the reason people buy a smartphone. The study says a particular phone’s social-networking abilities was far down the list of factors in a purchase decision, the No. 1 being the network quality of the mobile service provider. The phone’s operating system and overall app selection also rank highly.

How often do you get social on your smartphone or tablet? Do you think the comScore study accurately reflects how people use social media on mobile devices?

City Clerk Susana Mendoza is investigating claims that the city’s 2012-13 vehicle sticker — intended for every windshield in the city — includes symbols honoring the gang that Police Supt. Garry McCarthy vowed to destroy.

The city sticker design — which includes the city’s skyline inside a heart, with hands pointing up towards a police hat, fire department helmet and paramedic symbol — was advertised as honoring Chicago’s emergency responders.

But allegations surfaced online Tuesday on a blog popular with Chicago Police officers that it in fact pays respect to the Maniac Latin Disciples, the street gang that Supt. McCarthy made public enemy number one following the shooting of little girls in June.

The heart is a symbol of the MLD’s, and it is alleged on the blog that the hands on the sticker are making the “pitchfork” hand symbol that MLD gang members use to identify themselves.

Herbert Pulgar, the 15-year-old Lawrence Hall Youth Services student who designed the sticker, has photos of youths throwing the sign on his Facebook page, and of himself in a red bandana — the MLD’s color.

The Facebook page, which also features a photo of Pulgar posing with the winning sticker design, includes a long section of comments about the photo with people showing gang signs. One commenter asks: “what u doing throwing up the fork ha what are u a gangbanger.”

Speaking Tuesday evening, Mendoza said she was “shocked” at the allegations about the sticker, which came “just days before we were about to print the stickers.” The city sells about 1.2 million stickers each year.

“We’re looking into it,” she said “We hope it’s not true.”

“We wanted something that would honor first responders and if that is not the case and it is something that disrespects the police, then, clearly, I don’t think that should be rewarded.”

Pulgar could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

Jill Watson, a spokesman for Lawrence Hall Youth Services, which cares for at-risk students, defended the freshman, saying “somebody recognized his talent and his beautiful artwork and it changed his life,” Watson said. “The sticker isn’t gang-related — it’s a beautiful piece of art.”

Ten police officers were on the committee that selected Pulgar’s work as a finalist for the city sticker, Watson said.

Mendoza said her family left a crime-ridden neighborhood because of the Latin Kings street gang when she was 8. “Hard working families should not have to move neighborhoods to get away from violence,” she said. “It’s a tragedy.”

Chicago Police Spokeswoman Melissa Stratton said the department was notified of the controversy.

“This matter has been brought to our attention and we are looking into it,” she said.

Jody Weis, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, which just published a book on Chicago gangs, told WGN-TV the hands in the student’s sticker drawing are “pretty consistent with gang signs.”

Around 18,000 Chicagoans voted for a city sticker design late last year. Pulgar’s was one of several potential sticker designs by Chicago students supplied to the Sun-Times by the city. The Sun-Times published the designs, encouraging people to vote for a winner on the city clerk’s website or in person at the city clerk’s office.

When he won the sticker contest last month, Pulgar praised first responders.

“Those people did a lot of things for me and my family,” a thrilled Herbert said last month.

He “nearly died” after he was severely burned when a candle set fire to his clothes as a young boy, he said at the time. “They’re Chicago’s heroes.”

Herbert said last month that his mom came up with the idea for the heart and he decided to incorporate the hands after noticing that they were featured in several previous winners.

When he found out he’d beaten 240 entrants to win, “I started screaming — I was so happy!” he said.

He also won a $1,000 savings bond.

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Malware attempts to steal money by duping the user into divulging an e-cash voucher

A new version of the Carberp Trojan attempts to steal money from Facebook users by duping them into divulging an e-cash voucher, researchers say.

“Carberp replaces any Facebook page the user navigates to with a fake page notifying the victim that his/her Facebook account is ‘temporarily locked,’” says Trusteer CTO Amit Klein in his blog. “The page asks the user for their first name, last name, email, date of birth, password and a Ukash 20 euro [approximately $25 US] voucher number to ‘confirm verification’ of their identity and unlock the account.

“The page claims the cash voucher will be ‘added to the user’s main Facebook account balance,’ which is obviously not the case,” Klein states. “Instead, the voucher number is transferred to the Carberp bot master, who presumably uses it as a cash equivalent, thus effectively defrauding the user of $25.”

The emerging man-in-the-browser (MitB) attack exploits the trust users have in Facebook and the anonymity of Ukash e-cash vouchers, Klein writes. “Unlike attacks against online banking applications that require transferring money to another account — which creates an auditable trail — this new Carberp attack allows fraudsters to use or sell the e-cash vouchers immediately, anywhere they are accepted on the Internet.”

This type of attack is likely to grow as e-cash becomes more frequently used, Klein warns. “Like card-not-present fraud, where cybercriminals use stolen debit and credit card information to make illegal online purchases without the risk of being caught, e-cash fraud is a low risk form of crime,” he says. “With e-cash, however, it is the account holder not the financial institution who assumes the liability for fraudulent transactions.”

Carberp, like its predecessors Zeus and Spyeye, infects machines through malicious files — such as PDFs and Excel documents — or drive-by downloads, according to a blog about the Carberp Trojan published by security firm Context Information Security. “In most cases, Carberp will persist undetected by antivirus software on the infected machine using advanced stealth, anti-debugging, and rootkit techniques, and is controlled from a central administrator control panel that allows the attacker to mine the stolen data,” the Context blog states. “Carberp is also part of a botnet that can take full control over infected hosts, while its complicated infection mechanisms and extensive functionality make it a prime candidate for more targeted attacks.” The malware uses multiple layers of obfuscation and encryption to remain hidden from malware analysis tools, the Context blog says. “Once embedded and decrypted, the real infection begins with malicious file dropping and process injection steps that provide a backdoor to the host under attack.”

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Facebook has apparently become the new “lipstick on your collar.”

Twenty percent of divorces involve Facebook and 80 percent of divorce lawyers have reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence, according to a survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

It’s so common that there’s a website dedicated to Facebook cheating.

FacebookCheating.com’s founder says he started the site after his now ex-wife had an affair with an old flame she re-ignited on Facebook.

The site is an outlet that gives tips on how to catch a cheating spouse in the age of social networks and heartbreaks across the Web.

“Facebook has ruined my marriage of almost 20 years,” a man wrote on another support group website, marriagehelper.com. “My wife ‘reconnected’ with old boy friends and even started innocently flirting with a stranger.”

Stories of infidelity posted on such websites illustrate how the social media network has helped to reconnect former lovers.

Even celebrities are not immune.

Actress Eva Longoria has said that husband Tony Parker strayed with a woman he kept in touch with on Facebook early in their marriage.

Indeed, real-life desperate housewives have discovered that opportunities to cheat aren’t sitting at the next barstool but a keystroke away.

Couples Led Astray

Marriage counselor Terry Real said he believes that Facebook can provide a sort of fantasy for a cheating spouse.

“There is nothing more seductive than the ‘one that got away’ fantasy is always better than someone who’s up to her eyeballs in bills and diapers,” he said.

The Rev. Cedric Miller, a pastor in New Jersey, made headlines recently when he called Facebook a “portal to infidelity” and told his parishioners to delete their accounts after 20 couples confessed that Facebook led them astray.

Miller himself took a leave of absence because of his own (non-Facebook) sexual transgressions. He later admitted to having a three-way sexual relationship in the past.

A connection is made and it starts out platonic and can later turn into something more. But such connections cannot solely be blamed on Facebook, therapists say.

“Before it was e-mail, then before that it was the phone,” Real said. “The problem is not Facebook, it is the loss of love in your marriage.”

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Even without appellate case law in Pennsylvania to provide guidance on the discoverability of information on Facebook, the standard is becoming clear: Post at your own risk.

Three courts in this state have now decided that, if a party in a civil case posts information on his or her Facebook page, and that information appears to contradict statements in discovery or testimony, then the party’s Facebook page falls within the scope of discovery.

In the most recent case, Largent v. Reed, a Franklin County judge ordered plaintiff Jennifer Largent to turn over her Facebook username and password to defendant Jessica Rosko, who allegedly caused an auto accident that left plaintiffs Jennifer and Keith Largent with “serious and permanent physical and mental injuries.”

The decision came in Common Pleas Court Judge Richard J. Walsh’s 14-page opinion, the beginning of which reads like a Sunday driver’s debriefing on the world’s most popular website. According to Walsh, Jennifer Largent’s Facebook page brought up questions about the extent of her injuries.

According to the opinion, the page reveals Jennifer Largent posted about going to the gym, despite testifying that she needed to walk with a cane. Pictures on the website show Largent “enjoying life with her family.” Walsh pointed to these examples from the “public” profile that helped satisfy the slight relevancy standard the defense needed to probe the rest of her page. The plaintiffs filed negligence and loss of consortium claims.

Walsh said there can be “little expectation of privacy” on a social networking site.

He said no court has ever recognized a “general privacy privilege” for Facebook information, “and neither will we.” The opinion, which also warns readers of the “dark side” of social media, opens with Facebook’s long-standing motto — “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life” — and goes on to quote the site’s policy on responding to legal requests, preventing harm and sharing user’s information.

“Only the uninitiated or foolish could believe that Facebook is an online lockbox of secrets,” Walsh said.

Walsh also addressed whether the 1986 Stored Communications Act prohibited disclosure of Largent’s Facebook information, a novel issue in Pennsylvania and a question he said only one other court in the country had discussed. The SCA did not apply to Largent, Walsh said, because Rosko was seeking information directly from the plaintiff rather than serving subpoenas on Facebook, itself. Walsh said the SCA only covered internet service providers, though he acknowledged the “terms are somewhat confusing because they reflect the state of computing technology as it existed in 1986.”

Largent joins Zimmerman v. Weis Markets Inc. and McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway Inc. as defense victories in a sprouting body of case law dealing with Facebook. The apparently lone plaintiff win on the subject in Pennsylvania — Piccolo v. Paterson — came after the plaintiffs attorney successfully argued his case was distinguishable from McMillen because there were no allegations his client posted one thing and said another.

The plaintiff cited Piccolo and a Philadelphia case, Kennedy v. Norfolk S. Corp., which was not available at press time.

Walsh said making a Facebook page “private” does not shield it from discovery because even private posts are shared with other people.

Jennifer Largent also said that disclosure of her account information would cause unreasonable embarrassment and annoyance, but Walsh rejected the argument.

Largent compared the discovery request to the court allowing for discovery of all of her private photo albums and e-mails.

“But those analogies are mistaken in their characterization of material on Facebook,” Walsh said. “Photographs posted on Facebook are not private, and Facebook postings are not the same as personal mail.”

He said Largent did not specifically identify anything to indicate such discovery would cause unreasonable embarrassment and added that a probe of her Facebook account was “one of the least burdensome ways to conduct discovery.”

Leonard Deutchman, who writes a cyber law column for the Pennsylvania Law Weekly, said the decision is more narrow than some of the leading federal case law dealing with Facebook, because the defendant in this case is seeking information directly from the plaintiff.

“Largent has far less to protect herself with from fending off discovery requests than would Facebook,” Deutchman said.

According to the opinion, the case stems from a chain-reaction accident in which Rosko allegedly collided with a minivan, driven by additional defendant Sagrario Pena, that then crashed into a motorcycle being ridden by both plaintiffs.

Rosko’s attorney, Donald L. Carmelite of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin in Harrisburg, declined to comment on the decision, citing his firm’s policy to not discuss cases with the media without prior consent from the client.

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TAMPA – Tonight, there are missing children out on the streets who may never be found. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children lists 285 Florida children as currently missing and endangered.

The I-Team has been able to locate 16 missing children as part of an ongoing investigation. It didn’t take private investigators, hours of combing through public records, or interviews with friends and family.

We found them when we discovered that many missing children have active Facebook pages. Many post where they are living, who they are with, photos, and even phone numbers. All of that information provides clues that could help bring the child to safety.

By reaching out to them on Facebook, I-Team investigator Michael George has been able to interview several missing children on the phone, online, and in person. The stories they told us raise questions about how much is being done to find them, and why they are still considered missing even after we found them so easily.

Alisha Lollis is one of Florida’s missing runaways. She was reported missing in July of 2010 after she ran from a group home. St. Petersburg Police say they had contact with her earlier this year, but she is still considered missing and endangered by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

We found her hiding in plain sight, living with a friend in Pinellas Park.

“What did you think when you heard from us?” asked investigator Michael George.

“I was like, wow. They found me after all this time? It was amazing,” Lollis said.

Lollis recently turned 18. Because her whereabouts and safety are unknown to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, she is still considered an endangered runaway.

She told us she was safe and doing well. She bounced from house to house, never staying in one place for too long. She says she’s overcome drug abuse, and she’s working to get her GED. But the road has been difficult.

“Let’s put it this way. I’ve been to like 13 different schools,” Lollis said.

A 15-year old runaway from Clearwater spoke with us online.

“Are you ok? Not in any danger?” George asked.

“yes im fine not in any danger i got the street smarts to keep myself safe,” she wrote back. She also told us she’s not in school and doesn’t have a job.

The children we located have been missing for months, and in some cases, years. We found them in just minutes by searching for them on Facebook. Some of the missing children wouldn’t speak with us, but the ones who did all told us no one had tried to locate them through Facebook before.

We passed along the information we found to FDLE, police departments and sheriff’s offices across Florida.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) say they do use Facebook to try and locate missing teens, as do local law enforcement agencies. But they add that teens who run away over and over again aren’t always a top priority for overworked police departments.

“That’s reality. You have agencies that have homicides, they have shootings, they have armed robberies, lots of priorities in the community,” said Robert Lowery, executive director of the missing child division of NCMEC.

Every law enforcement agency we spoke with insisted finding runaways is a priority and they use Facebook to find them. But they don’t contact them through their page, knowing that many runaways would simply block the page if they didn’t want to be found.

The Clearwater Police Department says they put a greater focus on locating runaways than most police departments. They say they often monitor and communicate with missing children on Facebook.

Authorities also argue that just because we found their Facebook pages doesn’t mean they’ll find the child.

“What we’ve found is a lot of times, the information kids post is not always current, or, they’re smart about it. If it’s a case where they don’t want to be found, maybe they’re not posting exactly the correct information,” said Clearwater Police Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Watts.

So why haven’t police made contact with the children we found? The answer may come from why they ran in the first place.

Many of the missing teens who spoke with Michael George said they’re running away from abuse, even rape. They said in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want to be found. They believed they were better off on their own.

Alisha Lollis said she’s been in hiding since facing physical abuse in her group home. A 16-year old runaway agreed to talk with us online, in the hopes that it would help us locate other missing kids.

But she also told us, “I know you’re a reporter, but if you get the cops involved you’re going to do a story on a 16-year old who died because you told the cops.”

She wouldn’t reveal her exact location. Lollis says she knows what the teen is going through.

“Is there any advice that you would have for them?” asked George.

“Go public. Don’t be scared about what people could say about you or what you’re going to go through,” Lollis said.

Lollis believes law enforcement could do more to locate repeat runaways.

“I know that when I ran away, I wanted someone to find me. I wanted someone to care enough to go looking for me. But that never happened,” Lollis said.

The I-Team is working to contact the parents of the children we located. But in some cases, the parents are harder to find than their missing children. Law enforcement tells us in at least some of the cases we uncovered, the parents lost custody of their children.

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The holiday season is approaching and so are the scammers. Already they rub their hands with glee, ready to traumatize consumers and businesses. McAfee, one of the world’s largest dedicated security technology companies, has released its “12 scams of Christmas” list to forewarn and forearm against the dozen most dangerous online scams this holiday season.

Topping the list is mobile malware, McAfee notes that a recent National Retail Federation survey discovered that 52.6 percent of U.S. consumers who own a smartphone will be using their device for holiday-shopping. “Malware targeted at mobile devices is on the rise, and Android smartphones are most at risk. McAfee cites a 76 percent increase in malware targeted at Android devices in the second quarter of 2011 over the first, making it the most targeted smartphone platform,” the company reports. “New malware has recently been found that targets QR codes, a digital barcode that consumers might scan with their smartphone to find good deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or just to learn about products they want to buy.”

At number two is malicious mobile applications– mobile apps that steal information from smartphones, or send out expensive text messages without a user’s consent. “Dangerous apps are usually offered for free, and masquerade as fun applications, such as games. For example, last year, 4.6 million Android smartphone users downloaded a suspicious wallpaper app that collected and transmitted user data to a site in China,” McAfee says.

Rounding out the top three are phony Facebook promotions and contests. “Who doesn’t want to win some free prizes or get a great deal around the holidays? Unfortunately, cyberscammers know that these are attractive lures and they have sprinkled Facebook with phony promotions and contests aimed at gathering personal information. A recent scam advertised two free airline tickets, but required participants to fill out multiple surveys requesting personal information,” the company states.

Here are rest of the top ten, as reported by McAfee in its press release.

Scareware, or fake antivirus software. Scareware is the fake antivirus software that tricks someone into believing that their computer is at risk–or already infected–so they agree to download and pay for phony software. This is one of the most common and dangerous Internet threats today, with an estimated one million victims falling for this scam each day. In October 2010, McAfee reported that scareware represented 23% of all dangerous Internet links, and it has been resurgent in recent months.

Holiday screensavers. Bringing holiday cheer to your home or work PC sounds like a fun idea to get into the holiday spirit, but be careful. A recent search for a Santa screensaver that promises to let you “fly with Santa in 3D” is malicious. Holiday-themed ringtones and e-cards have been known to be malicious too.

Mac malware. Until recently, Mac users felt pretty insulated from online security threats, since most were targeted at PCs. But with the growing popularity of Apple products, for both business and personal use, cybercriminals have designed a new wave of malware directed squarely at Mac users. According to McAfee Labs(TM), as of late 2010, there were 5,000 pieces of malware targeting Macs, and this number is increasing by 10 percent month on month.

Holiday phishing scams. Phishing is the act of tricking consumers into revealing information or performing actions they wouldn’t normally do online using phony email or social media posts. Cyberscammers know that most people are busy around the holidays so they tailor their emails and social messages with holiday themes in the hopes of tricking recipients into revealing personal information.

11/10/2011 – A common holiday phishing scam is a phony notice from UPS, saying you have a package and need to fill out an attached form to get it delivered. The form may ask for personal or financial details that will go straight into the hands of the cyberscammer. Banking phishing scams continue to be popular and the holiday season means consumers will be spending more money–and checking bank balances more often. From July to September of this year, McAfee Labs identified approximately 2,700 phishing URLs per day.

Smishing. SMS phishing remains a concern. Scammers send their fake messages via a text alert to a phone, notifying an unsuspecting consumer that his bank account has been compromised. The cybercriminals then direct the consumer to call a phone number to get it re-activated–and collects the user’s personal information including Social Security number, address, and account details.

Online Coupon Scams. An estimated 63 percent of shoppers search for online coupons or deals when they purchase something on the Internet, and recent NRF data (October 19, 2011) shows that consumers are also using their smartphones (17.3 percent) and tablets (21.5 percent) to redeem those coupons. But watch out, because the scammers know that by offering an irresistible online coupon, they can get people to hand over some of their personal information. One popular scam is to lure consumers with the hope of winning a “free” iPad. Consumers click on a “phishing” site, which can result in email spam and possibly dealing with identify theft. In another, consumers are offered an online coupon code and once they agree, are asked to provide personal information, including credit-card details, passwords and other financial data.

Mystery shoppers. Mystery shoppers are people who are hired to shop in a store and report back on the customer service. Sadly, scammers are now using this fun job to try to lure people into revealing personal and financial information. There have been reports of scammers sending text messages to victims, offering to pay them $50 an hour to be a mystery shopper, and instructing them to call a number if they are interested. Once the victim calls, they are asked for their personal information, including credit card and bank account numbers.

Hotel “wrong transaction” malware e-mails. Many people travel over the holidays, so it is no surprise that scammers have designed travel-related scams in the hopes of getting us to click on dangerous emails. In one recent example, a scammer sent out emails that appeared to be from a hotel, claiming that a “wrong transaction” had been discovered on the recipient’s credit card. It then asked them to fill out an attached refund form. Once opened, the attachment downloads malware onto their machine.

“It” Gift Scams. Every year there are hot holiday gifts, such as toys and gadgets, that sell out early in the season. When a gift is hot, not only do sellers mark up the price, but scammers will also start advertising these gifts on rogue websites and social networks, even if they don’t have them. So, consumers could wind up paying for an item and giving away credit card details only to receive nothing in return. Once the scammers have the personal financial details, there is little recourse.

“I’m away from home” scams. Posting information about a vacation on social networking sites could actually be dangerous. If someone is connected with people they don’t know on Facebook or other social networking sites, they could see their post and decide that it may be a good time to rob them. Furthermore, a quick online search can easily turn up their home address.

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Facebook is facing legal action in Germany over its controversial facial-recognition feature.

The state data protection authority in Hamburg is preparing to sue the social-networking giant over the feature, which automatically recognizes and tags photos in Facebook users’ networks, according to a report in Deutsche Welle.

“This requires storing a comprehensive database of the biometric features of all users,” the organization reportedly wrote in a German-language statement published on its Web site. “Facebook has introduced this feature in Europe, without informing the user and without obtaining the required consent. Unequivocal consent of the parties is required by both European and national data protection law.”

The organization said it has had conversations with Facebook in which the company promised it would inform users of the feature, adding that “further negotiations are pointless.”

Facebook responded by saying a lawsuit was “completely unnecessary.”

“The Tag Suggestions feature on Facebook is fully compliant with EU data protection laws,” Facebook representative Andrew Noyes said in a statement. “On top of that, we have given comprehensive notice and education to our users about Tag Suggestions and we provide very simple tools for people to opt out if they do not want to use this feature. We have considered carefully different options for making people even more aware of our privacy policies and are disappointed that the Hamburg DPA has not accepted these.”

The feature was quietly rolled out in June and immediately attracted the regulatory attention of the European Union, which announced it would study the feature for possible rule violations. Authorities in the U.K. and Ireland have also said they are reviewing the photo-tagging feature.

U.S. lawmakers criticized the company for making the requiring users to opt out of the feature rather than opt in. “Requiring users to disable this feature after they’ve already been included by Facebook is no substitute for an opt-in process,” Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said in a statement in June.

Even though Facebook allows users who don’t want to be identified by the feature to disable it, the company conceded at the time that it could have done a better job explaining how the feature works.

“We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them,” the company said in a statement in June.

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It’s not just teenagers, college kids and adults on Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster.  “Tweens,” and even younger kids, are curious about the social networking sites that they see their older siblings and parents participating in.

Facebook and MySpace require registered users to be at least 13 years old but we all know that it’s easy for a child to pretend to be older when they sign up for an account.  Researchers have confirmed that a growing number of children are ignoring the age requirement  -  or using social networking sites designed for younger children.

In two surveys reported in 2009 by Pew Internet Research — of 700 and 935 teens, respectively – 38% of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile on some website.

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42% said they do so daily. The data in the study was from 2006, so one can safely assume those numbers are higher in 2009.

Are children younger than 12 years old using social networking sites?  “Of course they are,” said Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at Pew and one of the report’s authors. “They’re using them because that’s where their social world is. Because there’s no effective way to age-verify … children very quickly realize, ‘I just say I’m 14 years old, and they’ll let me use this.’ ”

Many parents also worry that younger users of social networking sites could be targets for online predators. While there are some concerns that kids aren’t mature enough to make good decisions about their privacy, most are savvy enough by their early teens to know what, and who, to avoid. Younger children need more parental supervision.

Alternately, a growing number of networking sites are geared specifically toward kids under 13. Sites such as Disney’s Club Penguin — mainly a game site, but with limited social functions — WebKinz and Whyville feature more restricted and supervised networking. These kids-oriented sites are in a ways a  training ground for future use of mainstream social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook.

See a List of Social Networking Sites