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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
Kensington, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 2010/03/09 - Anne's Diary, Inc. announce the appointment of its CEO Pino Baldassarre to an important international child safety organization.
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Anne's Diary Inc are pleased to announce that Pino Baldasarre has been appointed to a committee for child safety on the Internet by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. UNICRI, as it is commonly known, is one of the 5 global Research and Training Institutes of the United Nations which report to the UN Secretary General. Its main headquarters are located in Turin, Italy.
Mr Baldassarre was chosen after sitting on the UNICRI roundtable discussion on the Permanent Observatory on Anti-Counterfeiting Systems (POAS) and the Worldwide Track and Trace Bank (WTTB) and because of his previous talks with the EU Commission on Internet safety and the Internet Safety Technical Task Force set up by industry and 50 Attorney's General in the US.
The software, which has been developed in-house, is several platforms brought into one offering which provides parental control functionality and social networking for young people. The most interesting thing for parents is that this is all provided for free and it is secure system delivering a safe environment for young people to interact.
The security for users is based on Verification, Personal Verification Questions, Password and SSL Encryption.
After the verification process, the parent and the child have access to three things:
1. The Koini Safe Browser. The parent can download this onto any computer that their kids use and once protection is turned on, the child is unable to IM anyone or search any sites that have not been approved by Koini or the parent. Only the parent can turn off use of this browser.
2. Koini Club. This is a social network for young people from 5 - 17 which is totally customizable. From the parent’s dashboard at Koini.com, the parent can now add children and set the parameters for their web experience. For example, if you have a 10 year old girl and you only want her to interact with other 10 year old girls on the Koini Club site then you can do that. If you have 15 year boy and you want him to be able to speak with 14,15 and 16 year old boys and girls then you can that.
3. Koini Cafe. Koini created the Koini Cafe where parents have the functionality of the Koini Club but for adults. Everyone on the site will have been verified and everyone is a parent, guardian, or family member of a Koini Club member so when you are chatting you can be certain you are speaking with the person they claim to be.
The simplicity of use of the system is something that the company concentrated a lot of effort on, "We are aware that some parents are not as technologically savvy as their children so we had to build a back-end, what we call 'The Dashboard', that had functionality but was easy for parents to navigate" Jorge Sariego, technical Director of Anne's Diary Inc said
Mr Baldassarre has been involved with the project from inception and has discussed the merits of such a system with officials at every level. "Having talked at the EU Convention on Internet Safety and with officials at the Internet Safety Technical Task Force on many occasions, I can safely say that software like Koini's are something that all these agencies are keen on."
“In my early discussions there were criticisms of some blocking software as too restrictive for children, which made it ineffectual as no young people wanted to use it. We took this on board at Koini by creating, not just a safe browser that filters content, but also our own safe social network, the Koini Club. This does what other social networks do but is completely customizable by parents. If a parent only wants her ten year old to see and interact with other ten year olds, then those parameters are easily set."
In my interaction with the committee on Internet Safety of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute my main aim will be to put the case forward for more work to be done in the area of child safety on the Net. I am a little disappointed that the recent Harvard Report on the dangers to children on the web was perceived as an 'all-clear' in many quarters, to put child safety on the back burner."
There is no doubt that the dangers are over-stated in some quarters but the tragic recent case of Ashleigh Hall is a horrific reminder that we have to be vigilant. One child abused, bullied or intimidated on the web is one too many. One child viewing pornographic material is one too many and one child harming themselves because of the Internet is one too many. This is the message that I will be taking to the committee.
Anne's Diary Inc is a developer of secure web sites and technologies for the use of young adults in particular. Developers of the first fingerprint enabled access and security package on the web they have now concentrated efforts on packaging what they have learned into the Koini.com platform.
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dbw[.]koini.com 
