Profiles on Yahoo! Safety Guide

Safety Guide for Profiles on Yahoo!

What is Profiles on Yahoo!?

This feature displays your personal identity on Yahoo! and lets you easily connect and engage with the people, content, and applications that matter to you, wherever you are on Yahoo!. You can collect and share updates, text, photos, and videos with your connections, and connect to people with similar interests from just one place — your profile page. You can make your profile private, share it only with friends and family, or make it public.

The first few times that teens (registered as ages 13 through 17) go to their profile, Yahoo! will show them a video about how to stay safe, protect their reputation and look good online when using social networking sites.

What are some risks to my teen who uses Profiles on Yahoo!?

Visitors are expected to behave in ways that foster a positive community, and they must follow the Profiles on Yahoo! Community Guidelines as well as the Yahoo!Terms of Service.

Just as there may be risks in the community where you live, Profiles on Yahoo! may pose certain risks to teens. Profiles on Yahoo! provides a number of safety features, but as a parent or caregiver, you are expected to take an active role in protecting your teen online.

Please start by reviewing somegeneral practices for online safety. And please remember the following when your teen is updating his or her profile:

• Protecting personal information. Children under the age of 13 are not permitted to create a profile or post to other peoples’ profiles. Visitors who are 13 through 17 years of age should be reminded that posting personal information or photos could identify them to strangers or expose them to becoming targets of cyberbullying. A person’s profile privacy preferences can be set to limit contact with both unknown and known people.
• Harassment. If people can contact your teen and post on your teen’s profile, your teen might be exposed to unpleasant, sexually suggestive, or abusive language. Your teen’s profile privacy preferences can be modified.
• Mature content. Per our Community Guidelines, adult content is not allowed on Profiles on Yahoo!. If your teen comes across such content while browsing his or her connections and public profiles, please report the abuse to Yahoo!.
• Impersonation. Someone could impersonate your teen by creating a Yahoo! account and a profile. The impostor could post false information or send damaging emails in your teen’s name. If this happens, please report the abuse to Yahoo!.

To limit these risks, review the Profiles on Yahoo! safety features below, make it a practice to report abuse, and read more below about what parents and caregivers can do to help teens have a safer Profiles on Yahoo! experience.

What safety features can help protect my teen on Profiles?

For their own protection, children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create their own pages or establish communication with other people on Profiles on Yahoo!. Instead, we encourage them to explore age-appropriate content and activities on Yahoo! Kids.

Visitors of all ages are able to search for other people’s profiles, browse public profiles, and report abuse.

Visitors always have the option to share what they want with the people who are important to them and to control what their connections can and can’t see. The following safety and privacy features are in place for teens 13 through 17 years of age:

• Only your teen’s profile photo, display name, and gender can be seen by the public. Age, location, and status information will be visible only to their connections;
• Third-party developers create applications for Profiles on Yahoo! to enable all visitors, including teens and their friends, to connect on Yahoo! in fun and new ways through shared information. To customize these applications, third-party developers collect information from Profiles users. Teens can choose not to make their information available to third-party applications that their connections may have installed, so that third-party developers will not have access to private information that is hidden from connections.
• Teens can choose not to be listed in People Search so that others can’t find them by searching for a first name, last name, display name, or email address. A teen’s email address will not appear in search results in People Search.
• By default, teens are not visible to the public. Teens can only change their status to appear visible or invisible to their connections.
• Teens should always report abuse if they see content or behavior on a profile that violates the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Teens may edit their profile information anytime after they create their profile.

If your child is at least 13 years old and wants to make a profile, make sure you and he or she know how to:

• Use a display name alias. It can be used in place of your teen’s real Yahoo! ID and will appear on the top of the profile card. A display name alias without any personally identifiable information is best. For example, instead of "tedjones1992dallas," use something nondescript, such as "bluesky50." Learn more about choosing an online ID.
• Modify privacy settings. Your teen can be exposed to unpleasant, sexually suggestive, or abusive language from strangers or even from people your teen knows. To change your teen’s privacy preferences and limit contact with other people, click the Settings link in the upper-right corner of your teen’s profile. Use the Profiles privacy settings to specify who can contact your teen, send him or her invitations, and see and comment on his or her guestbook.
• Delete comments. If someone posts an unpleasant or inappropriate comment on your teen’s guestbook, you can remove it and limit who can post future comments. You can also remove any person as a connection.
• Ignore. To stop a specific Profiles on Yahoo! visitor from contacting your teen, click the Ignore link in the left column of his or her Profiles on Yahoo! page.
• Hide online status. Use this setting to prevent others from knowing that your teen is online.
• Use an avatar. An avatar is a customized cartoon character that can be used to represent your teen on Profiles and other Yahoo! services. Using Yahoo! Avatars, your teen can create a personalized avatar that’s fun and that takes the place of a photo.
• Report abuse to Yahoo!. To report any offensive content or inappropriate contact with other visitors, use the Report Abuse link in the bottom right corner of every Profiles page.

How can I report problems that my teen encounters on Profiles on Yahoo!?

Yahoo! provides a Report Abuse link on every person’s profile page on Yahoo!. If your teen is exposed to obscene language, mature content, threats of physical violence, harassment, or anything else that violates the Yahoo! Terms of Service or the Profiles on Yahoo! Community Guidelines, please click the link and complete the form. Please provide specific information about the location of the offending content and the identity of the user in question.

Yahoo! Customer Care receives abuse reports and takes appropriate action as necessary, which may include deactivating an abuser’s account. Yahoo!’s legal department deals promptly with reports that indicate activity involving child pornography or solicitation of a minor. When appropriate, such incidents are reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

What can I do to help my teen use Profiles on Yahoo! safely?

Yahoo! is committed to providing a safe online experience for everyone and complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Profiles provides a number of safety features to limit potential risks to users, which are outlined below. However, protecting children online is a responsibility shared with parents, teachers, and other caregivers.

Please review some general practices for online safety that include safeguarding identity online, keeping passwords secret, being cautious about contact with strangers, and creating a pledge for online safety.

If your teen is exposed to obscene language, mature content, threats of physical violence, harassment, or anything else that violates the Yahoo! Terms of Service or Profiles on Yahoo! Community Guidelines, please report the abuse.

Please review the safety features on Profiles on Yahoo! and work with your teen to set appropriate privacy preferences.

And remember, Yahoo! Kids offers all kinds of age-appropriate content and activities for children under the age of 13.