Yahoo! Groups Safety Guide

What is Yahoo! Groups?

Yahoo! Groups is an online community where you can connect and interact with other people who share your interests and ideas. You can view and post messages, photos, polls, event listings, and links to other web sites. Users can create their own group or join one of the thousands of existing groups.

Groups can be made private for a limited set of friends and family or shared with a wider audience of Yahoo! Groups users. If you choose to create your own group, you manage the content and control who can join.

Yahoo!’s younger members might join a group for their high-school marching band or Boy Scouts troop, or meet new people in one dedicated to one of their interests, such as camping or video games.

To learn more, please read through Yahoo! Groups Help.

What are some risks to my child on Yahoo! Groups?

Yahoo! Groups users are expected to behave in ways that foster community and must abide by the Yahoo! Groups Guidelines, as well as the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

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

We suggest that you start by reviewing some general practices for online safety. In addition, please keep the following in mind when your child is using Yahoo! Groups:

• Protecting personal information. Children under the age of 13 are not permitted to create their own group. Younger users of Yahoo! Groups, especially those between the ages of 13 and 17, should be reminded that posting any personal information or photos could identify them to strangers.
• Harassment. If users can contact your child, they could potentially expose him or her to unpleasant, sexually suggestive, or abusive language. If this happens, your child should contact the group moderator or leave the group. Learn more about the visibility of your child’s email address and handling harassment.
• Mature content. Yahoo! Groups users over the age of 18 can post mature content. If the moderator of a group doesn’t place such content into an appropriate adult category, your teenager might come across it while searching Yahoo! Groups. If this happens, please report the abuse to Yahoo!.
• Impersonation. Someone could impersonate your child by creating a Yahoo! account and a Yahoo! Group. This person could post false information or send damaging emails in your child's name. Please report such abuse to Yahoo!.

What can be done to limit these risks? Review Yahoo! Groups’ safety features, learn how to report abuse, and read what parents and caregivers can do to help kids be safe on Yahoo! Groups.

What safety features should I know about to help protect my child on Yahoo! Groups?

In order to take advantage of the safety features available in Yahoo! Groups, your child should know how to do the following:

• Manage group subscriptions. Choose which profile, email address, and membership type to use for each group.
• Control who can see group memberships. Limit who can see which groups your child belongs to.
• Hide online status. Prevent other users from knowing that your child is online. Or work with your child to create a new public profile that limits personally identifiable information.
• Leave a group or unsubscribe. If inappropriate messages or photos appear in a group, your child can cancel his or her membership. The group will no longer be listed on your child’s My Groups page, and he or she will no longer receive messages.
• Limit unsolicited invitations. Group moderators can subscribe members to their groups or send invitations to join their group. Your child can opt out of this.
• Report abuse to Yahoo!. Please report any offensive content or inappropriate contact with other Yahoo! Groups users.

To protect younger users, Yahoo! Groups does not permit members under the age of 13 to create their own groups. Instead, they are encouraged to explore age-appropriate content and activities on Yahoo! Kids.

If your child is at least 13 years old and wants to create a group on Yahoo! Groups, make sure he or she knows how to do the following:

• Use the Membership Wizard. The wizard allows your child to control who is able to join his or her group, who can post messages, and what web features the group will use.
• Manage Group Settings. In the left column of the home page for your child’s group, click Management. In the Group Settings area, select Web Tools to manage the settings for the group’s links, database, polls, files, photos, calendar, and member profiles.
• Hide a group from the public. Your child can keep other users from knowing that his or her group exists.
• Remove a group member. Anyone who behaves inappropriately in the group can be removed.
• Ban someone from the group. Banning inappropriate users from your child's group will prevent them from joining the group in the first place, or rejoining the group if they were removed.

How can I report problems that my child encounters on Yahoo! Groups?

Yahoo! provides a customer care form to report abuse. Please complete this form if your child exposed to obscene language, mature content, threats of physical violence, harassment, or anything else that violates the Yahoo! Terms of Service or Yahoo! Groups Guidelines. Make sure to provide specific information about the location of the offending content and the identity of the user in question.

Yahoo!’s customer care team receives abuse reports and takes appropriate action as necessary, which may include deactivating an abuser’s account. Reports that indicate activity involving child pornography or solicitation of a minor are dealt with promptly by Yahoo!’s legal team and, when appropriate, reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

What can I do to help my child use Yahoo! Groups in a safe manner?

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

We suggest that you start by reviewing some general practices for online safety. These include safeguarding identity online, keeping passwords secret, being cautious about contact with strangers, and creating a pledge for online safety.

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

Please review the safety features on Yahoo! Groups and look at your child’s My Groups page periodically to see which ones he or she belongs to. You can review the message history of any group to see the topics of discussion, or contact the moderator to ask if the group is appropriate for children.

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