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Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

I am the very proud father of a 14yo girl whom I have turned into an teenaged IT guru over the years.

She learned to read at age 3 using the very well done "Cat In The Hat" desktop program, and since then I have turned her on to everything from Gmail at age 6 to Ableton at 12.

I've decided that Snapchat is where it ends for me/us last year...she needs something to be hers and her friends alone, without "Dad" poking is old-ass nose into things.

I think she really appreciates that I haven't bugged her about connecting and sharing on that platform, and I know deep down it was time.

But boy...do I sometimes miss that 6yo angel sending me cryptic "i luvu" via Gmail.

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I'm biased by my perceptive (legal) but imho girls between 12 and 18 should not be allowed connected cameras. I've had too many conversations with horrified fathers and crying children after a disturbing image ends up somewhere it was never meant to be. There are just too many people, and I include cops in this, out there looking to get kids into serious trouble. I know that kids live a life in pictures, but that public record of everyday activities too often come back to haunt them.

And fyi for fathers: Do not share a phone with your daughter. Do not borrow her phone, nor lend her yours. Some pictures are fine to be in her possession but if found in your possession could destroy your world.

Not boys? Boys send nudes too, and often request them. Isn't that soliciting child porn? We need to be feeding kids (boys and girls) way more information and hoping they don't mess up too badly.

I have yet to see a boy in my office. I'm in no doubt that it happens every day, but the cases I've had contact with all involved young girls, or at least images of them.

I think there is a different dynamic with males. Boys seem to show off by photographing themselves with things, with cars, cash or even tigers. [see link] Girls seem more likely to create images focusing on their person or their friends' persons. There is also some sexual dimorphism at work. Boys simply have less to physically cover, probably making inappropriate or accidentally inappropriate images less likely.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/25/new_york_bans...

http://tinderguyswithtigers.tumblr.com/

Maybe we could instead go after the people who want to make careers out of destroying teenage lives with trumped-up child pornography charges? They seem like the real enemy in this stuff.

Oh, that shit is awful too don't get me wrong. I was just trying to make the point that both boys and girls can get in serious trouble (legally and personally/socially). I don't get or agree with the sentiment that teen girls, alone, should not have access to cameras. Attacking the wrong part of the problem.

Are you going to be the representative or congressman who proposes a bill to decriminalise child porn? Or the president who signs an executive order to not prosecute child porn cases? How do you think that would play in the media and with the voters?

I'm aware of that feedback loop, but the comments I see here seem to view that kind of Draconian treatment of people, ones who are obviously not child pornographers or dangerous individuals, as a problem. So there seems to be at least a subset of voters who recognize the issue and think it's absurd.

This is partly a problem of common knowledge[1] - where lots of people are thinking the laws are absurd, but no one wants to be the first to say it openly, because they can't know for certain that anyone else is thinking the same thing. Getting a conversation going about how ridiculous some of these prosecutions for "child porn" are would be the first step towards a sane discussion of what those kinds of child protection laws should actually be, when they should be applied and when they shouldn't, etc, so that it stops being a third rail for lawmakers.

Might also point out that the recently passed "International Megan's Law" actually places a permanent mark on these people's passports labeling them as sex offenders.[2] These cases of a dad being permanently marked as a sex offender just for letting his daughter borrow his phone, or a 19 yro getting a naked pic from his 17 yro girlfriend, only end up being counterproductive to protecting the real victims. When you hear of someone labeled as a "sex offender" now, does it serve as a reliable warning? Or do you just wonder if the guy was unlucky enough to get caught pissing in public?

[1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2410

[2] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/obama_signs_int...

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you tell your daughter not or send nudes of herself to her friends, they might not end up on the internet.

> And fyi for fathers: Do not share a phone with your daughter. Do not borrow her phone, nor lend her yours. Some pictures are fine to be in her possession but if found in your possession could destroy your world.

And the fact that you have to say that is a great example of what's wrong with the legal system in the US. Common sense about applying laws has been stripped away.

> imho girls between 12 and 18 should not be allowed connected cameras

are you saying they shouldnt have a phone until they turn 18? that sounds super unrealistic

i think its important to respect their intelligence.

>There are just too many people, and I include cops in this, out there looking to get kids into serious trouble

maybe that is the problem we need to solve.

saying a young woman in high school shouldnt be allowed a phone sounds like victim blaming

    "i luvu" via Gmail

Ouch. Right in the onion sensor.

seriously. Memories of my 12-year-old doing the same.

My 7 year old sends me strings of poop emojis.

My kids were running around when they were 5 doing the Minions "bee-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo!" until my wife said "ENOUGH!"

They went to one of their iPods and SMSed "bee-doo!" to my wife. I don't think I've ever been prouder as a parent.

My wife does this to me :(

Which "Cat In The Hat" desktop program are you referring to? The CITH section of the PBS site, or something different? If the latter, then my Google-fu is currently failing me and would appreciate a pointer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dtqzn6WuHk

it's been virtualized and mobilized and everything by now, but kids have been entranced by this since I was a kid and something about the rhymes and the the drawings just work.

My house is a Linux house, so Thunderbird for mail. Over the years, it went from "that sucks compared to gmail" (didn't need to introduce gmail, friends I guess), to "Thunderbird is for our real email with our real domain, gmail accounts are for the other stuff"

I gave all the internet safety tips I could over the years, I don't want to know what "the other stuff" are!

Sorry for being an old-ass as well, but wasn't snapchat created to send nudes to other people in a way that they are automatically erased and can't be saved? I don't know if people still use it like that, but do you feel comfortable letting your 12 years old daughter use something like that?

As an old-ass father of 3 that pokes here and there I can tell you that does happen. However, that is hardly the point of it. It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched. Honestly, from what I can tell it is used far more for making funny faces and moments than anything else.

Besides, if you are concerned that they are showing each other their bodies you have more to worry about than snapchat because it is going to happen regardless. At least nobody has got an STD from snapchat.

And after the things I found when doing a backup of my 16 year old's computer I'm more concerned with the pictures that stick around than don't. We had a talk about why I never want pictures of naked teenage friends on my network.

But if you think you can stifle teenagers, you are wrong. You just push them into the shadows and you out of their life.

Yes, but you know snapchat pictures aren't really deleted right? 'Temporary pictures' is a proposition that doesn't actually exist in the digital realm, and certainly not when a VC-backed company is proposing it.

Compared to facebook they go away and it's more a "Probably" goes away.

I'm sure there will be a few snapchat users that will get screwed by this but at least the majority of the use will vanish before these kids are old enough for jobs and the shit they did on snapchat doesn't show up in a background check.

The article clearly states how you can take a screenshot of a snap, thus saving it forever. That has always been an issue.

Stop pretending you know what you're talking about. Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures? Snapchat handles more pictures per day than facebook[0], which gets almost half a billion per day. I know a few snapchat engineers that concur that Snapchat really does not keep any pictures, which allows them to make interesting optimizations that Facebook (and similar) can't.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/19/snapchat-reportedly-sees-mo...

How in the world does that work? I'm too old to have caught that wave, but I have a younger sister, and it's not like the snaps her friends send her go poof into the ether if her phone isn't on the network when they are sent. They've got to get queued up in storage on a server somewhere, they've got to get sent to her phone, and I assume, checksummed to make sure they didn't get corrupted in delivery, possibly resent?

I mean, I hope SnapChat isn't keeping photos, or else they'd be sitting on one of the largest collections of child porn in the world...

You're right, I could've been more specific - they definitely need to sit somewhere if the destination phone isn't on the network or something, but they are deleted once viewed or some timeout has been reached. This of course also doesn't consider ways that the destination phone could store the photo (screen shot or something). But as far as snapchat is concerned, it's gone.

Well, the delete action doesn't happen until they've been viewed. The original comment was suggesting that delete-means-soft-delete-not-destroy, not that the photos are never stored at all.

Please let's stop equating naked children to child porn. That only helps the status quo which is willing and able to destroy the life of innocent people

> Stop pretending you know what you're talking about.

Calm down.

> Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures?

Okay, fine. Even if the pictures aren't stored indefinitely (I'd assume they'd do batch deletions at the end of the day or something when latency isn't as important), all of the photos are encrypted with the same symmetric key which can be found in any Snapchat binary. Which means that they aren't any more private than sending unencrypted images.

Why aren't they encrypting end-to-end with private keys on the devices?

Because teenagers don't understand/care about that.

An idea that a couple of friends (can't remember if cyphar was one of them) and I came up with: piggyback some actual crypto on top of Snapchat, using steganography to initially transmit public keys. Would be interesting to see this happen.

I think I was there. Can't remember though. The issue is that Snapchat has gotten more stringent about image formats and things (remember when bad crypto could cause the app to crash?).

Because they don't do crypto properly. Some friends of mine broke Snapchat quite badly a few years ago (one of them goes through HN, so he might read this). The tl;dr is that you shouldn't trust any aspect of your security to proprietary services. Especially ones that don't do crypto properly.

According to https://www.snapchat.com/static_files/lawenforcement.pdf, Snapchat still stores a record of who you've snapped, and that information can be retrieved by courts/etc.

> Stop pretending you know what you're talking about.

Whoa, that's totally out of line here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment would be fine without the first sentence (and maybe the second).

I just wanted to say it's really nice to see this type of moderation. I'm much more in favor of corrective action than just removing comments.

Thanks for doing such good work!

Yes, they really are.

Read the "Message Deletion and Retention" section: https://www.snapchat.com/privacy

As a thought experiment, if you were the head of ISIS or the Russian ambassador in Washington DC, would you or would you not expect your snaps to be "really deleted" aka actually private? Honest question, not trolling.

Snapchat won't protect you from a state-level adversary, nor does it need to. It may, however, protect you from a disgruntled ex leaking your photos, or from an employer snooping on your private life. It may even protect you from yourself when you come across an old post you really didn't need to see.

Snapchat attempts to use technology to enforce the social contract of "please don't repeat everything I say to everyone you know, and don't hoard it indefinitely", which is established protocol for, say, actual in-person conversations. By implementing a casual form of endpoint security, a non-sophisticated actor at the receiving end may not break this social contract without repercussions, since nominally, only the official client can get the payload; the official client deletes the payload upon receipt, and if the official client detects that a screenshot was taken or the message was saved, it notifies the sender. That's the feature, not off-the-record messaging.

I would expect that if I were personally targeted by ie NSA, they could intercept the snaps in transit, and those copies would not be deleted. Short of that though, I certainly do believe that snaps are indeed completely deleted after they are viewed (unless the recipient makes a screenshot) because the risk to Snapchat of lying about that far, far outweighs any potential reward.

I would expect them to take a picture of their phone with the picture I send them with another camera and arhive them for security reasons.

Oh come on, every phone can take a screenshot. Once you send a picture out - it's forever on the internet. That nude picture will end up in 4chan, 9gag, other teen image posting websites, then a dozen creepy guys will save them and share their collection...

Agree. Oh, and it will be also be used to generate other nudes - people create fake accounts, send the nudes as if they were theirs, and incite the other person to send nudes of their own.

Instead, hold volume-down + power in your Android device.

I noticed several replies talking about Snapchat's practices, but no one commented on the huge number of applications that exist to download Snapchat content permanently and without triggering Snapchat's screenshot detection. It's not like these require any technical ability either: they are listed even in the iTunes Store and are very simple to use.

I'm not a parent, but if I had a child in the Snapchat age range I would show them how easy it is to make the impermanent permanent and that trust is placed on people, not technology. Untrustworthy people cannot be made trustworthy through technology.

In a way Snapchat is trying to be like DRM, and we all know how well that generally works.

> It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched.

I miss the old IRC. I do mean it, the world of emojis and stickers and selfies is too vibrant for me; IRC wasn't recorded, it was text, private and I do miss it. Still using it for IT and Open Source, but not for private stuff any more, because private friends refuses to use it.

> IRC wasn't recorded

Except by anyone in the room with logging enabled.

Much easier to plausibly deny it was you in IRC, with Snapchat etc, it's much harder to deny that you sent the photograph of yourself from your mobile device.

So the point is that it isn't graphic, but text only. Nothing to do with recording. Which is a big point... Snapchat can erase images, it doesn't matter. People can still capture them in other ways.

IRC has a protocol for avatar photos. Some clients will even download/display them automatically. And a lot of clients render emojis these days.

If by emoji you mean the unicode table, yes, you're right.

Would you prefer they share nudes over some other service that doesn't erase the photos and does allow them to be saved?

man this is scary for me, I'm about to have a baby girl (she already has a Gmail account), I know I'm far from the "dad doesn't get 'it'" phase, but it is still scary.

Do you have any tips to make this transition easy?

Every kid is different. You'll know what to do.

The great thing starting with a baby is you get to grow with them -- you don't have to be an expert right off the bat.

Gloria Wall (mother of four, spouse of Larry Wall) also has great advice that is worth repeating: You don't have to be an expert in children to be a parent -- you only have to be an expert in _your_ children.

Just after our son was born this was wonderfully summed up by a friend of mine as being like levelling up in a game. You start off with the absolute basics of keeping them fed and clean, and then just as you've got the hang of that something new is introduce. Before you know it you're at month 24, and seemingly without effort juggling food, drink, changes, entertainment, nap times, and telling them what they just said is probably not appropriate in front of granny.

That's exactly right. If you don't right away, it won't take long to find it.

Never forget to tell them "you are my vengeance on this world."

Congratulations!! I'm about to have a baby girl too (she is due on March 6).

I've been really stressed out about this, so I set out to have as many conversations with other dads as I could. The best thing that I heard was that you just need to accept it as part of their maturing process. You won't get it because you aren't meant to get it.

Then, I remind myself that when I was into AD&D, my Mom thought that I was worshipping Satan...:)

I would suggest you talk to mothers too, not just fathers. They might have insights that are important for you too :-)

Great advice. Also add your own parents to the list.

Great advice

Accept you "won't get it" early on.

I have four kids...two in college now...the other two are on track to be in a few years...I get compliments on them all the time...

The number one piece of advice I can give you is to suspend any preconceptions you have, consciously or unconsciously, about the kind of person they will be...don't force them into some mold you have in mind for them...they will be separate and distinct beings from birth...treat them as such with as much love and guidance as you can muster...let them breathe...

Also: Expose them to as many things as possible, and let them choose the things that they want to follow up on...

Model good behavior, so they will see what good behavior looks like...point out good behavior to them as opportunities arise...

And hope luck is with you...

This is very nice advice. Thank you!

Thank you very much, and congratulations on raising great kids. I'm really looking forward to the time ahead, the first few years are really fun - this is the time when you as a parent (or uncle/aunt) are a superhero to the child, you can do no wrong.

Even if they get to that phase it's often temporary. I've got a young daughter and in retrospect my dad seems a lot smarter than he did when I was a teenager.

But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/

I have a daughter who is always trying to compete with her older sister. One time she was chatting online with some creepy dudes in private. She saw her older sister chatting with teen friends and thought it was the same thing. I would try to lay some ground rules and keep at it. Being a dad ain't easy on the nerves with girls. Rules get broken, but just make sure your relationship with her isn't. Daddy time is important at any age.

Man, the age difference is what, 30-ish years? Of course you won't get it, and they won't 'get' your world. If you can comfortably relate to someone 30 years younger or older than you, something has gone wrong in your development.

Don't worry about it. You don't need to get it. You will hate her music, you will find her friends stupid children, she will think you're boring and no longer with it, and when she's grown up, you will annoy her with unwanted advice on how best to get around in the world of 20 years ago. It's an inevitable, normal part of life, not a problem.

Cat In The Hat desktop software?

Hm, I searched and found more than one. Various companies: The Learning Company. Borderbund. MacKiev.

Which did you have?

My younger brother had the Borderbund one. I recall it being a pretty decent piece of software.

This "Cat In The Hat" app looks quite nice. Is it Mac/iOS only? I can't find version for Windows :(

If I may... http://i.imgur.com/6e50Kwl.jpg

Please don't. It lowers the bar for the type of comments on HN.

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