Beginning November 2002, only news release
headings will be posted here with hotlinks to the full releases at PRWeb. We hope
you find this new format beneficial to your work. Media
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November 7, 2004 - SBC Unresponsive to, Identity Theft, Internet Fraud, Complaints
Reports to SBC of identity theft scam go unanswered. Fraudulent web sites remain to collect personal information.
April 1, 2004 - SurfSafely.com founder Mark Brasche shares spotlight at Internet Safety town meeting.
Westchester County takes proactive measures to combat Internet predators.
February
26, 2003 - SurfSafely.com founder Mark Brasche to speak
at SIFKaL conference in Seville, Spain, March 14-15, 2003.
Global Internet Safety initiative to feature prominent
speakers.
E.U. Safer Internet Action Plan taming waves for surfers.
November
24, 2002 - SurfSafely.com founder Mark Brasche skeptical of
.kids.us domain acceptance, urges Congress "Proceed with
caution."
Ability for .kids.us domain to create
a safe haven questionable.
Broad acceptance of .kids.us "safe haven" unlikely.
November
24, 2002 - SurfSafely.com elevates voluntary content labeling
to new heights at Comdex.
Platform for Internet Content Selection
(PICS) labeling embraced by Comdex delegates.
Popularity of voluntary content labeling rises.
 For
immediate release
Saturday, Sept 21, 2002
SurfSafely.com celebrates 3 years of continued service!
We're three years old! Since September of 1999,
SurfSafely.com has been the catalyst that many web developers
needed to voluntarily label their online content and remains
to this day the only Family Friendly web directory reserved
solely for PICS labeled content. Today our directory boasts
nearly 25,000 labeled web sites and receives approximately 300,000
unique visits per month from almost 10,000 referring web sites
in all corners of the globe.
"Congratulations to
SurfSafely on this anniversary. Their search engine and wider
network are a clear demonstration of how content providers'
self-labelling using the ICRA system can be used effectively
to offer a tailored online service that meets the demands of
its users." Phil Archer - ICRA
We're proud to be a part of the online movement
toward conscientious web publishing and responsible content
selection within our homes and schools. Together with the PICS
labeling authorities ICRA
and SafeSurf,
third party review authorities such as iWatchdog
and our good friends at Rackspace,
our expectations are high for a safer online community for us
all.
Friday,
February 22, 2002
SurfSafely.com announces plans to offer dial-up Internet service
SurfSafely.com will soon offer dial-up Internet
service through more than 1400 access numbers to subscribers
in the U.S. and soon in Canada. Branding will be under the name
SurfSafely.net. The service will be available prefiltered and
unfiltered, user selectable at any time through the master account
password in the online control panel with filtering broken down
into 38 categories. Pricing will be $19.95/month for unlimited
access. Each account will include 10 email addresses, 10 MB
of personal home page web space and 24/7 tech support! Enterprise
level web hosting is also available through New England Webmasters
for those needing a more robust solution for their online presence.
 Tuesday,
January 15, 2002
Rackspace hosts SurfSafely.com
SurfSafely.com would like to take this opportunity
to thank Rackspace, Inc. for their enormous generosity in hosting
our Family Friendly directory. Their commitment to satisfaction
and first class managed hosting make it possible for us to continue
to grow and assures that families and schools will continue
to enjoy the many benefits of a directory like ours open only
to voluntarily labeled content for a very long time to come.
Monday,
November 12, 2001
SurfSafely.com deploys new search engine
To better serve our users, SurfSafely.com has
been completely redeployed on an entirely new database engine
from the good folks at iWeb. Our many thanks go out to John Cokos,
iWeb CEO, who was and continues to be instrumental in helping
us to adapt the scripting to best suit our needs. Some of the
many new benefits include:
-
Much faster turn around time
from date of submission to date of inclusion. Updates should
now occur on a WEEKLY basis! There's nothing more frustrating
than submitting to a directory only to wait forever to see your
listing appear. NO MORE! This goes for new affiliates as well.
-
Search within search. Before
all we had was search within category. The problem was many
links in our directory are not categorized so that feature was
of only limited use. Now, with this feature, results can be
refined to the Nth degree!
-
[+, and] Required search
terms. "+" is not new but the"and" operator
is.
-
[-, not] Excluded search
terms. Like item 3, "-" is not new, but "not"
is. We're not taking any steps backward.
-
[or] Specify non-exclusive
search terms. For those extreme power searchers like myself
who appreciate Boolean operators, this one's for you!
-
[url:] Search by url (Like
AltaVista and Google) We had this with the previous engine but
url's appeared in regular searches. This tended to clutter the
results with unrelated information. Now, if you want to find
url's, you ask for url's.
-
[*] Wildcard matches. This
is one of my favorites! If a search for a term does not return
enough results, this allows you to search for parts of a term.
For instance, searching for inter* would find intern, internet,
interrogation, etc. Get into the habit of using * when you search
at SurfSafely.com. You'll like the results.
-
Private Label branding. We
are now licensing fully private labeled versions of our service
to ISP's, portals and PDA manufacturers who wish to express
their support of voluntary content labeling but still keep their
users theirs.
-
Built in multilingual support!
Because we are a GLOBAL resource, it has always been the objective
of SurfSafely.com to one day offer our service in more than
one language. With the new software, that dream can now become
reality! We're looking at mirroring in French, German, Spanish
and hopefully someday in Japanese!
This is a very exciting time for
us. We hope you will continue your support of our directory by making
SurfSafely.com your first stop each time you log onto the web and
labeling any sites you may have online.
Monday,
November 12, 2001
SurfSafely.com revises Terms of use to encompass "Site spamming"
In response to the growing trend of Site Spamming,
SurfSafely.com has revised its policies to address the issue.
"Site spamming" is the term used when users become bombarded
with numerous new browser windows just by going to a page and
is a favorite tool of porn predators. What then appears in the
new windows is entirely at the discretion of the web site operator
and often against our terms for inclusion in this directory. Sites
given to such practices, even though their material may be suitable,
will be barred from this directory until such time as they discontinue
this practice. Our rule of thumb for determining how much is too
much will be - Only one pop-up window allowed, pointing only to
content within the same domain to material suitable for our directory.
 June
5, 2001
SafeSurf and SurfSafely.com form wireless web alliance.
Ray Soular, co-creator of the SafeSurf PICS content
labeling standard and Mark Brasche, founder and CEO of SurfSafely.com,
a web directory exclusively for PICS labeled sites, announced
today the formation of an alliance together with the United Federation
of Childsafe Web Sites to work with manufacturers of wireless
Web enabled devices to voluntarily incorporate PICS filtering
as an integral part of the firmware and work with them in adopting
a standard on which it will be based. Already in discussions with
the alliance are Nokia and Qualcomm with many others preparing
to follow suit. "It can only work to enhance their brand
value, especially among parents concerned about access to content
that they can not be there to supervise." commented Brasche.
Because wireless web access is still very new,
for a short time we will have a small window of opportunity to
not repeat the same mistakes made when PICS filtering was first
introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium back in 1995. Like
any other consumer product that must be labeled, so too should
web content. By building PICS filters it into the firmware, parents
purchasing these devices for their children can configure them
to filter rated content based on viewing levels they set and block
unrated content. Web developers concerned about reaching as large
an audience as possible need only include a descriptor tag into
their sites to assure that their content is not blocked. And,
once labeled they can then be added to and searchable from the
SurfSafely.com web directory, the obvious choice for safety conscious
parents.
Freedom of speech for the developers and freedom
of choice for parents.
Win/win.
 May
8, 2001
ICRA recognizes SurfSafely.com search engine
Recognizing the unprecedented potential of the
Family Friendly Search Engine at http://surfsafely.com/ to promote
voluntary self labeling of web content, ICRA (The Internet Content
Rating Association, http://icra.org/)
today unveiled links to SurfSafely.com from both their PICS (Platform
for Internet Content Selection) labeling process results page
as well as the confirmation email sent to all who rate using their
labeling system.
SurfSafely.com is the only search engine of its
kind open only to PICS labeled content. As parents and teachers
become increasingly aware of the benefits of seeking labeled content,
so too do the web developers who see the added value of rating
their material in the additional traffic generated because of
it. Due to the exponential growth in popularity of the SurfSafely.com
search engine, web developers who submit their rated sites there
are virtually guaranteed substantial return on investment.
February 25, 2001
Surfsafely.com exhibits at SafeSurfing 2001, Singapore.
Great strides were made at Safe Surfing 2001 Singapore in the battle
to keep cyberspace safe for us all, children and parents alike.
Keynotes and conferences were chaired by such notable figures as
Stephen Balkam, executive director of ICRA, Nigel Williams, founder
of Chatdanger.com and ICRA board member, David Kerr, Executive director
of Internet Watch Foundation and many others. SurfSafely.com is
proud to have been a participant in this event.
We would also like to thank Mrs. Carmee Lim, chariman of PAGi (Parents
Advisory Group for the Internet) for inviting SurfSafely.com to
exhibit at Safe Surfing 2001 and sponsoring our booth space there.
Her zeal for children shines brightly in everything she does. May
she continue to teach and inspire us all.
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