I had a great chat this week with Emily Want, CEO of Anne’s Diary. A subsidiary of Logica Holdings Group, the site launched in November and quickly gained the valuable reputation of becoming one of the Internet’s "super-safest social networks". Inspired by one of Canada’s cultural literary gems, Anne of Green Gables, it’s not hard to see why safety is critical for its chosen demographic.
The Toronto-based site’s commitment to providing a safe environment for girls between 6 and 14 is echoed in their partnerships with Fujitsu Microelectronics and123ID to provide biometric login kits for fingerprint authentication that replaces password authentication for each incoming member on the network.
The biometric solution uses Novell’s Modular Authentication Service to enroll users into Novell "eDirectory", eliminating the children’s need to remember logins or risk intrusion from outsiders.
To sign up, users pay a fee of $119.25 US per year or $12.95 US per month and receive a starter kit. The starter kit includes a fingerprint reader that is tied to the member’s identity once it has been approved. As part of the approval process, parents must submit contact details for a guarantor (similar to a passport process). Once the guarantor is contacted through Anne’s Diary, the member is given an ID and may join the site.
One of the site’s features is a direct line into the Ontario Provincial Police representative Robyn MacEachern. Robyn is a Police Officer and a specialist in Youth Crime Prevention. She has partnered with Anne’s Diary to help not only keep the site as safe as possible, but also to give advice to other people about how to stay safe online.
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