• NJ AG's wider social-Web effort. One of the more unusual stories I've seen in the news about a state attorney general dealing with teen social networking: Instead of focusing only on MySpace, as many attorneys general have done (at least on the public airwaves), New Jersey's seems to be more practical. Attorney General Anne Milgram "has asked a dozen Internet social-networking sites to find out whether convicted New Jersey sex offenders have created profiles on their sites," FoxNews.com reports. The sites are Xanga, Facebook, Community Connect, TagWorld, Bebo, MyYearbook.com, Tagged, Friendster, LiveJournal, Imeem, Hi5 and Gaia Online. The AG's office found "at least 269" sex offenders registered in New Jersey in the latest list MySpace provided attorneys general. Of the 269... 109 are either on probation or parole," and one has been charged with a parole violation, the AG's office told Fox News. What is not known is how many other sites have the technology to detect and report registered sex offenders on their sites. General Milgram said New Jersey would help the sites in their searches.
• Important patches. Windows users should be aware of security updates this week, reports Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs.
• Microsoft plans "to push out at least nine patch bundles," seven of them plugging "some 19 different vulnerabilities." Most of the updates are to fix what Microsoft has deemed critical flaws. "Among the Microsoft products to be patched are: just about every version of Windows (including a standalone update for Windows Vista), Internet Explorer, Visual Basic, Microsoft Office, and Office for Mac." Brian links to the key security pages at Microsoft.com.
• Euro kids unfazed by P2P risks. "Everyone's doing it," is the rationale European kids use for their P2P music-downloading, Reuters cites a "major survey" by the European Commission as finding. "Other excuses included: the download is for personal and private purposes; the Web sites presumably remunerate the artists; claims of harm inflicted on artists lack credibility; and DVDs and CDs are simply too expensive." The vast majority of the young people surveyed in 27 EU member countries, Norway and Iceland said they planned to continue downloading music through file-sharing services. The survey also found that most European teens go online several times a day and, "while Internet use is to some extent limited by parents, most own their own mobile phones, the use of which is largely unsupervised."
• Parents of college-bound in Facebook. Parents sending kids off to school are beginning to use Facebook too — to find out what their kids' roommates will be like - and schools aren't sure this is a good thing! "A growing number of schools say they're getting more requests for changes — from parents who don't like the roommates' Facebook profiles," USATODAY reports. The article says housing officials cite party photos as referenced most by complaining parents, but one Syracuse University "says race, religion and sexual orientation are the top three concerns from parents contacting officials there," and an administrator at Suffolk University in Boston said sexual orientation was the No. 1 parental concern she heard about. Most schools USATODAY contacted said they don't make changes because of these calls, and the University of Chicago said it never allows changes until the third week (at Syracuse the wait is between 8 weeks and the whole fall semester). Meanwhile, you know social networking's mainstream not only when parents are checking up on potential roommates but when Wal-Mart's advertising back-to-school products in Facebook (see Reuters on this.)

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