Take care with digital tools to protect students’ privacy

Question: Auwe! Don’t schools know not to post students’ personal information on Facebook? Just because it’s convenient to sign up that way doesn’t mean it’s safe!

Answer: We’ve turned your complaint into a question because this seems to be happening more often, as schools and affiliated teams, clubs and groups turn to social media (such as Facebook) and shared digital documents (such as Google Drive) to organize activities.

Executed carefully, these tools work well. Executed carelessly, they expose students (and others) to potential identity theft by releasing personal information to a wider audience than intended.

It’s important to use the correct privacy settings for any medium, so that, for example, a “private” Facebook group is not mistakenly public, or a shared digital document can be seen only by authorized users.

According to Hawaii’s Better Business Bureau, children are even bigger targets of identity theft than adults. Criminals use their information to create false personas and rack up debts before the youngsters have ever applied for credit cards of their own. Names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses and cellphone numbers are among the data thieves crave. If you haven’t already notified your child’s school of the potential breach, do so.

Q: I know they don’t add fluoride to the water here, but what about chlorine?

A: Yes, Oahu’s municipal water supply is chlorinated to control disease-causing bacteria, according to the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. The agency adds only enough chlorine to prevent contamination, it says.

If your drinking water smells or tastes like it has too much chlorine, call the BWS Microbiological Laboratory at 748-5850.

Small amounts of chlorine are found in drinking water throughout Oahu. Concentrations can range from 0.1 to 0.5 milligrams per liter, according to the BWS. Almost all the water pumped into the system is chlorinated, and even that which isn’t may end up with trace amounts, because the system is interconnected; chlorinated and unchlorinated water can mix.

As for fluoride, you are correct that the BWS doesn’t add any. However, military installations throughout Hawaii add both fluoride and chlorine to the water supplies they control, according to the BWS. So some drinking water on Oahu is fluoridated — that which is dispensed on military bases.

Cities and towns on the U.S. continent commonly fluoridate their water, a huge win for public health, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because doing so reduces tooth decay among the population by 25 percent.

Efforts to require Honolulu and the other counties to add fluoride to public water systems have foundered, however, despite the fact that Hawaii third-graders have the highest rate of tooth decay in the United States.

Q: When they say a Blaisdell event is free, does that mean parking too?

A: No, not usually. If an event is advertised as having free admission, patrons should assume there’s no charge to enter the exhibition hall or other venue, not that it’s free to park a vehicle, according to notices for past events at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center complex. Consider walking, bicycling or taking the bus if you’d like to avoid a parking fee.

Mahalo

Aloha is alive and well. Today I went to my post office box and received an envelope from the Waialua post office which contained my lost Hawaii driver’s license! Shaka time! Finding my license, some good soul had dropped it in the post box and the Waialua post office sent it on to me! In these times, how nice to experience honest people and a hardworking post office! Much aloha and mahalo! — Beth Rasmussen

Write to “Kokua Line” at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.