e-Safety in Schools

Professor Sonia Livingstone, one of the report's authors and professor of media and communication at LSE, said: ‘This study shows children are going online younger and more often than ever before. The internet is now central to children's lives across Europe and they use it for a range of things which are often beneficial including schoolwork, playing games, watching video and instant messaging. So while it is worrying that some children have been upset by things they've encountered online, it's important to balance this against the benefits and to understand that risk doesn't always lead to harm. For instance, bullying online is the behaviour most likely to upset children but it is also the least common risk among all those we looked at. The youngest children are those who find it hardest to cope with upsetting experiences and this is the area where governments should promote actions to protect and educate.'

Key findings from the Report includes:

• The most common risks reported by children online are communicating with new people not met face-to-face and seeing potentially harmful user-generated content. It is much rarer for children to meet a new online contact offline or be bullied online.
• 12% of European 9-16 year olds say that they have been bothered or upset by something on the internet. This includes 9% of 9-10 year olds.
• 1 in 12 children have met an online contact offline; but this risk rarely has a harmful experience (1% said they had been bothered by an offline meeting).
• Half of all children said they find it easier to be themselves online than in real life
• Many 11-12 year olds lack basic safety skills such as knowing how to set privacy settings or block unwanted contacts.
• Teenage boys are more exposed to sexual images while girls are slightly more likely to receive hurtful messages - however, girls are more likely to be upset by online risks than boys.
• 15% of 11-16 year olds have received peer to peer "sexual messages or images and 3% say they have sent or posted such messages online.
• 19% of European 9-16 year olds have been bullied, online or offline, and 12% have bullied someone else, in the past year. Examining online bullying only, 5% have been sent bullying messages while 3% have sent such messages.
•  One in eight 9-16 year olds have seen user-generated content promoting hate or anorexia
• Overall 57% (65% in the UK) of 9-16 year olds across Europe report having their own social networking profile. One quarter (24%) of the 9-10 year olds report having their own profile, compared with half (48%) of 11-12 year olds, 72% of 13-14 year olds and 81% of 15-16 year olds.
•  In the UK 13% report to have a public Social Networking account, 27% have an incorrect age, and 7% share their phone number or home address.
• Parents were often not aware of the risks to which their children had been exposed as 41% of parents whose child has seen sexual images online say that their child has not seen this; 56% of parents whose child has received nasty or hurtful messages online say that their child has not; 52% of parents whose child has received sexual messages say that their child has not; 61% of parents whose child has met offline with an online contact say that their child has not.
• Children are going online at ever-younger ages - an average of seven in Sweden and eight in several other Northern European countries, including the UK
• 48% of children in the UK who use the internet have access in their own bedroom
• Almost one in three children (31%) has access to the internet via a mobile phone or other handheld device. In the UK 21% access the internet via a handheld device and 29% via a mobile phone.
•  72% of children aged 9-19 in the UK use the internet everyday or almost everyday.

An expanded version, including policy recommendations and new findings on parental mediation, is due in November.

To read the report and supporting videos and documents visit www.eukidsonline.net

 Data Protection Day 2011

Data Protection day is the 28^th January 2011. Data Protection Day is an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through our unique personal information.  In this online and networked world, our identities, locations, actions, purchases, associations, movements, and histories are stored as so many bits and bytes, we have to ask - who is collecting all of this - what are they doing with it  - with whom are they sharing it?  Most of all, people are know asking ‘How can I protect my information from being misused?'  These are reasonable questions to ask and we should all want to know the answers. To find out more (including links to lesson plans and resources altough most are American based at present) and to register your interest please visit http://dataprivacyday2011.org/

As soon as more information and material becomes available, this blog will be updated

Safer Internet Day 2011

The new Safer Internet Centre starts on 1st January 2011, and is made up of Childnet International, the South West Grid for Learning, and the Internet Watch Foundation. Safer Internet Day is a great opportunity to raise awareness, and Childnet want to make Safer Internet Day (SID) a collaborative event, where all of the networks work together to build up a momentum to ensure that SID has the greatest impact on the audience as possible.

 Safer Internet Day is on 8th February 2011 and the theme this year is 'Virtual Lives', with the strap line 'It's more than a game, it's your life'.

 The European coordinator of the network of Awareness centres and Safer Internet Day, INSAFE, is developing some content that will be shared and available for use on the day. This includes:

• A banner advert, which is due to be ready by the end of October
• A toolkit, which is also due to be ready by the end of October
• A short film clip (about 15-30 seconds long) which will be ready in November.

The UK Safer Internet Centre will have a number of resources available for the day, and in advance of the Day:

 For Primary:

• 5 quick lesson ideas
• A lesson plan
  
• 'Only a game' Primary drama activity
•  Know IT All for Primary 
• The Safer Internet Centre will list other resources and events happening relevant for this age on the Safer Internet Centre website.

For Secondary:

• 5 quick lesson plan ideas
• A lesson plan
• Digizen game 
• Safer Internet Day event for 16-18s
• Know IT All for Secondary toolkit with lesson plans and accompanying resources
• The Safer Internet Centre will list other resources and events happening relevant for this age on the Safer Internet Centre website.

The website for the Safer Internet centre is www.saferinternet.org.uk and the site is currently under construction. It will outline the new SIC, the plans and resources from SIC and other stakeholders, and will include a map of activities.

If you have any further questions about any of this, or want to discuss your plans, do get in touch with the esafety officer either via email or this blog, or contact the Safer Internet Centre.We will keep you posted on plans and resources as they become available, and it would be great to hear from Schools in Kent about any plans.

Today (7th October 2010) is the fourth national Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) awareness day. This year major UK internet companies are joining together with government departments, charities and police bodies to promote the IWF and its confidential online reporting service.

IWF is marking the day by launching its new website designed to make it even easier for the public to report suspicious content on the web and providing up-to-date information about their work and how they operate: www.iwf.org.uk. The website receives around 400,000 visits a year and has dealt with over 35,000 reports so far this year.

The Internet Watch Foundation is an independent industry body and since 1996 has operated the UK Hotline for the public to report criminal online content. Reports can be submitted anonymously and each one is assessed and tracked by a specialist team of analysts. Action is taken to remove and disrupt criminal web content, particularly images of child sexual abuse. IWF provides details of websites depicting child sexual abuse to police forces and Hotlines around the world for investigation leading to the removal thousands of images from the internet.

Eve Salomon, IWF Chair, said: "It is crucial that everyone knows they can report child sexual abuse images to us and have confidence that we will work to get them removed and investigated, wherever they originate in the world. It's fantastic to see our member companies joining forces and getting behind this initiative by publicising our Hotline to their customers. Fighting child sexual abuse is something that unites us all and a report to the IWF could rescue a child from suffering."

This month also sees IWF's industry members working together to enhance the self-regulatory and accountability structures around the blocking initiative which prevents accidental exposure to child sexual abuse images. This is an important milestone and marks the launch of a testing and transparency programme for the blocking solutions of IWF member companies taking the IWF list of child sexual abuse web pages. The number of companies which choose to receive this list continues to grow with over 70 internet services providers, search and content providers, mobile operators and filtering companies around the world now taking steps to protect their customers in this way. 

The IWF publishes a list on its website of companies taking this list and testing their systems for effective deployment of a blocking solution. Therefore the public can see which companies are doing their best to effectively prevent their customers being exposed to child sexual abuse content.

For further information on this testing programme see here.

About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)

The IWF was established in 1996 by the internet industry to provide the UK internet Hotline for the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way. The Hotline service can be used anonymously to report content within their remit. The IWF works in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, and international partners to minimise the availability of this content, specifically:

• child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the world
• criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK
• incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK
• non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK.

Self-regulation

The IWF is an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations, and the financial sector. The IWFs self-regulatory partnership approach is widely recognised as a model of good practice in combating the abuse of technology for the dissemination of criminal content. 
 

Sharing Good Practice

The IWF works with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to promote greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. The IWF works internationally with INHOPE Hotlines and other relevant organisations to encourage united global responses to the problem and wider adoption of good practice in combating child sexual abuse images on the internet.

Success

The IWF helps internet service providers and hosting companies to combat the abuse of their networks through their ‘notice and takedown' service which alerts ISPs to content so they can remove it from their networks and provide unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributors. As a result of this approach the content the IWF deal with has been virtually eradicated from UK networks. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, the IWF facilitates the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through their provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse web pages.

Tactics
There are a number of tactics carried out by the IWF on a national and, where relevant, international basis which are having an effect in minimising the availability of child sexual abuse content:

• Reporting mechanism for the public to report their inadvertent exposure to potentially criminal child sexual abuse content.
• ‘Notice and takedown' system to swiftly remove child sexual abuse content at source.
• Targeted assessment and monitoring system to remove child sexual abuse content in newsgroups.
• Provision of a child sexual abuse URL list to ISPs, mobile operators, search engines and content providers to help disrupt access to child sexual abuse content.
• Working with domain name registries and registrars to deregister domain names dedicated to the distribution of child sexual abuse content.

Please note that 'child pornography', 'child porn' and 'kiddie porn' are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.

Press release from IWF

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 237700

media@iwf.org.uk