/Big Question/ Net nannying

29/04/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question

What controls, if any, should be put in place to protect children more online?

Web filtering specialist
Eamonn Doyle
Bloxx

Children are more tech savvy than ever and social networking sites in particular now play a big part in how young people form new friendships and develop social skills. Outside of the home environment, schools have a duty of care to monitor internet use and should deploy filtering solutions that can proactively manage access to these sites and other sites that might create even higher risk. This ensures that students can study in an environment that balances the benefits of having access to valuable online learning resources and being protected from the risks and dangers.

Eamonn Doyle is managing director of web filtering and internet blocking company Bloxx

B3ta guy
Rob Manuel
B3ta

There should be a group of cyber-lollypop ladies that can stop the traffic when kids want to cross the information superhighway. Plus fines for middle aged men with www.aquarterof.co.uk in their browser history.

Rob is co-founder of B3ta, a website that “celebrates the best stuff on the internet”

Technology expert
Graham Cluley
Sophos

The internet is never going to be completely safe for kids. Concerned parents can use a variety of mechanisms (including software and limiting physical access to a shared room) to better police what their children get up to online. But I do believe there’s a requirement for social networking sites like Facebook to act more responsibly, to ensure everyone (adults and youngsters alike) is better protected against identity theft.

Surely it’s time for sites like Facebook to lock down the information they share with other members by default, rather than using defaults that share it with, say, everyone else in the London geographic network? If people had to choose to share their information with a million strangers – rather than choose not to – then these sites would be a lot safer for everyone.

Graham is a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a globally recognised security solutions company

Accessibility expert
Julie Howell
Fortune Cookie

I can’t help thinking that the best way to protect children online is through parental control. All the technical fixes in the world won’t prevent a determined child (or adult) from using the web to make inappropriate contact. Parents have got to get involved in their children’s use of the web and help children to understand why they’re concerned for their safety. Unfortunately, children appear to grow up fast these days and think they can be responsible for themselves when in reality any child under 16 must have parental guidance, as their tender years mean they lack experience in dealing with inappropriate attention from predatory adults. I grew up in the 70s – we didn’t have the web back then but my walk home from school involved a walk through some isolated woodland. My parents drummed into me how dangerous it was to walk through the woods on my own. I was made to understand the dangers and so never took that route without a parent. The same parental role must apply today. Expecting government legislation or ISP measures to protect our children is passing the buck. The web we have today is the woods of 20 years ago. The environment may have changed but the dangers have not.

Julie Howell is director of accessibility at Fortune Cookie, a UK-based web design agency

Security guru
Greg Day
McAfee Security

This challenge of protecting children online can be broken down into three areas where progress needs to be made:

Children online in the home environment.
It seems that today, young children increasingly have their own internet-connected PC in their bedroom. While children getting to grips with technology and making use of the wealth of information on the internet is a great thing, in their own space children have more confidence to explore and when this exploring goes on behind closed doors, they may be more inclined to do things online that they wouldn’t do if they were using the computer in a shared family space. Furthermore, without being able to see what their children are doing when they walk past, it’s more difficult for parents to really know what their children are doing online and to start the conversation about how they should be using the internet.

When we think of security, we tend to think about protection from external attackers. However, when children come into the equation, additional controls are needed. Parental controls are the obvious choice as they allow parents to control the time children can spend online and the sites on which they can browse. Privacy controls, however, are often overlooked as another tool that can help. These allow parents to block specified content leaving the PC, for example home address, phone number, date of birth or other personal details. Blocking such content will help to protect the identity of children as they surf and make it harder for any malicious person to build up a profile of a child in order to target them or even take on their identity.

Children at school
As a schoolboy, I was taught about ‘stranger danger’. However, in many cases, children – like adults – use the internet to meet and stay in touch with friends around the world, which is great. Because of the way that the internet has penetrated everyday lives, there is now a need for some kind of education around safe internet practice as part of the standard schooling curriculum. This should focus on the basic things that children need to learn in order to use the internet safely.

Legislation
Possible legal initiatives could focus on areas like improved validation of identities (to make sure that people are who they say they are), the registration of offenders, or the monitoring of traffic by internet service providers. However, there will always be challenges because of the global nature of the internet and the local nature of the laws that are introduced. The Council of Europe’s initiatives to attempt to standardise legislation against cyber crime should help but a devious person will always try to flout the law. For this reason, international cooperation in the area of detection and enforcement will continue to be paramount.

Greg Day is EMEA security analyst for McAfee Security

Software expert
Ian Moulster
Microsoft

This is a big topic and probably deserves a much more in-depth analysis than can be provided here. And of course there is plenty of advice online about protecting children online and I don’t want to repeat that (www.getsafeonline.com, for example, is a good place to start). I think, though, that at the core of the issue is how much we can do with technology, and how much we can do beyond technology. I feel that there is a risk of believing that this problem can be solved with technology alone and that’s almost certainly not the case. The real solution involves a mix of education, trust, experience, support, information, technology and probably a host of other things too. That doesn’t mean we need to get bogged down with complexity but it does mean that we should consider technology as just one piece of the answer and not the whole answer. Keeping children safe, online or offline, is something we’re all very interested in getting right. We need to make sure that we use all of the available means to do that and not just focus on one piece.

Ian Moulster is senior product manager in Microsoft’s Developer & Platform division in the UK

Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK

While there can be many benefits to children using social networking sites, they should also be able to do so without fear of stalking, grooming or exposure to inappropriate content. In general, we advocate that the rules we use in real life should also apply in cyberspace. For example, you must be over 18 to view a website about alcohol or containing sexual matter because children could view inappropriate content and be targeted by people in forums, mailing lists and chat rooms attached to these sites. However, this rule is extremely difficult to enforce online, because it relies on trust. In real life, you wouldn’t expect to sell alcohol to someone you couldn’t see, simply because they told you they were 18 – they could be six or 60. Although children do need to be protected from external influences, they also frequently need to be protected from their own curiosity. Many websites have simply given up, abandoning age verification procedures in favour of disclaimers putting the onus on the user. The problem is, after all, enormously difficult to solve practically or ethically and without grossly invading personal privacy.

In practical terms, ISPs need to make sure that content filtering services are available, but similarly, parents need to make sure that they’re effectively using these services. Social networking sites also need to make sure that their privacy controls are customisable so that even if children do put personal information on their sites, this information can easily be restricted to their friends and people they know. At the end of the day, parents need to apply common sense and monitor their children’s use of the internet. After all, they wouldn’t let their children run around without supervision in real life – they shouldn’t do it online.

Neil is the director of Hostway UK

Activist
Oxblood Ruffin
Hactivismo

There’s a shared liability. Commercial providers must work with parents to ensure that children’s rights are not violated, sort of like accepted porn standards.

In the case of social networks, they should provide click-through terms that establish the age of the user. If the user is under the age of consent then things like contact details should not be published. And parents should also get in on the act.

It used to be that the cheapest babysitter was a television. Now it’s the internet. But parents must take time to see who’s minding their children. If they don’t then they should held liable.

Oxblood Ruffin is the founder of Hacktivismo