Back to school, back to work… on September 8 Insafe will celebrate International Literacy Day and the start of the school year with a very special online safety package for schools containing a lesson plan and an invitation to the Teacher of the Month competition for teachers as well as tips and games to remind children and young people of the things they need to do to stay safe when they are online.
The “safety issues” of the Insafe portal will also be revamped to provide customized information and resources for children and young people as well as their teachers and parents. September is indeed a good time to make new resolutions and set new targets, and Insafe is there to keep internet safety on the radar as pupils and teachers embark on the new school year.
The Safer Internet Centre in Latvia in cooperation with Ministry of Education and Science organized "Internet safety" test for students of the 6th grade. The aim of the test was to find out what is the knowledge, skills and attitude towards internet safety of children aged 11-13.
The test was developed based on the curriculum of “Social science” with the help of Latvian Safer Internet centre. The test contained 30 multiple choice questions and situation analysis. Students had 40 minutes to give their answers. The test had to be filled out electronically and it was available in both Latvian and Russian languages. 13.990 students or 72.4% of all 6th grade students in the country participated in this test.
In general the results of this test show that knowledge and skills on internet safety is at a satisfying level and are sufficient. Correct answers to all the questions were provided by 55.7% of students. The test included questions like: What is private information? What is a safe password? What to do if you find out, that a friend of yours is being cyber bullied? When and with who should you or should you not share your passwords? What kind of information can be shared online? etc.
The best knowledge and questions that could be considered the easiest for students, where more than 80% provided correct answers, were concerning cyber bullying. Most of the children are aware that cyber bullying should not be tolerated and should be reported to parents, teachers or children helplines.
The test results also show that children have a good knowledge about anonymity online, because more than 70% are aware that the internet is only seemingly anonymous, and when necessary it is possible to find out who has posted comments and sent anonymous letters.
Only 38% could answer correctly to questions concerning copyright – what kind of materials are protected with copyrights and when can these materials be shared, when this sharing becomes illegal. Even fewer children, only 32% could provide correct answers to question about what are the potential harmful aspects of social networking.
The results of this test are valuable and will be taken into account when planning the further actions of the internet safety centre in Latvia.
Already the last day at the Safer Internet Summer School, which means last workshop, last giggles with the friends, last moments spent with the camp staff, but also award ceremony for the best safer internet project. Bernardoand Bianca, our correspondents today, tell us more about their final day.
"Now that we got some rest after the trip from yesterday, everyone is finally ready for our last day here. Some people had difficulties waking up in the morning, so we decided to help them with the megaphone and a screaming Adam.
We started our day as usually with a breakfast and then had a workshop about Internet Addiction, held by Diana Stanculeanu, a psychologist from Save the Children Romania. At the end of the day in the feedback session we actually found out that the volunteers thought this was one of the most interesting workshops.
But, before getting to the feedback session, maybe you are wondering why they thought so.
Well, during the discussion we learned how to recognize the symptoms of an addiction, especially computer addiction. Also we found out that we are surrounded by many addicted people who need help. These people put aside their real lives and forget almost completely about human interaction, which is truly important for our fulfillment as an individual. Thus, this is a very important issue nowadays that needs to be held under control.
Then we had one hour to finish and hand over the complete state of our projects before lunch. Everyone was excited and nervous at the same time, not only because of the work that this project required but also because some of us had been asked to take part in interviews.
Following the lunch we took part in the last workshop of this beautiful Summer Camp. Partly sad because we are gradually approaching the end of this awesome week, and on the other hand happy because it’s the last one and we are pretty tired, we gathered in the room ready for it. It was a long but fun workshop. We talked about the Youth Panel and we made a comparison between the tools used in Romania and the other countries that took part in the Summer School. Also we summarized everything we have done during this past week and had a feedback session with Georgiana Rosculet.
Last but not least all the camp participants were invited to attend the award ceremony for the best project of the Camp. The three winning teams were awarded with prizes and then, the night continued with the revealing of the Secret friend in a very relaxing atmosphere.
Finally, we went to the goodbye party and had a lot of fun.
We are surely going to miss each other so much after spending so many special and beautiful moments together…
Sebi and Ancuta two Romanian volunteers for Save the Children tell us more about their stay at the summer school. Today, tourism with the visit of the Bran Castle, more commonly known as Dracula's Castle, and Brasov, one of the most charming cities in Romania.
The story starts in a wonderful morning in the middle of July.
Because of the heavy working schedule of the previous day I fell asleep at 2am in the morning working on my project about Safer Internet.
I was about to skip breakfast if it wasn't for Ovidiu's well thought advice who asked Joanna (Portugal) and Adam (Germany) to "kindly" wake us up (me and Mihai) using the megaphone, which sounds like a thousand police sirens.
After taking our sweet revenge, by pouring cold water on Joanna and Adam we finally got to the table, where we found out that we only have about 5 minutes to eat our breakfast before the bus to Bran will leave.
We almost forgot about the trip to Bran that the coordinators organized for the volunteers to have a better look on what Romania has to offer. The trip was described by our coordinator Ovidiu as "legendary", which also turned out to be true.
Firstly, we went to Bran to discover more about count Dracula, the famous vampire. Despite my initial belief, it turns out that Dracula wasn't even a vampire. It's only a legend that came along with Bram Stoker's novel and now brings lots of tourists to Bran's castle.I was even more amazed when I found out that Dracula was actually a very cruel ruler, which went by the name of Vlad Tepes. His well known "thirst for blood" comes from the way he used to punish those who betrayed him.
After this very enlightening experience we continued with our adventure to another place. We went to Brasov, one of the most beautiful mountain cities from Romania.
After arriving at Brasov we visited the Black Church, one of the oldest churches in Europe. Although I have to admit that it was pretty interesting, dear reader, you have to agree with me that a church is still a church.
Hours passed by without me even noticing. We shopped, then we shopped some more and then we went shopping a bit more. After feeling a bit tired, we stopped at a traditional coffee shop to "recharge our batteries". These are the moments that make life worthwhile.
Like all good things in life have an end, our little trip did also. When we arrived at the Mama Cozonacilor's camp we were tired, sleepy and hungry. After we ate our dinner like a pack of wolves which were devouring their prey, we costumed ourselves in something which was related to Internet and technology. So, we had many interesting costumes like laptops, viruses, smiley faces, spam, blog etc. We had to present our costumes in front of the others and we also had to create a theatre play, in which we had to involve all the persons who were costumed which actually turned out to be a very fun and creative way to interact with one another. As a prize for our plays, we received safer internet t-shirts, from Save the Children Romania.
Fourth day at the Internet Summer School with a special focus on privacy issues, from what privacy means to search engines. Mihai from Romania and Androula from Cyprus have kindly accepted to be our reporters.
Basically we had three different workshops.
First we started with a discussion about online privacy held by Bogdan Manolea, the representative of the Association for Internet and Technology. So, what is privacy? Generally it’s our stuff. What we mean about privacy has to do with the details of our lives. Importantly privacy is a personal subjective condition. It’s our photos, our personal data like our name, age, birth place etc. Moreover it’s our right to say “leave me alone”. We also talked about search engines. An interesting fact that intrigued us in yesterday’s workshop is that Google’s search engine actually stores all our search queries among other personal data. It was also mentioned that all the data will be deleted only if 18 months have passed from our last search on Google. In addition we talked about encryption and how to decrypt the content. We have to replace every letter plus 13 in vocal. We watched some videos about privacy and were amazed of how easy a hacker can break a password and steal your personal data. If you want more details about privacy you can find it on www.privacy.net.
The next session was held by Mihai Olaru, the representative of the Romanian Hotline. What is a Hotline? It’s a chat room where people can report an abuse on the internet. In Romania since February, when the Romanian Hotline was launched, there has been about 300 abuses. So it’s important to have a place where people can act.
The last workshop of the day focused on the goals of the resolution for the European Parliament. The participants discussed suggestions to improve the program and the internet in general. These suggestions will be integrated in the final resolution which will be transmitted to the European Parliament in order to change the most important issues on the online safety as we, the European Youth, see it.
What can we do? We can make a declaration which will be sent to the EP, and write a positive paper about the Summer school. What will be the content?
Positive, it must have prospects.
Suggestions about the program related to E-Safety.
Legislative proposal .
Major concerns.
Means of involving youngsters.
In the evening, Mama Cozonacilor was visited by a group of traditional Romanian dancers who made a show for us and afterwards invited us to dance with them. Even though we didn’t catch all the steps, we had a lot of fun.
On 13 May 2010, the UK's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) published its Annual Report 2009 reporting continued success at tackling criminal online content in the UK but revealing the existence of at least 450 distinct criminal ‘brands' selling images and videos of the sexual abuse of children, worldwide.
These findings help to quantify the overall scale of the pay-per-view child sexual abuse business, with the ten most prolific ‘brands' alone accounting for more than 650 unique web pages. By removing and disrupting these ‘gateway' pages the Foundation is helping to disable access to many thousands of images as well as the membership and payment systems which support this horrific trade.
"Sharing this data with those investigating the criminal distribution of images at an international level brings us a step closer to eradicating the problem", said Peter Robbins OBE, QPM, and IWF Chief Executive. "Although internet usage and the volume of content continue to rise globally, we are not seeing a proportionate rise in commercial child sexual abuse material which instead appears to have remained fairly static over recent years. This indicates that our international partnerships are having an impact however there is still a significant challenge. The techniques used by distributers are diversifying; becoming more complex, quicker, cheaper and more opportunistic than ever before. It is critical we understand and stay ahead of these changing patterns."
IWF intelligence also reveals a marked trend towards the exploitation of legitimate internet services for the distribution of child sexual abuse content: from free hosting platforms and image sharing websites to social networking areas and hacked websites. Content distributers use increasingly complex systems to evade detection, moving their distribution networks regularly between hosting providers and countries, with 92 per cent of content hosted in those areas with advanced, cheap and accessible internet infrastructures and services (North America, Europe and Russia).
It is worth restating the sad fact that the severity of the content dealt with by the IWF is extremely serious with 72 per cent of child victims appearing to be between 0 and 10 years old and 44 per cent of images depicting the rape or sexual torture of a child.
The Foundation is planning to widen its links to the internet industry around the world, in partnership with Hotlines and law enforcement agencies, in order to speed up the removal of child sexual abuse images hosted outside the UK. It hopes that by extending and widening its membership it can help more companies rid their networks of child sexual abuse content and reduce the length of time images remain available.
2009 figures:
The IWF assessed 38,173 reports of online content;
It took further action on 8,844 occasions against web pages depicting child sexual abuse content, across 1,316 websites around the world;
48 per cent of all child sexual abuse content reports processed (commercial and noncommercial) were traced to networks in North America; 44 per cent to Europe and Russia;
IWF issued 40 notices to companies to remove child sexual abuse content in the UK.
Recommendations
The IWF supports a combination of tactics to combat online child sexual abuse content:
Swift removal at source;
Deregistration of domain names dedicated to content sharing or selling;
Blocking and filtering of web pages to disrupt supply and protect users from being exposed to criminal content;
Stepping up international collaboration to share information between the internet industry, Hotlines and law enforcement.
For more information about the IWF visit the IWF website. If you would like to receive a hardcopy report for you and your colleagues please email info@iwf.org.uk with your details.
Firstly, we went to Bran to discover more about count Dracula, the famous vampire. Despite my initial belief, it turns out that Dracula wasn't even a vampire. It's only a legend that came along with Bram Stoker's novel and now brings lots of tourists to Bran's castle.
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