Safer internet day

This, in case you didn’t know, is Safer Internet Day. It’s a Europe-wide initiative run by an organisation called Insafe. The idea is to promote safer and more responsible use of online and mobile technologies, especially amongst children and young people across the world. But figures just released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, suggest that people across the continent have a long way to go before they heed the message.  Many Europeans aren’t properly tech-savvy. Although there’s plenty of security and parental control software in the market, they’re not using them effectively, even when installed. As a result, almost a third of the population of the European Union's 27 member states caught a computer virus last year. The worst in this particular league table was Bulgaria. A massive 58% of people there reported malware on their computers. Malta came second with 50% with Slovakia, Hungary and Italy close behind.  By contrast, Austria and Ireland has the lowest rates of infection with just 14 and 15% respectively. The UK came round about the middle ground with 31%. But much more serious was the UK’s record when it came to falling for online scams. Only Latvia has a worse record when it comes to people suffering a financial loss from fraudulent credit card use or phishing attacks targeting online banking and similar websites. It’s only 7% but most other countries are down at the 1-2% mark. When it comes to protecting children from the dark side of the web, it’s perhaps surprising that only 14% of families in the EU used parental control software. Luxembourg and Slovenia were the most conscious of the risks but, even there, only 25% of parents actively deployed the software. With 24%, France was next with while Denmark, Austria and the UK all having a 21% take-up. The report also found that 5% of parents were shocked to discover some of the material their children were looking at. The worst were Italian and Latvian kids, where parents found 11% and 9% had looked at the dodgier side of the web. What the report doesn’t cover is whether children lie about their age when online. That however is provided by another survey, this one by the charity Kidscape. It found that 6 out of 10 young people were prepared to lie about their age when communicating with strangers online. It also found that many young people were ignoring the warnings about the risks and were taking chances online which could endanger themselves and others. The survey was quite large, sampling almost 2,500 young people aged 11-18 from Great Britain. It looked at their cyber lives through an online questionnaire. The results will make worrying  reading for parents. They show that one in two young people lied about their details, mainly about their age (60%) and their personal relationships (40%). According to Peter Bradley, Kidscape's deputy director and a psychotherapist specialising in adolescents, “We were alarmed by the number of risks being taken by teenagers online. We know that safe online behaviour is taught in schools and by other organisations like us, but teenagers seem to be unable to relate the risks to themselves.” However, not all of the news about young people and the Internet is bad. Four pupils from Fettes College in Edinburgh are taking part in the national Young People's Symposium in London today, to mark Safer Internet Day. They’ll join another 36 teenagers from across the country to discuss how to use the internet safely and put their ideas to a team of internet experts.

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