54.5 percent of children have not received basic information about safety in the Internet

The growing number of children using the Internet has become one of the key factors to take into consideration in the IT security field. The crimes involving children in most cases are of a sexual nature, and therefore have serious physical and psychological risks. It is becoming increasingly common to read about this in the media, which should have alerted parents and guardians. However, data from the NGOís Protgeles and ACPI1 shows that the situation could get worse, as over half of the children and teenagers using the Internet have not received basic information about safety.



The data collected by these NGO speaks for itself: 44 percent of minors have felt sexually harassed on the Internet and many of them, on more than one occasion. Eleven percent have been insulted by other Internet users, whereas four percent have received email messages with unpleasant content. Whatís more, 1.5 percent of them have even felt afraid at some time.

However, the fact that minors are the target of an increasing number of cyber-crimes is not the only concern, as many teenagers have not been educated about behavioural rules on the Internet and are acquiring extremely dangerous habits. This statement is supported by the following statistics:

- Nineteen percent of youngsters between 12 and 17 that connect from cyber-centers affirm that they carried out illegal actions from these centres.

- Four percent threaten others.

- One percent do both.

Whatís more, many youngsters voluntarily connect to pages with inappropriate content: 28 percent have connected to pornographic pages, 38 percent to pages with violent content and 16 percent to pages with racist content. However, the biggest problem is that this could get even worse in the short-term, 86 percent of minors that access the Internet do so from computers that do not have any type of content filtering system installed.

According to Luis Corrons, director of PandaLabs: ìnobody can doubt the benefits that the Internet offers society. However, it also has its dangerous side in the form of thousands of criminals that use the Internet to carry out their actions. Obviously, children are the most vulnerable users and all the security measures available should be used to protect them. Bear in mind that not only chats or email messages can pose a threat, but also a network of paedophiles, for example, could get into computers by exploiting vulnerabilities or using malicious code like Trojans. Therefore, it is not enough to simply prevent children from accessing websites with potentially dangerous content, but also effective and updates security solutions must be used.

Education and technology: keys to safety for children in the Internet

From the data above, two basic needs can be identified: the need to educate children about safety on the Internet and the need to use technological solutions that block access to certain websites. The aim is to combine both solutions in order to not only prevent children falling victim to attack from cyber- criminals but also to impede children from voluntarily accessing inappropriate content.

As regards education, it is essential that children know the dangers that they face when they use the Internet. It is also highly advisable to implement behavioural rules, which should be agreed on by parents, guardians and children and must include from the time they are allowed to connect and the data that they should never give out over the Internet. On the technological side, they should use security suites that not only include protection against the most common threats, such as viruses or spam, but also content filtering technologies and a parental control system that restricts childrenís use of the Internet.