Following news earlier this week that social networking website Facebook has set up safety measures to improve ways in which children and teenagers use the site responsibly, the UK government is set to launch a 'Green Cross Code' for the internet to promote safe surfing in the UK.
Lessons in internet safely will become a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary school children in England from 2011, as part of the government's new "Click Clever, Click Safe" initiative.
The new online "Green Cross Code" will teach children how to block and report inappropriate content online, in measures outlined by the UK Council on Child Internet Safety.
Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook have all pledged support for the CCIS campaign.
Zip it, Block it, Flag it
The "Zip it, Block it, Flag it" campaign will be widely seen across schools, shops and popular online social networks such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.
Kids will be discouraged from sharing personal information on the web and taught how to report inappropriate content to their teachers or – in extreme cases - the police.
The UKCCIS rules will be published in 2010, and Children's Secretary Ed Balls said they would "provide a handy tool for children and parents to give them the confidence to know how to protect themselves online".
Via BBC.co.uk
Your comments (1) Click to add a new comment
rossano
December 9th 2009
1. Addressing Internet issues directly with children is an excellent initiative so that they can understand, in the form of a game, the perils in the Internet jungle.
Though the campaign is a great initiative it is not enough if children are not also backed up by the protection of their parents.
Parents should consider the campaign as additional support to the education they provide on how to safely use the Internet and not as a replacement.
Additionally we also need to consider that technology, represented by parental control softwares,could be of help to automate and modulate the daily operations which can be allowed or denied within a computer connected to Internet.
Rossano Ferraris, CA ISBU Research Team – Internet Security Intelligence
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