Wednesday 11 February 2015

Safer Internet Day.......Hitting the right buttons reaching to May15

Yesterday was Safer Intenet Day or #SID15
Considerable coverage across a range of media raising awareness in many languages on various fora to issues of safety online. But did it work, and how would we know?
As far as I can see there are no real measures in place of what is success or failure. No stats on # usage, amount of posts or number of people joining in.
Or more importantly what has changed.
It could be argued that the day was not about "Targets" or "Deliverables" but a timely and valuable assessment of how people protect themselves.
Aimed at some real risk and high profile aspects of social media usage, such as sexting, SID15 really sought to transform the activities, particularly risky ones, of young people. Yet are they the right audience? Are silver surfers, or elderly iPaders more or less vulnerable in their digital behaviour at home than a "youth" madly plucking their Samsung on the bus to school, surrounded by "advisers". 
Put simply we don't know. We can estimate risk based on reported cases through ActionFraud or police figures, or we can survey and hope people tell the truth. In either case we may be able to secure some consensus of the problem but probably not all.
However the one thing we probably can safely assume is that if we don't raise awareness through SID15 and similar events we run the risk of complete complacency, and that's not a great place to be.

Probably over the next few months we have the chance to raise these issues as we stroll towards the next election.
Here are some questions to ask candidates if you are stuck

What is your party going to do to make all people safe online?
How will you equip police to tackle online abuse, identity theft and cybercrime?
What will you do to protect the national critical infrastructure from hacking?
How will you train people to protect themselves and to manage offending behaviour when they see it? How will you help them secure the evidence?
What can your party do to ensure that digital evidence is secured quickly without disrupting the lives of innocent people?
How will you make ISPs and other industry leaders accountable for protecting our society online?

I am sure there are more

As the BT Share launch once said. Have you seen SID?
 
Yes I have and was encouraged. 

Many people did something. But was it enough and if not how do we use
the opportunity of May15 to put it right



Popular Posts in last 7 Days