There are many software choices for protecting children online, but do they really work?
Before you can understand how best to protect your child online, you need to know what threats they face. If your only metric is the media, you might be forgiven for thinking the internet is a paedophile paradise, with predatory behaviour the norm.
However, Dave Miles, director at the Family Online Safety Institute reminds us that while predation is perceived as the most challenging threat, “the reality is that cyber-bullying is probably a larger problem”.
Children used to be …

Following a series of lessons that tackle head on the problems related to bullying and cyberbullying, a Merseyside school has seen incidents of bullying drop:
Last night teaching officials said the powerful lessons were already paying dividends.
Recorded incidents of cyberbullying among pupils have tumbled by 75% when comparing recorded figures this month, as compared with December last year.
The school’s ICT director, Nigel Price, and head of the lower school, Barbara Jones, have run the classes after being trained by The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
The lessons look at the impact …

Lincolnshire police recently warned school pupils regarding cyberbullying, not against other pupils, but rather against teachers:
As reported, a number of pupils from Caistor Yarborough School have been suspended or expelled after comments were made on the social networking site Facebook.
Lincolnshire Police’s Inspector Rod Brant, who heads up policing across Market Rasen and Caistor, said police have visited the pupils believed to be involved.
Although they will not be pursuing prosecutions at this stage, he said they would not rule this out if incidents persisted.
He said: “The headmaster (Jeremy Newnham) was happy …

Should social networking sites such as Facebook be doing more to proect children? Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection thinks so:
His comments came after Bebo introduced a “Ceop report” button for users to log abuse. Clicking on the tool, which appears automatically under users’ profile pictures, opens a window inviting victims to log “violations of Bebo’s terms of service” – including bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content.
The Ceop button was added across Bebo’s website yesterday. As well as functioning as a bullying deterrent, the …

Peer mentors at Trinity Catholic College are helping year 7 pupils to deal with the new trend of cyberbullying.
Over the next 12 months the Year 9 pupils at Trinity Catholic College, in Acklam, will be on hand to help Year 7 pupils who feel vulnerable to bullying.
They have been given training sessions on mediation and dealing with cyber bullying.
The peer mentors are already providing support to younger pupils who are worried about bullying, or mentees as they are known.
Gazettelive.co.uk (via bullying.co.uk)