Crowdsourcing to Protect: NCMEC’s Newly Redesigned CyberTipline

Posted by Liz Eraker, Policy Counsel

We are strong believers in the importance of abuse reporting tools that identify harmful and illegal content online. That’s why we are proud to say we recently helped The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) launch a newly redesigned CyberTipline — the national reporting mechanism for cases of child sexual exploitation — to better protect all Internet users.

NCMEC receives a staggering amount of information. Since the CyberTipline’s inception over a decade ago, it has handled more than 1.25 million reports of child sexual exploitation. The National Center is at the forefront of efforts to protect society’s most vulnerable individuals by providing tools and resources for reporting abuse and working with law enforcement on child sexual exploitation investigations.

We are proud to have assisted NCMEC in building a more user-friendly and seamless reporting system for both the public and electronic service providers. In the spirit of our continued partnership with NCMEC, we hope that these improvements will help to better facilitate CyberTipline reporting and encourage more Internet users to join the fight against child sexual exploitation.

More details about the new CyberTipline are available on the NCMEC website here.

Military families and digital literacy

Posted by David Green, Public Affairs Fellow

My father was in the Army while I was growing up and I moved around a lot. It was fun and exciting but occasionally a little sad since every two years I packed up my things and said goodbye to my friends. We always promised to stay in touch but as addresses changed and phone numbers got lost we eventually drifted apart.

Thanks to technology, military children today have a much easier time keeping in touch with old friends and making new ones at the same time. During a time of increased deployments and separation the Internet also makes talking to family halfway around the world a snap. In fact, military families use the Internet at greater rates than the civilian population.

Knowing the pitfalls of the Internet and how to navigate it safely helps adolescents and parents protect themselves and establishes a safer online environment. That’s why we think it’s important to help military families be smart and safe online. Today, we’re proud to announce that we’ve teamed up with the organization Blue Star Families to promote and distribute our Digital Literacy curriculum to their members worldwide through their website and social networks.

Blue Star Families is a group of military spouses and families from all over the country who work hard to to support, connect and empower military families. Last Veterans Day, we partnered with them to distribute priority Google Voice invitations, helping families stay in closer touch with their loved ones.

Being a military kid is tough enough. By working with organizations like Blue Star Families our goal is to help kids today keep in touch, safely, online.

New online safety video: Steering Clear of Cyber Tricks

Posted by Mandy Albanese, Policy Communications

Today we're releasing the latest in a series of online safety videos as part of our Digital Literacy campaign. As we engage more students, parents and teachers about how to make good decisions online, many have noted how difficult it is to identify and avoid online scams. We know how tricky scammers can be. Our new video, Steering Clear of Cyber Tricks, shares some tips on how to avoid tricky online scams.

Locking SafeSearch

Posted by Pete Lidwell, Product Manager and Aaron Arcos, Engineer

(Cross-posted from Official Google Blog)

When you're searching on Google, we think you should have the choice to keep adult content out of your search results. That's why we developed SafeSearch, a feature that lets you filter sexually explicit web sites and images from your search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, SafeSearch helps you avoid content you may prefer not to see or would rather your children did not stumble across. We think it works pretty well, but we're always looking for ways to improve the feature.

Today we're launching a feature that lets you lock your SafeSearch setting to the Strict level
of filtering. When you lock SafeSearch, two things will change. First, you'll need to enter your password to change the setting. Second, the Google search results page will be visibly different to indicate that SafeSearch is locked:



Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don't see them, it's quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch.

To use SafeSearch lock, go to the "Search Settings" page on Google. For detailed instructions, check out this video.



We hope you and your family find exactly what you’re looking for in Google search results — and nothing more.

Bridging the digital literacy gap

Posted by Dorothy Chou, Policy Analyst

It's important that parents and educators help kids to develop healthy, safe, and responsible online habits. But this can be a challenge, even for the tech-savviest families.

That's why we're launching a tour with iKeepSafe to help parents and educators across the country become more involved in kids' online activities. To kick-off the tour, we're sponsoring a panel discussion on Capitol Hill to address some of the key issues around digital media literacy, including how to talk to kids about maintaining their online reputations.

Over the past year, we've been working with the PointSmart.ClickSafe. Task Force to help policy leaders get up to speed on many online safety topics. This initiative is a direct outcome of the recommendations the group released in July.

"Playing and Staying Safe Online"
An expert panel discussion on how to help kids become responsible members of the digital community.

Panelists:

• Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health
• Dr. Harry Bloom, Director, California Technology Assistance Project
• Lt. Joe Laramie, Director, Missouri ICAC Task Force
• Darlene Faster, COO, Center for Social and Emotional Education
  

Moderator:

• Marsali Hancock, iKeepSafe President
  

With special presentations from Google and WoogiWorld.

When: Tuesday, November 3, Noon - 1:30pm
Where: Room B-354, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Lunch will be served.

Please click here to RSVP.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow on Capitol Hill. Stay tuned for more announcements about when we'll be coming to your local community -- and in the meantime, check out our new instructional videos to about how to help your family stay safe on the Web:

Helping create responsible digital citizens

Posted by Alice Wu, Policy Specialist, YouTube

With more and more kids going online, whether to connect over social networking sites, mingle in chat rooms or play games, it's become increasingly important for families, schools and service providers to work together to ensure that the younger generation understands their responsibilities while they explore the virtual world.

A few weeks ago, Google participated in the 21st Annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, where over 3,500 members of law enforcement, child advocacy groups, the tech industry and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) convened to share ideas, discuss strategies and explore new technologies designed to combat the many and varied forms of crimes against children. We had the opportunity to describe some of the positive steps Google is taking to educate and safeguard minors who use our products and services, as well as the unique ways we support the individuals on our staff who do child exploitation-related work.

According to a recent NCMEC study in patterns and trends in online child victimization, the past few years have seen a 6% increase in reports of kids providing images and videos of themselves when asked by online acquaintances; sending naked photos of themselves through text messages ("sexting"); and cyber-bullying. This new trend underscores the need to educate our younger users, their families and teachers on ways to create and enjoy safe online experiences.

We're doing our part by working with child safety organizations and law enforcement around the globe to spread positive messages about life online. For example, in mid-September, we're launching a global training program on YouTube to help teens teach other teens about these issues. This is just one step among many that we're taking to help create a generation of responsible digital citizens.

Best practices for online child safety

Posted by Jennifer Marsh, Policy Analyst

Protecting children online is a shared responsibility. The PointSmart.ClickSafe. Task Force, of which we're a member, is an important example of how industry leaders, safety advocates, and community organizations are working together keep kids safe online.

This morning the Task Force released its Recommendations for Best Practices for Online Safety and Literacy, the culmination of a year-long effort.

The most important and timely recommendation from the report (which previous online safety task forces all agree upon) is the need for digital media literacy and safety education that empowers kids, parents, and educators. It's important that kids of all ages learn what it mean to be a digital citizen and how to navigate the online world safely, and it's equally important that parents and educators have the resources and online tools to help kids make the right choices online. That's why we support the SAFE Internet Act, introduced by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), which would establish a $175 million dollar competitive grant program for state and local education agencies and nonprofit organizations to promote Internet safety education.

For our part, Google's approach to child safety has three primary elements. First, we empower families with powerful and innovative tools to create a safe experience online, like SafeSearch, community flagging tools, and granular privacy controls for our products. Second, we partner with law enforcement and industry partners to stop illegal content and activity online -- we're especially proud of our work with NCMEC and the technology we provided them to fight child exploitation online. Third, we support educational efforts -- both Google and YouTube have developed online safety resources for parents and kids, including a Online Family Safety Guide, and we continue to work and support many of the non-profit organizations doing great work in this space including FOSI, NCMEC, Common Sense Media, and iKeepSafe.

We're committed to helping keep our users safe online, and we look forward to continuing our work with the Task Force to explore and share new and innovative ways to do just that.