Educational campaign to ensure child online safety

Online safety will become a part of school curriculum from 2011, it was reported.

Government is to launch ‘Zip it, Block it, Flag it’ campaign which would instruct the web companies to use ‘Click Clever, Click Safe’ voluntary code to help the children to stay away from harmful things available on the internet.

Google and other internet companies like FaceBook would support the campaign and follow the code.

Google said to the BBC that the campaign would ‘help young people to remember how to stay safe online’.

A couple of months ago, UK telecom watchdog, Ofcom said that its study on the internet safety of the young people revealed that nearly a quarter of the surveyed in UK needed some kind of information on how to be safe online. The telecom regulator has also released two guides to parental controls for mobile phones and game consoles.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) which deals the complaints of abused children online says that the online services like social networking, IM and mobile internet access are just helping the offenders to access and abuse the children so easily.

Recent survey conducted by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) of United Nations says that the number of children who go online without the supervision of parents is just increasing. ITU has also recommended the use of online filters, law and education to save children from the online dangers .