Safer Internet Day: how we help you stay secure online

Technology can sometimes be complicated, but you shouldn’t have to be a computer scientist or security expert to stay safe online. Protecting our users is one of our top priorities at Google. Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help you manage your information online or fighting the bad guys behind the scenes, we’re constantly investing to make Google the best service you can rely on, with security and privacy features that are on 24-7 and working for you.

Last year, we launched Good to Know, our biggest-ever consumer education campaign focused on making the web a safer, more comfortable place. Today, on Safer Internet Day, we’re updating Good to Know to include more tips and advice to help you protect yourself and your family from identity theft, scams and online fraud. You can also learn how to make your computer or mobile device more secure, and get more out of the web—from searching more effectively to making calls from your computer. And you can find out more about how Google works to make you, your device and the whole web safer.

For example, we encrypt the Gmail and Google Search traffic between your computer and Google - this protects your Google activity from being snooped on by others. We also make this protection, known as session-wide SSL encryption, the default when you’re signed into Google Drive. Because outdated software makes your computer more vulnerable to security problems, we built the Chrome browser to auto-update to the latest version every time you start it. It gives you up-to-date security protection without making you do any extra work.



We know staying safe online is important to you - and it is important to us too. So on Safer Internet Day, we’re participating in events in countries across Europe including: one hundred simultaneous online safety workshops with the Italian Postal Police; a Hangout between parliamentarian Trine Bramsen and 80 school kids from a primary school in Højby, Denmark; and a debate about inappropriate content online in Germany, with politicians from the Brandenburg state government and civil society groups. There, we'll be talking about our YouTube 361 campaign to encourage tolerance and respect online:



And in Brussels, we’ll be launching of a new educational handbook for 13-16 year-olds that we have helped develop in collaboration with InSafe, INHOPE, the European Commission, Liberty Global and European Schoolnet (the network of thirty Ministries of Education). The booklet, which will be available in multiple languages, has been extensively tested with young people across Europe, and will guide classroom discussions on digital footprints, reputation, rights and responsibilities online.

We've also been a part of Commissioner Neelie Kroes' Better Internet for Kids initiative, and now support - amongst other commitments - new ways to report harmful content online, including Second Friend and Net Ecoute.

Please find some time today to talk with friends and family about Internet safety. Take affirmative action by making your passwords stronger and turning on 2-step verification to protect your Google Account. And please also visit our new Good to Know site to find more tips and resources to help you stay safe online.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

Supporting safety online

Telefono Azzurro, one of Italy’s main child protection NGOs, does amazing work on behalf of missing and sexually exploited children and their families. Last year, we donated a Google Search Appliance - essentially the Google ‘search engine in a box’ - to improve information retrieval on their internal network and make it easier to search on their public website.

Today, on Safer Internet Day 2012, we’re happy to announce that this collaboration is expanding. Telefono Azzuro will share its Search Appliance with all of the members of Missing Children Europe (MCE), the federation of national NGOs responsible for the European 116.000 phone hotline, who will use Google's search technology on their public websites. Eventually, the Search Appliance will also be linked to MCE’s interconnected European database of missing children (currently under construction), enabling each member NGO to better organise its own case files and conduct secure searches on its internal network.

This is just one example of how seriously we take the challenge of increasing safety on the web, but on Safer Internet Day, we’re also involved in a whole host of initiatives all over Europe, including:

Digital literacy education / workshops

• Italy: we’re running online safety workshops with Telefono Azzurro / Sicuri in Rete and with the Italian Postal and Communications Police (at more than 100 schools); and we’re distributing online safety information to parents together with the Italian Association of Paediatricians.
• Portugal: we’re launching the Google Family Safety Center at an event chaired by the President of National Commission for Support for Children.
• Russia: We’re partnering with Net Literacy to engage over 200 Russian journalism students in digital literacy campaigning in schools and communities

Events

• UK: we’re hosting online safety events with CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and Raceonline; we’re also participating in workshops organised by the UK Safer Internet Centre.
• Russia: we’re working with the Russia Safe Internet Centre and Russian Association of Electronic Communications to run a series of international expert panels at the Safer Internet Forum.
• Germany: Wieland Holfelder, Google Engineering Director, is keynoting a session on the platform for safe internet use at the Safer Internet Event in Germany, organized by Bitkom and the Ministry of Consumer Protection (BMELV).

Research

• UK: we're launching, together with YAW-CRC, new research funded by Google into how parents can keep their families safe online, and become more digitally literate themselves.

Technology

• France: we’re supporting the work of e-Enfance.org on a new Google Chrome browser extension called NetEcoute, which will make it easy for youngsters to start an online discussion with a helpline counselor.

These initiatives are part of our global outreach on Safer Internet Day - but we hope that each of them will - in their own way - be a step forward for online safety education.

Posted by Laura Bononcini, Senior Policy Analyst, Google