Safer Internet Day 2006

Comments can be posted to the blogathon until 15 February. Here are some examples of the 300 posted so far:

"If we work together as defenders and professionals (with political willingness), we will be able to improve our capacity of protecting victims and act against those who take advantage of children."
Bernie Lajmanovich, Information Security Association, Argentina

"I am a 13 year old child and i use msn. i think it is a great place to chat to friends. but sometimes people pretend to be people they're not and try to find out information about you. it's pretty safe because you can block them and stuff and you dont have to talk to them if you dont feel safe. people think that its a bad place to chat because you dont know who it is. so all you can do is BE SAFE!!"
Emily

After having spoken to my class about internet safety, and bringing in an expert to talk to my students, I realize even more how important it is for students to learn about internet safety. The old safety message "Don't talk to strangers" just doesn't apply to members of a virtual world. And in that virtual world, with the anonymity of just a screen in front of them, children just don't realize all the traps and dangers unless they are taught about them. I think it should be compulsory for all students to have an internet safety session. Keep up the good work Netalert!
Betina, Australia

"I didn't think that putting pictures on the internet could be so dangerous, until we had a adult who specializes in internet safety come in and tell us all about how putting pictures on the internet could be a hazard to myself and my family, everyone in fact, i was putting pictures of myself on msn. Now him telling me about this stuff has made me stop and think before i do things on the internet. i think that internet safety should be a compulsory thing to be learnt due to how much it has helped me in being safe while on the internet."
Rhys

"I have always wished i could tell the whole world about me... and when i was like 10, I thought i could use the internet to do so... I never really got round to it... luckily. I'm glad that we got to learn about the dangers of the net..."
Chrissie

"I used to think the internet was safe until a friend of a friend of mine was about to meet someone they had met on the internet. i told her to have a good time. When she came back she was scared and frightened. So now I know, never trust the internet."
Charli

“Even 3 month babies have blogs nowadays. I didn’t know how to write at that time”.
Einis, Lithuania

I felt hassled on the Web once…it’s tough because you feel powerless when you see people saying terrible things about you and everyone can read it. I think what [Spanish node] Protegeles is offering is very good. If it happens to me again, I know what to do.
Penelope

"Let’s not fool ourselves, the solution is responsible parenting, not creating deficient and enslaving systems of control"
Federico Ponce de Leon

"Humans are, by nature, quite good at dealing with complexity - if you let them do it themselves and give them the right knowledge and tools to keep up with developments."
Peter Troxler

"Probably worth pointing out that illegally sharing music over the internet is *not* "effectively 'stealing'". It is actually breach of copyright. Breach of copyright and theft are morally two quite different offenses and are, quite appropriately, dealt with differently by law. It bugs me when people conflate the two."
Richard

"Hello! We are three Portuguese students and we have just started 'meeting' the problems of internet! We like surfing the internet to search information, and you? But we think there are some disadvantages:like violation of privacy, a lot of spam. However, we think that it is a good way to meet new people..."
Ana,Cátia and Adriana