Safe Internet Alliance

[This is the fifth in a series of posts featuring key points and issues discussed at Safe Internet Alliance’s event on Capitol Hill on October 20th, “Framework For A Safe Internet: Know the facts, understand the issues, shape the future.”]

Speaking on Panel 2 , titled, ""Confronting Internet Risks Today," Safe Internet Alliance President Linda Criddle said that "we have a problem where people do not know whether they're novices or security experts." She explained that cyber security is a multi-faceted beast that is made up of privacy, safety, and security, and it isn't until one employs all three that he or she is really secure.

"If you focus on privacy, and say you want strong privacy, this does not mean that safety is in place, or your security is in place," she said. "All of those combine."

Criddle said that in many places where we teach internet safety we fall short because we fail to actually teach the skills to use the tools that we're trying to keep safe. She compared it to teaching someone a bicycle safety class without teaching him how to ride a bicycle. In the end, he'll "still likely wobble out in front of a car."

Part of the problem, she explained, is that we're careless both online and offline, but in the offline world we have more immediate feedback. If we put our hands on a hot stove, then we face an immediate consequence, whereas if we put our information into a phishing website, it might be a year or more before our identify is stolen and we wouldn't necessarily know why or how it was stolen.

"One of the groups that places a tremendous amount of information about you online is the government," Criddle said. "Not only can I find all the information about your home and the taxes you pay, a lot of times I can see your floor plans and even your loan applications. It can be your school or your child's school that's posting photos of various teams with the names of children underneath, and that can be combined with a government site, combined with what's on their Facebook page, and you can form a comprehensive picture of that person."

Criddle said she regularly calls up people she finds online who are sharing what she considers too much information. In one instance, she called up a woman named Cathy, who lived not far away from her.

"I said, 'hey, this is who I am, can I talk just about internet safety? What do you know about it?' She said, 'I know that people can steal your identity, but what am I supposed to do, turn off my computer?' No, that's not the right answer, the right answer is you want to use these products. But here are some of the things that you don't know. And here is some of the information I found. And as I proceeded to give her information about her and her family, she finally got to the point where she said, 'how do I know you're telling the truth.' And I said, 'well, I'm calling you aren't I?' She had an 'aha' moment, and she was suddenly really frustrated, and she said, 'how dare they?' How dare who? At this point she was using a social networking site, and she said, 'how dare they let me put this information on this site without any warning, and then she thanked me, and she thanked Microsoft."

CrispThinking's [http://www.crispthinking.com/] Head of Safety Rebecca Newton addressed the site moderation side of the online safety debate, and she said the challenge can be wrapped up in one word: "Volume."

Newton pointed out that there are currently 89 million Americans generating content online, and of those, 15 million are children 11 and under, and about 17 million are children 12 to 17.

She said that typically, there is about one moderator for every 15,000 users; because of this, traditional moderation is reactive, based on some kind of filtering or "report abuse" system.

"So how well does the online community watch system work?" Newton asked. "Well, most of the numbers show that just like offline, only three percent of youth approached by a stranger report it to an authority. Nine out of 10 parents don't know that any inappropriate contact has happened with their children. 80 to 90 percent of problem behavior goes unreported, so it falls below the real time moderation radar."

Newton said that within the past year, 5.6 million messages received by children have threatening or inappropriate content. These messages requested phone numbers, asked whether a child ever had sex or if they wanted to look at pornography.

"So to boil this down to a single illustration imagine 10,000 people under 17 being dropped off at the National Mall with five chaperones, and each has a red alert button, and they say, 'behave, and push the button if someone harasses you, and one of these five people will come to your aid.' About 85% of people behave, but those 15% are very noisy and often dangerous. But that's still 1,500 people with five professional moderators to deal with them every minute. There's just too much --too much for human eyes, for a human brain -- to contend with."