“Framework for a Safe Internet”: Panel 3 Wrap Up
[This is the tenth 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 3 , titled, "The Future of a Safe Internet," Chris Stetkiewicz, Sr. Communications Manager of Trustworth Computing at Microsoft, said that the average person receives over 200 emails a day, but he doesn't see most of them because the vast majority of them are made up of spam.
"That's how much spam is being sent and filtered," he said. "About 95% of email is spam, and this is a testament of technology actually working. So the technology is not a complete failure here, but what I think is important is that it's automated. It's very easy to do, to get your spam filter up and running."
Stetkiewicz explained that kids are so immersed in the web today they "don't see the difference between being online and offline." A study conducted in June of 2008 looked at grade by grade usage of the Internet and found that of 5 and 6 year old kids, 27% are completely unsupervised online.
"We put seat belts on them, we don't let them cross the streets by themselvse, you put their bicycle helmets on them, but millions of children are on the web completely unsupervised," he said.
Once these kids get to the high school level they expose themselves to even more risky behavior, including conducting illegal activities of their own. About 65% of high school students, for instance, admit to downloading music illegally.
Hedda Litwin, Cyberspace Law Counsel for the National Association of Attorneys General, said that each year the president of the organization chooses an initiative to focus on and brings in industry and government officials to tackle it, and this year they chose Internet safety for children and financial fraud.
She explained that though the same cyber crimes are carried out every year, they take on subtle nuances that make them harder to detect and fight. For instance, phishing scams used to be riddled with typos and other indicators that they weren't legitimate, but these days they can be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
"At least 95 million adults have received a phishing email," she said. "About five percent of that number have provided their personal information. That amounts to about 5 million people that have provided information. Spyware is another issue we've been working on. What the attorneys general has tried to do is sponsor legislation to make it a crime and we have had training to teach our prosecutors to prosecute these crimes."