The government ought to inform citizens about the options of parental control after the children’s access to the internet, said the representatives of major Russian mobile operators at the meeting with the senator Ruslan Gattarov.

Gattarov, who submitted a draft law about providing the information for parents by mobile operators, proposed the companies to initiate an educational campaign to adoption of the legislation.

At the moment the demand for parental filters is very low. Out of 800 thousand Beeline customers in Moscow only 1.3 thousands use parental control, said Alaxey Rokotyan from “Vympelcom”. Popularization of these products does not bring direct profit to the operators and the majority of customers do not know about the possibility to obtain such services. At the same time the measures towards informing their customers are often viewed as advertisement.

In relation to this companies suggest the government to use social channels of spreading the information and start social advertisement campaigns on radio and television. Apart from the this, there is problem of parental education, whose level of computer knowledge is often way behind their kids’ skills, believes the general manager of the “Dr. Web” company Boris Sharov. In order to eliminate the problem it is important to organize an informational campaign at schools where parent can find out more about the dangers of the Internet and methods of protection. For the same goal it is necessary to create a united internet portal with the description of alternative methods of protection of children from harmful information and instructions on their application, suggested Kseniya Karyakina from the Russian Google office.

Suggestions made by the representatives of the Internet and mobile operators were positively accepted by the senator Gattarov. He offered Yandex in cooperation with Google and the Ministry of Education to work on the educational campaign. However he was skeptical about the idea of starting a social advertising campaign due to financial issues.

Author: Alina Tarasova

Source: RIA News

The statistics about the web resources that contain the largest amounts of prohibited information related to suicide has been published. The first place of the rating is taken by the social network VKontakte.

The statistics was announced by Rospotrebnadzor. From November 2012 to July 2013 Rospotrebnadzor made two thousand decisions about closing the web pages which contain information about methods of suicide and/or encouragements to commit suicide and 128 decision about the absence of such information on websites. 1754 pages have been deleted. 204 pages remain on the “measures” stage and owners of the resources are expected to remove the prohibited information.

“More often the prohibited information is posted in various social networks (for example, VKontakte – 349, Mail.ru – 119, LiveJournal – 158) and popular search engines and video hosting (Google – 59, YouTube – 66, Yandex – 53)” – Rospotrebnadzor reports.

According to the statistics provided by the agency, the most widespread type of prohibited information is a list of different methods of suicide (including the most gruesome ones) with detailed description.

Author: Alexey Tsoy

Source: Telecom blog

The Great Britain starts to take measures aimed at limiting access of users to pornography on the Internet. In addition, a responsibility of keeping some types of pornography will be introduced. The largest internet providers of the country expressed their readiness to cooperate with government on this issue. It is possible that British prohibitions become interesting to Russian government.

Prime Minister David Cameron, the representative of the Conservative Party, announced about the ban of the online pornography in his speech. “Many children watch pornography on the Internet and they also find other harmful materials there” – he explains the reasons for taking measures on blocking the adult content.

In the nearest future six largest British companies that supply Wi-Fi services (O2, Virgin Media, Sky, Nomad, BT and Arqiva) will start blocking access to pornographic resources in public areas. Whereas four Internet providers – TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky и BT – who take over more approximately 90% of internet connections in homes, will install “family filters” that block pornographic content. By the end of the year filters are supposed to be activated on all devices newly connected to the Internet. Nevertheless citizens would still have a freedom of choice as they can switch the filters off if necessary. In addition by the end of 2014 the providers would be required to contact all existing customers and offer to install the filters.

“This easy measure would help us to protect children and their innocence”, – believes Cameron.

He also suggested to make a list of “nasty” search requests, which are not supposed to receive answers, adding that Google, Bing and Yahoo have “moral responsibility” to cooperate in solving this issue.

In addition, he wants to prohibit the storage of pornography which shows rape. The possessors of such materials would become outlaws.

Author: Alexay Tsoy

Source: Telecom blog

Rostelecom JSC has signed a voluntary agreement on popularization of systems of parental control on the Internet, reports the head of the commission of the Federation Council on development information society Ruslan Gattarov.

Earlier the agreement was signed by MTS, Vympelcom and MegaFon

“The agreement has been signed by all “big four” operators which cover more than 100 million of customers”, – he said.

The senator has came up with the initiative for popularization of parental control aimed at children’s safety several months ago by submitting a draft legislation into the State Duma. The document offered all service providers which provide Internet access to inform their customers about options of parental control.

The draft legislation will be considered soon, but voluntary agreement has already been signed by four largest network operators in Russia, notes Gattarov. Earlier the senator offered conscientious IT companies not to wait for approval and adoption of the legislation and sign the agreement about providing information about systems of parental control voluntarily

“This measure was necessary due to the fact that the research results revealed a very low level of digital literacy of children in Russia which makes internet surfing an unsafe activity. At the same time parents are not able to help because only 5% know about ways of controlling children’s access to internet resources” – said Gattarov. According to him an effective method of parental control is usage of software that can block access to websites containing inappropriate information.

Source: RIA Novosti

Rospotrebnazor has developed the criteria which are supposed to help determining which information can be classified as propaganda of suicide.
The information that contains «offer or request to commit suicide, request to commit suicide, mention of suicide as a solution for a problem, expression of positive attitude or appreciation of suicide, presence of friend request aimed at committing suicide».
The criteria of information about suicide methods include «the description (demonstration) of processes and procedures that depict a sequence and/or possible results (consequences) of committing a suicide as well as tools and locations for committing suicide in the context of the suicide method that is being discussed; presence of the information about the complex of conditions required for committing suicide (choosing a place, other preparations required for committing suicide), etc.».
The prepared criteria are contained in the interdepartmental decree of the Roscomnadzor, which is now being registered with the Ministry of Justice. According the authority, the criteria have been developed with involvement of Internet community and suicidology experts.
«The decree will allow optimizing the process of decision-making in regards to presence of absence of prohibited information and can be used by the experts who analyze the information»

Source: RIA Novosti

Approximately 36% of parents in Russia admit that their children were exposed to risks during their internet sessions, repots the Kaspersky Lab.

According to the research carried out by B2B International together with Kaspersky Lab in summer 2013, which involved more than 8.6 thousand participants from different countries, 20% of children came across undesirable content on the Internet and 5% communicated with strangers via the Internet.

In addition, 17% of parents took financial losses or lost important data because of their children’s actions. Children often accidentally delete important data and used parents’ payment data without permission. Overall, 79% of parents believe that effective methods for protection of children on the Internet would be very useful.

Although the majority of respondents believe that children do need protection online, the methods that they choose for this vary considerably. 39% parents say that they try to control their children’s activities online another 39% limit the amount of time their children spend online and 30% regularly check children’s browsing history

Experts note that 22% of parents do not limit their children’s Internet activities and only 26% of respondents use protective software which has the function of parental control.

Author: Inna Kudrina

Source: RIA Novosti

Children and adolescents often spend time on social networks, type messages on their smart phones with incredible speed, make friends, split up, argue and get together via the global network. The president of the creative union “Junpress”, executive director of the League of young journalists Sergey Tsimbalenko told about the influence of the internet on the young generation to the RIA Novosti correspondent Irina Zubkova.

— Sergey Borisovitch, many journalists complain that pupils almost live on the Internet and rarely surface from it into the reality.

— You seem to have a negative attitude here. Why? Children on the Internet is a fact and one cannot do anything about it. The society has moved towards a constant dialogue, never ceasing communication. This is a clear step towards the collective mind, or noosphere. Children were the first one to step into this new condition of the society, they consult with each other on everything, including by means of social networks, and make decisions together.

— How much time do adolescents spend online?

— The results obtained by the League of young journalists and Junipress union research group show that they spend between three and five hours online, with slightly less time on week days. It is generally the same amount of time they spend on any other occupation. If a child has a more difficult and intense day, he or she might dedicate less time to the Internet. That is why such prohibitions as “do not spend more than 30 minutes on the Internet!” are ineffective and parents need to create a slightly different structure of the leisure time. Internet has nothing to do with this.

— Nothing has to be forbidden then?

— They need rules, limitations, but most importantly – positive effort. Nowadays to prohibit something is the same as to make laws about drinking the right kind of water in a waterless desert. We simply do not have quality “water”. Internet has remained the only channel, where an adolescent can find something relevant, useful and friendly for himself. Television barely has any programs for children and adolescents, the same goes for radio. «Pionerskaya pravda» and «Pioneer» magazines do exist my their circulation is small even for Moscow. On this account we are at least ten years behind the European countries and the US. They have already understood that limitative and prohibitive measures are not effective and they only cause protests. The cure from protests is a dialogue with kids. Why don’t we prohibit children to go outside? After all it is dangerous out there, there are criminals and something might fall from the roof. Nobody does that and children are simply being taught how to act in different potentially dangerous situations. The same goes for the Internet. We have to develop rules and teach them to children rather than prohibiting anything.

— When did adolescents immerse themselves into the web?

— Questionnaires and research show that the Internet has came into masses three of four years ago. Children do not only use it at school and computer centers. It came into homes and became a casual thing for adolescents no matter where they are – it became available even in small villages. We did not expect such a scale. 93% regularly use the Internet in their everyday life and this number reaches 96% in the cities where the population exceeds 100 thousand. There is a small proportion of those who do not use the Internet – there are 6.6% of them.

— Are they very young children and those who live in rural areas?

— There are small children and those who live in villages without the Internet, but they make up the minority. The majority of them are fifteen-year-olds who live in large cities and have access to the Internet. We call this particular group a protesting one. It is a conceptual issue for them and psychological disagreement with the universal involvement into the net among the peers: «I will not use the Internet and will go to the library instead to get the information there». Sometimes it is the influence of their parents. However when asked about the sources which they use to gain information 20% still state that they do use the Internet. It is curious that when we compared the answers to the question about the lisure time, it turned out that those who use the Internet more often, also spend more time communicating with peers and parents and generally have a more exciting leisure time. On the other hand the “no internet” group is more interested in computer games and spent less quality leisure time.

— Do the rest of them play less?

— Not much less, but less. Moreover it is a myth that on the Internet children only play games. In reality entertainment is placed third among the usages of the Internet. The first position is taken by communication as the Internet is way form social connections. The second place is taken by studying, solving problems and searching for information. The situation was reversed in the past and in the present communication occupies the leading role.

— Real and virtual communications are different though

— Internet does not take away children from real communications. On the contrary it attracts more attention to it. Those who cannot express themselves in real life or who is even rejected gets another opportunity to find like-minded people. Internet is irreplaceable for such children. Most importantly, unlike us children do not split their live into real and virtual: “bye, we shall continue online”. Types of communications flow from one into another. This unified reality gives development to collective skills, which almost died out when youth organizations disappeared and the opportunities to be involved in mass activities became unavailable.

—There is much more inaccurate information on the Internet as compared to official sources. If you compare Wikipedia with the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, for instance, the former would be full with mistakes.

— This is one of the most important issues: how to learn to find quality information. Librarians used to be and still remain on guard here. They create navigation systems which help to find useful and quality information. But these are public initiatives, whereas providers for instance could be involved in this and develop some search tips. Adults already know hot do it and they have to teach children as well.

Another problem is systematization of knowledge. So far adolescents do not know how to systematize icons on a desktop and to sort them according to the categories in order to use them more effectively. However, children learn very fast and even teach each other. And they do not have to learn the actual technology and they immediately master everything that is new and tech their grandparents. Only those who sell these devices might master them faster than children.

— Does this mean that we just have to teach them navigation and systematization?

— We also have to teach them the ethics of internet communication. Just like everywhere else, Internet may become the place for expressing cruelty and rudeness. There are arguments as to whether internet is good or bad. Well, what about television? Books? These are methods of communications that complement each other and they cannot be either good or bad on their own. It all depends on how they are used.

Author: Irina Zubkova

Source: RIA Novosti

Cyrillic domain .ДЕТИ (children) will become a territory of safe Internet. Vladimir Mamontov (Smart Internet Foundation) has told about this to the participants of the round table organized by the “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” within the international business summit that took place in Nizhniy Novgorod.

Before the beginning of the discussion there was a lesson of internet safety and the youngest users of the net, pupils of the first grades became the listeners. At the lesion children have learned about filters, anti-viruses and protection from internet frauds from cartoon characters. And adults have learned that almost every child has a social network account: in reply to this question pupils raised their hands in unison.

- We should not forget that social networks have age limitations – stated the minister of information technologies of Nizhniy Novgorod region Sergey Kuchin – I am a father myself and the topic of safe internet is interesting to me as well. Nowadays we often talk about limiting children’s access to the information that is harmful and unsuitable for them. Should this information be prohibited or replaced? I believe that you cannot do without prohibitions when dealing with children. Of course one has to do it carefully – so that up until certain age a child was not aware of the existence of the territory that is prohibited.

The representative of Megafon JSC Dmitrij Lukyanchikov told about the screen providers are trying to install. Before the 1^st of September the company has introduced the simplest model of a mobile telephone, which only has four buttons: parents’ telephone numbers and SOS button, which is to be pressed in the case of an emergency.

A particularly worrisome piece of information for discussion participants was the fact that 9 million of children under the age of 14 use the Internet without parental supervision.

- Mechanical blocking of forbidden topic is not a solution – noted Dmitrij Klochkov, deputy head of IT school named after Lomonosov. – If we stop naming things for what they are they will not stop existing. Children have to be told about violence, cruelty and other threats so that they could resist them.

Vladimir Mamontov told about a different solution to the long-standing problem:

“I became a grandfather seven years ago and became interested in this problem too. That is why I agreed to head the Smart Internet Foundation. We made a first step towards creating Russian internet and a short while ago we registered Cyrillic domain name .ДЕТИ». The objective of our project is offering parents a clearly marked territory, which is free of those threats. Later, of course, a child will leave this safe area. However, while we can control we should control. This is the first step towards creating Russian Cyrillic Internet for children. Our offer have been introduced to the council of social initiatives and have been approved”

Source: Smart Internet Foundation

Many sites won’t let users create an account until they have created a suitably “strong” password – often measured by text flags on sites describing passwords as “weak” or “strong” as you type.

This sort of system tempts users to fall into traps such as adding numbers and symbols to the end of passwords – which makes them easy to remember, but also much easier to crack.

Thankfully, there are a few tricks to creating memorable passwords that will at least slow down cybercriminals – buying you time to reset your accounts if a list of encrypted passwords leak in a data breach.

Consider using phrases, not words

Using a single English word as a password is incredibly insecure – easy prey for the “dictionary attacks” cybercriminals use to “guess” passwords. Merely adding more words – changing, say, “dragon” to “dragonistired” – is a good first step.

“This works up to a point,” says ESET Senior Research Fellow David Harley. “Length is helpful. But the guessability of a passphrase can be overestimated. Dictionaries can include commonly used phrases as easily as single words, and a space character is just a character (and looking for the delimiter between words is actually a decryption technique). Using a passphrase in combination with other techniques such as interleaving, character substitutions, special characters and so on, does make a difference.

Maths can be your friend

Sites which demand special characters – “!” – as part of passwords often lead to users adding a special character at the end of a password. This, again, makes the cybercriminals’ job easier. Harley says, “This also applies where the site requires you to change your password periodically but allows you to do so by appending a number. Password cracking 101.”

Using maths equations – where the characters mean something – can make for a memorable, secure password.  Something like“1hundred+5=Threehundred” is long enough to be secure, has a nice mix of characters, and the wrong answer is silly enough to be memorable. Using these symbols in sentences works just as well.

Size does matter

Size does matter more than complexity, as long as you do not use just one long word. Long passwords, made of several elements, are more secure than short ones. A short sentence such as “happinessisgood” is very hard to guess –  1,677,259,342,285,730,000,000 possibilities, and that’s just a 15-character lowercase password (as discussed in a previous ESET paper). Adding a single number or special character makes the criminals’ job even harder.

Harley says, “If you augment it with other techniques, you can increase the time it takes to crack it.”

Don’t use words in the cybercriminals’ dictionary

Typically, cybercriminals will use a “dictionary attack” – so the key to making their lives difficult is to avoid anything in the “dictionary”. This will usually include any English word – or indeed any single word in other languages.

Don’t use any part of your own name

The programs criminals use will also look for parts of your name or username being reused in your password. It’s one of the first things a password cracker (human or automated) looks for when it comes to trying to guess a password).

Don’t use your home town

Whether or not cybercriminals already “know” details about you – from your Facebook page, say – place names are easily guessed. If you live in Springfield, Springfield is definitely not a good password choice, for instance). The word lists used in dictionary attacks are likely to contain common place names.

Don’t use TV “likes” and “dislikes”

Dictionary attacks will usually include song titles, the names of books, and cartoon characers and so on – no matter how unique you think your tastes are. Particularly not recommended are geeky references such as “Superman” or “Gandalf”, which regularly crop up in lists of the most over-used passwords of all time.

Mixing things up

Mixing up numbers and sentences can make for secure passwords – even if you “break the rules” and use personal details. While we’ve tried to discourage the use of easily remembered (but easily guessed) words or character strings, like your dog’s name or your birthday, you can still use these safely if you are smart about it. “Roverloves 2 run” is a fine password. “On 4/17/60 I enteredthe world” is a very strong password that contains somebody’s birthday!

Use personal details – fake ones

“It’s even better to use false personal details, as long as you’re consistent about it,” says Harley. “There are those who advocate using false details on social media sites, where possible and appropriate (and legal) and it’s a related issue: where the risk is from someone who has enough information about you to target you specifically, it’s likely that he’s using social media to gather it. However, if you use the same false data for social media and for password mnemonics, then it doesn’t matter to the crim that it’s false: it’s still all too useful to him.”

Author: Rob Waugh,

Source: We Live Security

A prolific pedophile who used the internet to target and blackmail young girls all over the world has been jailed in a case described as one of the worst the British courts have ever seen.

The “sadistic exploitation” conducted by Robert Hunter, of Middlesbrough, England, was so extensive that an international operation through Interpol was sparked.

This came after the 35-year-old had used sites such as Facebook, Skype and MSN to abuse girls as young as nine from across Europe, Asia, Canada and the US.

He would also often pose as the singer Justin Bieber in an attempt to convince the girls to expose themselves and perform sex acts on a webcam.

Teesside Crown Court heard that after being arrested in December 2012, he continued to target children and this resulted in a girl from Tasmania eventually contacting police, who traced him back to his home.

In total, more than 800 videos and images were discovered on his computer, all of them having been made by the defendant.

Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said: “Over the course of 2010, 2011 and 2012, Hunter, using a number of online aliases, had pretended to a number of very young girls that he was a teenager.

“On each occasion he was able to disguise his true age and identity by the clever use of images of young boys or by pretending that his computer wasn’t working properly.

“As a further demonstration of the naiveté and innocence of his victims, he was also able to persuade some that he was the music artist Justin Bieber.

“He did this in order to dupe and encourage these young girls to strip on webcams and perform sex acts for him.”

Hunter also blackmailed some of the victims into agreeing to his demands by threatening to make the videos he had already made of them public.

Sentencing Hunter to 14 years in prison, Judge Peter Bowers said it represented a callous and sadistic exploitation.

“This is one of the most serious cases on internet abuse that the courts have dealt with,” he said.

“It’s a warning to all parents of teenage children of what can be done via the internet.

“The public will be disgusted by how you have behaved even after you had been arrested and bailed.

“It represents callous and sadistic exploitation of a number of girls over a number of years.”

Tamara Pawson, defending, said Hunter was remorseful for his actions and the distress he had caused.

In total, Hunter pleaded guilty to 30 offences, which included 15 charges of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and 14 of making indecent photos of children.

Sergeant Paul Higgins, from Cleveland Police, said: “Robert Hunter was a calculating and malicious predator who set out to coerce and bully young girls into exposing themselves over the internet.

“This investigation highlights the dangers that children face when conversing with people over the internet.”

Source: BreakingNews.ie