In a progress report on the 2008 Byron Review – in which Byron criticised the then access arrangements for online games and the internet, and which resulted in the BBFC being replaced with PEGI as the agency responsible for age-ratings on games – she is now asking for a new report into under-age access to online and mobile social networking services.
Infosecurity notes that the situation regarding privacy issues as they relate to under-age usage of social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook is compounded by a recent Ofcom report that says 25% of school age children have profiles on social networking sites.
And, says AdaptiveMobile, the mobile internet security specialist, whilst Byron's recommendations are a step in the right direction, it believes that many more comprehensive measures could be taken to protect children against the risks they face.
Simeon Coney, AdaptiveMobile's vice president, said that, whilst measures such as an easy-to-use panic button can go a long way to helping social networks to identify and stop threats as early as possible, parents are still calling for more visibility and increased control.
"One issue which is making this battle even tougher is the growing trend toward accessing web content via mobile phones", he said.
"With it becoming the norm for children under 10 to have their first mobile phone, many parents are finding it more and more difficult to keep track of what their children are accessing or with whom they are communicating", he added.
According to Coney, without suitable parental controls in place, children are potentially subject to harassment, unsolicited messaging and inappropriate content.
For example, he says, data from AdaptiveMobile highlights that peak mobile usage for children is late evening – peaking between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm, just after bedtime.
"Unlike a PC however, which may be in a shared room of the house, it's much more difficult to monitor what a child is accessing when theyre doing it from a mobile handset in their own rooms", he said.
"The challenges that exist are primarily parental education and the availability of appropriate and effective controls – with parents being unaware of when their child is at risk – for example, by responding to fraudulent messages, visiting web content inappropriate to their age or receiving undesirable incoming contact", he added.
Coney went on to say that many of the parental controls largely in use today provide protection to the parents' wallets against unwanted charges by setting spend limits – rather than deciding who can contact their child.
Where content controls are available, he adds, it is primarily a coarse decision of adult content – equivalent to only having an 18-year-old cinema rating, versus the grading of content to U, PG and 15 or older that we have today for film, TV and game content.
Against this backdrop, AdaptiveMobile, which says its technology protects around 400 million cellular users world-wide, reports that it technically possible to categorise social networking sites using similar systems,
Coney says that this means that – as an example – with one click, parents can block a child's access to all sites within that category and also against phishing, fraud and malware sites, rather than parents needing to configure each site individually, and to keep their child's mobile handset constantly updated with the latest social or phishing sites.
"With operators becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to using their data intelligently, flexible controls can enable parents to regain autonomy for pro-actively protecting their children when online", he said.
"This guards them against harassment and inappropriate content but still gives children the freedom to use their phone safely", he added.