ONLINE SAFETY POST

ONLINE SAFETY POST

Dear Parents & carers,

At Southwark, we take our online safety responsibilities very seriously. We have a robust and up-to-date online safety curriculum which helps prepare children to access the online world safely. We also know how hard it is for parents/carers to keep up-to-date with the latest online safety information which is essential to keep your children safe. Please read below for some useful reminders and resources.

END-TO-END ENCRYPTION
Each year, tech companies report many incidents of children being groomed or exploited online to the police via auto-reporting. Meta makes up for the majority of these worldwide reports, around 80% of the approximately 21 million reports (containing approximately 90 million illegal images and videos of children) each year. Meta has now announced that Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct (direct messages) are to be end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), exactly the same as WhatsApp has always been. This means that criminal activity across their services/platforms will now be undetectable using current methods. No detection = no reporting. This obviously increases risks for children using these platforms. To understand more about end-to-end encryption, CEOP have put some really useful guides together.

Guide for parents /carers:
https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/articles/what-is-end-to-end-encryption/

Guide for younger people (not primary aged):
https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/11_18/lets-talk-about/online-safety/e2ee/

The NSPCC have some good resources to help parents and carers help keep their children safe whilst online here:
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

PERSONALISED LITTLE DIGITAL TOOLKIT
This is a really useful toolkit for parents/carers who may be unsure about what parental features are available on their children's devices. Put together by Internet Matters and Tesco it takes around 8 minutes to answer a few questions and then receive a tailored toolkit.
https://www.internetmatters.org/little-digital-helps-toolkit/

ROBLOX CHECKLIST
Roblox is one of the most popular games out there for children - if your child plays it, please take a look at this parent/carer guide.
https://swgfl.org.uk/assets/documents/roblox-checklist-2023.pdf?_=1691587832

As always, further information about online safety can be found on our school website here:
https://www.southwarkprimary.net/safeguarding/e-safety/

Thank you.

Mr Skirton