07/02/12 - Safer Internet Day 2012
COFACE encourages the set up of privacy protection tools

Online advertising has been growing tremendously over the last decade. It has grown by 15.3% in 2010 and has reached 17.7 billion € in the EU.

In order to save money on advertising campaigns and avoid that consumers are exposed to irrelevant ads, behavioural or targeted advertising has steadily developed over the last few years. Although internet users might find it useful to be exposed to ads relevant to their interests, many concerns remain around the trade-offs of this new service. When considering the amount of private information that needs to be collected about an individual to show him/her ads relevant to his/her interests, consumers could become much less enthusiastic about behavioural advertising.

A parent concerned about his child's privacy, protection from tracking and unsolicited exposure to advertising will be glad to know that browsers can help. While Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer have chosen different strategies, all provide some form of ad-blocking features and tracking protections.

COFACE encourages parents concerned about privacy to set up tracking protection and ad-blocking. These features should be enabled on computers used by children, especially younger children, in order to safeguard them against ever more intrusive and insidious advertising and tracking.

"I am a parent and I want to configure my browser to protect me from tracking but I don't know how…" Depending on your browser, please follow the links below to configure your tracking protection tools:

Microsoft Internet Explorer: Tracking Protection
Mozilla Firefox: How do I turn on the Do-not-track feature?  |  Adblock Plus 2.0.3
Google Chrome: Desactivation

Read the full article including the review of the browser features

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COFACE acknowledges the positive effects of the Internet in the field of education, work, housing, health, social integration,… However, it contains hidden risks, especially for children and young people, such as exposure to illegal content and harmful conduct, bullying, violation of privacy, contacts with strangers, self exclusion,… These dangers are justified as technological developments allows the access to the Internet not only by PC but also by mobile telephone.

COFACE wishes to put forward some recommendations to European and national policy-makers supporting parents in their role of educators. COFACE considers essential to:

- Raise awareness of parents.
- Train parents by supporting exchanges of good educational practices.
- Provide supporting technological tools.
- Promote positive content.
- Involve family organisations in the elaboration and the implementation of regulation measures.
- Research in the field of parental education and supervision.
- Provide support services to deal with self exclusion of young users.

The development of an Internet which is safe and respectful of fundamental rights must rely on the involvement of parents who have been empowered to fully understand the Internet. This involvement must build primarily on strong educative principles and dialogue between parent and child. Apart from education, any initiatives in view of regulation or classification of the Internet content and uses should involve all stakeholders: public authorities, services and content providers, researchers, and also users, family and child protection organisations.

COFACE focuses on parents, but many of these recommendations apply likewise to teachers, who should share the responsibility of educating children in this field. Recognition of this shared responsibility should translate into making media awareness a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Awareness raising and training actions should also be aimed at children themselves.