FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
11:00
WS 154
INTELLIGENT RISK MANAGEMENT IN A MOBILE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JUTTA CROLL: Good morning, everybody. We will wait for 5 more minutes because the coffee break started late. Thank you for your patience.
Good morning. We are now going to start the workshop, Intelligent Risk Management in a Mobile Online Environment, and I'm very glad to be the moderator of this session, which was organised jointly by Google, the companies represented by Marco Pancini who run the panel who will speak afterwards to you, and by the German Safe Internet Awareness Centre called Click Safe in the safer Internet programme of the European Commission, and by the organisationI represent myself, which is the newly founded German Centre for Child Protection on the Internet called, I-KiZ.
We have been doing some research at the German centre on children and youth usage of mobile devices within the last month and that is why we have put the focus on the question, how can parents take their responsibility in that fastly‑moving environment where children use their mobile devices, their smartphones and tablets and laptops anywhere and at any time of the day. And on the other hand, how can we take care of the rights of the children like they are laid down in the U.N. charter of the Rights of the Child so they have the right to privacy; they have the right to choose their own media for information access. And how can we balance between these two areas?
We will do this in a so‑called appreciative inquiry session. That means firstly we will have very short and brief statements from our panelists, and then afterwards, we will go on to ask you, ask the audience, to go through a procedure of four questions where we appreciate what is really in digital media for the society.
So, I will introduce the panelists when they are up to speak and I will start on my left side by Claudia Lampert, the researcher at the institute well‑known for all the work she has been doing for the I-KiZ online studies and she will report about recent findings on children's mobile usage. Please, Claudia.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: Hello, everybody and thank you for the introduction and for the invitation as well. In the next five minutes, I want to draw your attention to some trends regarding children's mobile use and some challenges for both children and parents, and fortunately, with the I-KiZ online survey from 2010 and the Net Children Go Mobile project from 2013 and 14, we have current international and comparable findings for the nine to 16‑year‑old children in Europe. I would like to stretch the status quo of children and use mobile Internet use and four and five points.
First, we can state that the user‑friendly devices, with attached screens, children are becoming more familiar with digital media an as increasingly early age and subsequently, the age of online use is also dropping. In the I-KiZ online survey of 2010, the average age was 9 years and in the mobile study from 2013 and 14, the average age is 8 and a half.
This is important because the findings also indicate that younger children and particularly younger girls, are less familiar and also less able to activate functions on the smartphone to control their online use and secure their privacy. For example, they are not able to block push notifications from different apps or to block pop ups, which promote content or services they have to pay for, or to deactivate localization services and things like this.
Second, Internet use increasingly takes place out of the sight of the parents. Even if most children use the Internet via Wi‑Fi at home, parents hardly notice what their children are doing online. On the one hand, the screen of the smartphone is too small to see clearly what is going on and, on the other hand, 1/3 of the adolescence prefer to use their smartphone in their own bedroom. Additionally, the opportunity to use the Internet all times and everywhere, makes it more difficult for parents to mediate the online activities of their children. Which leads to the third point, what are children mostly doing online with a mobile device?
The findings of the Internet children go mobile studies, show that children with smartphone use, the online opportunities and services more than this and especially entertainment platforms for music, films and sharing pictures and social networking sites and instant messages to stay in contact with their friends. 86% of the 9‑16‑year‑olds have a profile on social network like Facebook, and 33% have a profile on a media‑sharing platform like YouTube or Instagram. The findings indicate that most smartphone and tablet users have a profile on social network compared to those who neither or use neither of the mobile devices to go online.
Although the current findings show that underaged use of social networking sites is dropping, there is still the need to keep an eye, especially on younger children.
The fourth aspect is about risks. Seeing sexual images online or off line, having contact with someone not met face‑to‑face and seeing harmful user generated content, for example, hate content, drug topics, suicide are the most relevant risks.
All risks, accept bullying others, increase not only with age but also among smartphone and tablet users. The findings also indicate that children who use the Internet via mobile device experience more things online that bother them compared to others.
And the final point comes back to parental mediation and considers two points. Younger children are mediated most by their parents. Teenagers receive more support and mediation by their peers. And regarding parental mediation findings of the project show that active mediation of Internet safety has increased compared to active mediation on Internet use, restrictive mediation and technical restriction. We see that technical restrictions are still the least favorite mediation.
The events regarding potential risks seem to have successfully increased among parents, which builds a good background for the discussion, I hope. Thank you.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you very much Claudia for this insight. I just would like to have one final question to you. How do you differentiate between active mediation and ‑‑ I don't remember what you said the other thing was.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: You mean active mediation on safety and Internet use?
>> JUTTA CROLL: Yes.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: The first is the mediation on Internet safety. So parents tell their children what they shouldn't do online, while the other thing includes ‑‑ advises how to use, for example, the Internet creatively or to show them good websites or things like this. So the first one is more focused on the safety.
>> JUTTA CROLL: There might be some awareness of safety risks by the parents?
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: Yes.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you. I will hand over to Yuliya Morenets. She is working on the project together against cybercrime and she will tell us something about what they discovered as the most relevant facts to children's and youth's safety. And we will also have, I think, some remote input from Amelia Gowa and Carla Licciardello, who are both working as strategy and policy advisors at the ITU on the international multilateral partnership against cyberthreats. So, would you take over first, please, Yuliya.
>> YULIYA MORENETS: Good morning and thank you very much, Jutta, for this introduction. I'm very happy to be here today and thank you for the invitation to be part of this panel.
My name is Yuliya Morenets and I actually present and lead the Civil Society Organisation together against cybercrime international. We are based in France and operate mainly in Europe. We do work on the cybercrimes, cybersecurity and cybersecurity strategy centre on children online protection. I want to speak about child online protection. We have in this year, a very particular focus on vulnerable children. When I speak about vulnerable children, I mean, and I take the definition of WSIS process of Tunis Agenda, so mainly children with social problems or from families with social, low social income and children with disabilities, migrants et cetera. So the definition you can find it in the Tunis Agenda
Now I think why I was invited to be here is because we developed together with the University of Statsburg a research on the use of vulnerable children and others and other children. And it was research we started three years ago and this year, we developed online forum to get the data. What is very interesting concerning our subject, the use of mobile Internet by all children, vulnerable or not vulnerable, is growing, of course, and I can give the percentage is 84% of all children of the age of 13‑17 in the mobile Internet. At least France it was the research based on different regions in France.
Now I was asked, we have a more detailed data, of course, available. It was a publication made in English so I would be happy to make it available for you for all participants and stakeholders. And I was asked to give the information concerning the threats online and the dangers that they face. I have to say that we have identified the identity theft and the bullying being one of the ‑‑ well, the important dangers that they face. Of course, it was the growing demand of unknown people to become friends with the kids via social media using, for example, Facebook and other social media and applications.
Now, it is very interesting what I would like to underline, the difference between the real dangers, because when I speak about these dangers, it is the real dangers that these children from our pool that they face. Now, we made a difference between the feeling that the children have. And this is very interesting, because the feeling of dangers of the pool of children, or of children from our pool, is that they feel unsafe online concerning identity theft and personal data. And this is very important. I would not speak about the solutions and what should be done now but I think we will raise these questions later on. As I may be a little bit early, what I would like to say is, when we speak about the need of children and protection strategies at the national level, we definitely need to include the data protection and privacy issues in it, because what we have seen already the feeling of these children about the privacy issues is growing and very important. So I will happy to discuss later on. This is my two cents. Thank you.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Yuliya, for that findings from your recent research. We now have a chance to directly mirror that to the perspective of two young people coming from the German youth panel from click safe. To my right is sitting Lennart Nickel and then we have Luca Troncone. Both are students at German high school in the next to last year. So you have nearly one year to go to take your final exams. I would like to invite you to tell you ‑‑ I think Yuliya mentioned identity theft, bullying, and grooming as the threats that they considered at the study, but that the children are most concerned about identity theft. So losing your private data. Maybe you could give us your perspective on these points. Thank you.
>> LUCA NICKEL: First, thank you for the short introduction and our chance to speak here at the workshop. I think we should start with a general look at the Internet. It's an important part for us in the modern age and especially for younger generations because we shouldn't forget the positive aspects of the Internet, that you can communicate with everybody around the globe, the whole day, and the Internet has an ample source of information. And you have services making your daily life quite comfortable. We shouldn't forget that. It is a fixed part in our daily life, especially for the younger generations. There are some problems and threats that they can't really see when you use the Internet, and that is what we are now discussing.
These negative aspects, are for example, online social networks where people are bullying each other and so they are going into an online identity and losing the personal contact to each other.
>> LUCA TRONCONE: And I think younger generations have the big problem that they are decreasing the time they spend face‑to‑face interactions so that just sitting in the bus next to each other but nobody is talking anymore. Everybody is just looking at this little smartphone. And I think this is a huge problem because when you write for somebody, on a mobile phone, you don't notice his emotions, what you're writing. And I think this is one of the main reasons why cyber mobbing is such a big problem in our daily life.
>> LENNART NICKEL: Yes. And this cyber mobbing is a point where experts and parents should give a safety background for the children and the youth because the victims of the cyberbullying aren't able to get on with this problem on their own. They need some help. So other people are needed to defend themselves.
>> LUCA TRONCONE: And also, the Internet has no limitations for the age. We have no age restriction. That's a huge problem. So people get in touch with inappropriate content that is not good for them. Like sexual content, or horror films or anything like that.
>> LENNART NICKEL: That's the gap in the limits of the youth are creating on their own and that is the task for maybe the parent and teachers at school where they should try to help them and find good arrangement between trusting the children and protecting them from these inappropriate contents and maybe cyber bullying or problems like these.
Very important for that is the good relationship between the parents and the children that the children can say, I have a problem, can you help me? If the parents are able to help them, it is good. Or they know experts where they can find or get information to get on with this problem.
>> LUCA TRONCONE: I think parenting is really important for children to get over a safe environment. People, especially young people, need their own to find their own limits. They need free time without limits to find their own limits. But I think people like maybe two years younger than us, 17 now, like they are 15, they can make their own limitations about how much time they spend in the Internet and what content they are watching. There are still some gaps in this framework they are making. And this is the role of the parents to fulfill these gaps and I think the most important thing is -- between a relationship between the parents and the children is trust. So you can talk about everything.
>> LENNART NICKEL: And maybe this framework, what the parents should create and close for the children should change with the children growing up when they are 14 or 15. They should have most of the ‑‑ they shouldn't have any control by the parents because they are old enough to get on with the Internet problems. Because when you're growing up with the smaller technical instruments, you are able to see these problems earlier than the adults are maybe seeing these problems, like cyber bullying. With the growing age of this problem it is decreasing. And you will find cyber bullying or these online hurt of other people in younger generations than ours. Like 8, 9, 10 years.
And that is what ‑‑ I will now summarize this for us. The relationship between children and teachers and parents is the most important part and this is where the parents should try to begin with saving and securing their children.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you so much for your perspective. Maybe we just turn to our audience and, I think you said from the age of 15 you would say you can take your own responsibility? That is right?
>> Uh‑huh.
>> JUTTA CROLL: So you can raise your hands if you think that 15 is an appropriate age that children should have their own responsibility and the parents should not take care. Who thinks that 15 is a good age? Please raise your hands. Okay. Some hands. And the others. Do you think that children should be guided until 18 maybe? So who thinks the age should be older? Some are nodding.
>> (Off mic)
>> JUTTA CROLL: Could you take the mic, please.
>> (Off mic)
>> JUTTA CROLL: Try the other one, please. We need it louder. Better?
>> (Off mic) -- regardless of the environment they are in virtual world or physical world. So a parent's responsibility to a child, surely, is set by the legal obligations required upon them as a parent inside their environment. Albeit with the degrees of variation of responsibility as the child grows up. Why would that be different in a virtual world? Why is there a distinction here?
>> JUTTA CROLL: I think the reason why we discuss this is because in the real world, the parents would know how to take their responsibility, but maybe they are not so much equated with the virtual world so they give some of the responsibility to their children as well. So what do you think and though real world where 28 Porter be where children can take their own responsibility?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that varies depending on the child, depending on the parent, depending on the legal environment, on a whole vast array of variables. I don't think you can put that down to a single arbitrary age, be that 15 or 18 or 21 or 3.
>> JUTTA CROLL: We have another comment from the floor. Can we have the mic?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think there should not be a real difference between real world or virtual world because the responsibility you have for your children as parents are always the same if they are online or if they are in real life. So, the way how you should observe what the children are doing, where you could stand behind them, help them, depends very strong on the way that the children are educated and the way they get help when they are younger. If they are standing by themselves.
We have young people who are able to take responsibility for themselves when they are 13, 14 and 15. In many, many cases. But not in all. And so you always have to make a difference there too. And that is what we should always think about when we are discussing about the virtual world. Taking or trying to get parallels to what would I allow my child to do in real life? And if I have a 15 or 16‑year‑old child, I cannot observe everything what they are doing. That is not realistic.
And so, it is also the same, I have to prepare them that they are able to see what is dangerous for me or to make them strong, to see that is not kosher what is going on there. I go back. And to educate them to be open to talk to people to friends or to others if something happens that doesn't make them feel well. So, I think that is very important to prepare them also to this virtual world where many things can come easier to children than in real life sometimes.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you. Lennart wants to answer directly. I want to skip in and say, that is what we mean with the heading, "Intelligent Risk Management" to adapt it to the age of the child and to have it also in the hands of the parents.
>> LENNART NICKEL: The problem is that many parents don't have the same technical education as the younger generations have. So we can see it in our situation when we are talking to a younger children. They sometimes have more technical abilities than we do. And so it is quite difficult to prepare them.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Is it a question of technical knowledge or is it a question of experience in life or moral knowledge of the way you are stable and strong? I think the technical knowledge is not the most important thing, but in general to know what is possible, not the technical knowledge as such but the offers that are on the net and I think you are very right, that it is very difficult if you have parents who are not digital natives.
But I think that will not be the problem in 5, 10 or 15 years, because they are also growing up with new technologies. I think that is a very big problem now in the times where many parents don't have the experience with these technical matters. And in countries where people in general don't have these high experiences with these things.
I think it is a question of education in general, to be careful with special things.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I really appreciate we are so interactive. We have another comment from the floor and then we will go back to the panelist.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do I just speak? Just speak and it will start? It's not starting. Can you hear me? Okay.
Thank you so much Lennart and Luca. Told directly to the mouth? Okay. Thank you very much. I really appreciate what you said, that it is so important, the relationship between the child and the teacher or the child and the parent is so central to safety.
But I'll ask you something that I asked in a previous workshop. In this world, in all societies, there are children who don't have engaged parents, who don't ‑‑ it's not even they don't have a trust relationship. They don't have good parents, or they don't have parents at all. So, do you have any thoughts on how these children can get the right education and protection? Don't you think that there is some peer mentoring going on already online? Do young people help each other? Is there going to be more of this going forward? Are there trust relationships peer‑to‑peer trust relationships.
>> LENNART NICKEL: I think for these situations it is important they just find one or two persons who can show them how to go get on with the problems and the usage of the Internet. It is just they need to know that if they do anything wrong on the Internet, they have somebody to talk to, to say, I did a mistake. Can you help me? If they don't find a solution, they can go to an expert and say, this is my problem. But children with 10 years wouldn't go to an expert on his own. So they need to talk to older people, maybe to older students, that is a possibility too.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: Thank you for mentioning this point with the peers. As I said, we see in the data that the older children get more support from their peers than from their parents. In Germany, we have some approaches to use this for special programmes to educate peers that they are able to support others more efficiently, and I think perhaps my colleagues agree, that is a very good approach to reach more children, because children and adolescence likely to hear more of their peers than on what their parents say. So I think it is a good way to reach them.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Okay. Thank you. Then we now continue with our panel, and I think the question that also matters is the question of privacy, which is a human right given to all children regardless of their age. On the other hand it is the question whether parents need to respect the rights of privacy and how is the legal situation? Abhilash Nair from the university who has well‑known research career in regards to these questions on children's rights on the Internet and especially on privacy will elaborate a little bit on this question. Thank you.
>> ABHILASH NAIR: Thank you, Jutta. You heard about the risk to children on the online environment, including the mobile environment from this panel and also if we are talking about the child protection workshops and panels, as well as the coming days. You will hear more about it.
Also, one of the challenges for restricting and enhancing safety online, if you like, is the issue of free speech and privacy and the debate has surrounded on the right to free speech of adults and privacy of adults. It's only recently people are talking about, no, children have rights too. So, what about children? Children's rights to free speech and privacy? Are you restricting that at a reasonable level by incorporating safety measures or restricting children's access to the Internet or certain parts of the Internet? And certain types of content?
So, you also must have come across the different conflicting rights in this context in terms of the state's responsibility or a parental duty to ensure the best interest of the child. But, people often do not stop to think about inherent rights of children. Children have rights too, like privacy. Children have rights too. The right to free expression. But, the question is, do I extend -- can you restrict those rights? As you know, right to free speech of adults is not unconditional. It's a qualified right. If you look at the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 10: Right to Free Speech, Right to Free Expression; Article 8: Right to Respect for Private Life. None of those are unconditional rights. There qualified. They can be restricted provided that they are within the law or they are reasonable restrictions and that applies to children too.
Now what constitutes a reasonable restriction on their right is a very subjective thing. Just as an example, if you look at access to pornography of children, a child could not go to a sex shop and buy porn. Right? This is before the Internet and it shouldn't be any different post‑Internet. Obviously there are technical issues which makes that restriction less practical for the Internet context.
But, if you look at the recent and analyze whether that restriction was reasonable or not, that was not ever based on any credible evidence of harm to children. You will find a lot of studies which point to harm but you'll find an equal number of studies which point to lack of harm or lack of evidence of harm of accessing adult content.
But what there was for a fact, was credible risk of harm. And the risk of harm has provided or offered sufficient rationale, justification, for restricting children's access to adult content.
So, coming back to restricting the right to access different kind of information, it was never required, and it's not required, to identify an actual credible risk, even if there is an actual evidence of harm, even if there is a credible risk of harm, that has that additionally, from a purely legal perspective, offered substantive justification for restricting access to inappropriate content.
Now I talked about the conflicting interest, people talking about rights of children, right to privacy, balanced with the state's responsibility to ensure the best interest of the child or parents' duty to ensure the child's best interest. I think we need to go beyond that and start thinking about the child's inherent right to self and see the different rights of the same child and balance it with each other.
For example, yes, a child has the trite privacy, but also in the same token, same child has the right to a healthy upbringing, a right to grow up and reach their full potential. So for restricting certain rights, which includes right to privacy and free expression, can be justified by making sure that restriction leads to a fuller child being to grow up and reach their fuller potential and then that restriction would be reasonable in my opinion.
So, I think to summarize that, I think it is important that we need to take a step further and start thinking about rights from a child‑right point of view rather than a right which society or the state confers on children as a privilege. It is a right which exists for the very reason that they are born, that they exist it's their inherent fundamental basic human right. With that said, it is subject to reasonable restrictions. Again for the best benefit of the child. I'd be happy to take any questions.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for being a child's right advocate at that point. I really appreciate the example you have given because it leads directly to the question, what can parental controls do. When you talked about restrict to adult content pornography in the real world, it is just performed by not letting children go to the moves or to the shop where they can buy such stuff, but on the Internet it is different. Everything is open and free and the only tool we consider as maybe having the potential to reduce the access to this content could be parental controls.
I am really happy to have Clemens Gruber here working on the SIP benchmark project which is run for several years by the European commission. They are looking into the effectiveness of such parental control tools but also into the usability of these tools and how parents will be able to cope with the tool and to set it up correctly to make them work.
So we have a short presentation and I hope that the technician in the background will see my sign. Sorry. Okay. It will work.
>> CLEMENS GRUBER: I can start? We have the website on the screen. This is the website of SIP benchmark. It is a project founded by the European Commission and we are monitoring parental controls to control tools, technical tools, that limits the access to the Internet for our children, for our teens, for kids, and we monitor these tools on a regular basis. At the moment, every eight months we have a look at the tools and we test different aspects as you can see on the next slide.
The first thing and the most important thing is the effectiveness. This is the score of underblocking and overblocking. How much good content, how much bad content is blocked or is not blocked. The next point is the security and how easy is it to bypass the filter? In some cases children are able to use a proxy, use an alternative browser, especially in the mobile tools, and so they can bypass the filter.
The next thing is the usability. We are monitoring, because it is important, how easy is it to install the tools, to configure the tools, and to use the tools? If the tools are not easy to install or to configure, parents can make mistakes and so, the filtering and the monitoring is not working correct.
And the last thing is the functionality. You have a filter but you have other functions like time restrictions like monitoring. And we try to hope. We try to help parents to use the right tools for their children. As you can see on the slide, you have on the website, different sorting opportunities, different browser options and parents can see and can search for tools for special operations system or for special functionalities.
So you have this overview of the tools but you can also have tool fish, and they can see details of the tool like the operation system, like metadata, language, the available language, or our scores for the different rating categories.
So, we monitor with different tools, we started with tools for PC and Mac and then came time by time, the mobile devices and now it is new. We monitor also so‑called alternative tools. These are tools that have on the technical base, a wide list only approached, especially for very young children where you have a walled garden and you can say, okay, it is safe for the children, but it is also a very limited access to the Internet.
So, let's go to our topic today. Let's go to the mobile devices and I have got some numbers here. Let's compare the mobile devices as new tools to the old tools, the PC and Mac tools. And you can see the effectiveness is not so different for this tool, because the engine is in the most cases or seems to be in the most cases the same. So, those are more or less good or bad. Let's turn to the usability. There you have some better points for the mac or PC tools because you have a larger screen and for instance configuration is much more easy on the screen than on a tablet.
Functionality is not so good. For the mobile tools, in the most cases, on the basic filter, and you have more features on PC or Mac tools. But the weak point is security. If you have a look at the security score, the mobile tools are really bad. You have in some cases the opportunity to install simply and easily another browser and you can access the web. This is the weakest point at the moment on the mobile tools compared to the PC tools.
But if you have a look at the effectiveness, there is also a weak point because if you will see that overblocking and underblocking score, overblocking obscures the tools, blocking content. It is the percentage of dropped good content and under blocking is the other point, the percentage of missed bad content. And if you ever look at the tools we have tested in the last cycle, you will see about an average rate of overblocking 17%. So, this means when we go back to the definition, that 20%, nearly 20% of good content is missed. Or, let's go to the underblocking. So, how much content is not blocked?
As you can see, it is 45% and this is a lot. I think we will discuss about this later. But, if you have a look at the categories we have tested, you can see that for adult content, it is not so bad at all. So, this means that the filter is relatively good for pornography, for sexual content, but it is not good for racism. It's not good for self-damage. It's not good for drugs and so on.
So, as a conclusion, I would say that adult content is relatively good filtered. We have also a low effectiveness for Web 2.0 content because it is user generated. In the most cases, the filter cannot access this before and you need a realtime filter and so it is not so good filtered. And, all filter work well with English language content, but work not so good with other language content.
So, we propose to talk about the tools, not as a solution, because the tools are not a solution, not a solution for parents and not a solution for government. You cannot say, let's have a filter and the problem is done. So, it is always a tool to support parents. We have heard that children use more and more mobile devices. They use more and more the Internet in a content that can parents not monitor.
And so, we have the opportunity with these tools to support parents, but it is not a solution at all. Thank you.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you. Thank you for that presentation and for the deep insight into the research from the SIP benchmark. Because at some point, I think if it is 45% of underblocking, that means 45% of the unwanted content still coming through. That's nearly random. I wouldn't know how to install and configure such a tool, but maybe Myla Pilao can step in because she is coming from provider and vendor of parental control, which is Trend Micro. And I think is not an easy situation for you to comment on this and maybe, I don't know whether your tool has been in the test but maybe you can tell us more in detail. Just comment on that.
>> MYLA PILAO: Good morning. I think it is very good queue in to what you have covered in terms of growing security threats and mobile. Let me step back a bit and talk a little bit more on the fact that I think it is the most, the fastest‑moving gadget we all agree in the market. It is a major neutralizer that everyone definitely has access to mobile, younger ones and older ones and middle‑aged. Just because of the greater accessibility of this gadget presents a greater risk to all of us, right?
So speaking of ‑‑ and just covering a little bit on the security issues we see. I come from Trend Micro, a global company that we are looking into security solutions for a lot of the things. And I think mobile is one of the biggest challenges that we do have at the moment.
We are actually seeing from the first sign that we saw, the first mobile security threat, that was actually 10 years ago. And for those who are using Nokia, Symbin, you can definitely nod your head and say most of the threats we saw in the past were more on advertising, Malware advertisement, we call it.
Today we are seeing the tenth year of this mobile threats. We have at least up to present, 2.7 million mobile applications that are sitting on mostly on Android platforms that are qualified as high‑risk and malicious. Meaning, this is how much we are exposed as consumers and users of mobile. Think about 2.7 million. As we said earlier in a previous panel, there is no age difference when it comes to usage. So think about that even our children are exposed to these 2.7 million threats every day.
When we look at these threats, 80% of threats are more focusing on the bad of the bad applications, meaning to say they come here to disrupt, to disengage our online usage. 20% we call them high‑risk. What is concerning is that from this 2.7 million, we see a lot that are catering mostly from, I think, our moderator talked about unwanted content in a traditional world of PC and laptop. We call them mal-vertisement.
This is an area that is a huge threat of the mobile environment. The other percentage, about 20% is mostly going around ‑‑ I'm sorry, 40% is mostly working around premium SMS, which means you guys are receiving messages that seem to be catering to your lifestyle, to your need, but you're always wondering why am I getting it? Who gave my number, right? So no wonder.
When it comes to severity of security, this may not be on the top list. What concerns us the most as a security practitioner, is 20% of these threats are data or information stealing. They are mostly spying tools. There are things that are set up in our mobile that functions as a way to harvest information, critical information that sits in our mobile. So bottom line is, our kid are exposed to this. There is no different shader that only adults get it. The kids are definitely subjected to this. The point is, how can we design, as was mentioned, how can we design controls and tools to do this?
And I guess my challenge this morning is that -- two things, one is, we need to change the mind‑set. We always believe that that smallest gadget doesn't have to have a security. And I think the numbers of 2.7 is alarming enough to say it requires equivalent security. And the second is, we are actually facing a mobile community when it comes to children. They are already across the chasm where they are huge mobile users. Remember, there is still a huge number of incoming generation that have not yet touched a smartphone. How can we influence both? The existing users of this mobile who are exposed to a lot of security threats but at the same time, the incoming generation, how can we leverage what we have learned and pass it on to them? Thank you.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for that statement. I think that there will be some questions going to you as well when we come to the discussion. But last but not least, I would welcome Marco Pancini, who is our co‑host. Thank you for your patience. I think you will have to tell us something, what Google is doing also in this area of safeguarding children and other people as well.
>> MARCO PANCINI: Thank you for the invitation. And for those who don't know me, I'm Marco Pancini from the Brussels policy team of Google. And actually I was invited to learn and listen from all of the different panelists and understand them much better. They start the debate on child safety and family safety and mobile.
I would like to start to say that we fully understand that the job of the parent is not an easy job. The most of us are parents also at Google. Our engineers and our leaders are parents. They know how it is difficult to deal with parenting and the real world and the online world, as additional complexities. This is why I think we have done a lot of progress in terms of making it easier to control the experience for families on our platforms, particularly on Android and mobile in two ways.
First, in general attempts for concerns the whole Android environment, so the safety and control in Android now much easier to install and much easier to assess for parents. At the same time, one important point for us in our Android system, Google Play, as we made a lot of effort to make sure that all of the shady applications are actually easy to detect and easy to be taken down.
We also made, thanks to the work with the Commission, good progress in making sure that any unclear offer which is hiding behind the concept of free, is not actually representing the cost for families. And very recently, the Commission acknowledged our efforts in this direction, in order to make this in-app purchases more fair and clear, is going in the right direction.
On top of that, we also made the huge investment in terms of making Chrome a more family safety, create a different experience in chrome. The goal here is not to, with the risk we have seen before create just filters or tools that can impede access to a specific content. The goal is really to create tools that make possible for families to have a shared experience when they are online.
For example, on Chrome, thanks to new product we launched, it is possible to create a profile that is shared between the children and the parents. And the parents can decide what kind of site the children can access or decide to provide them full access to the Internet. Because I believe that as we answer your question, what is the right age to be online? Again it's the same question that sometimes parent are making themselves. When is the right age to give the key of the house to their children? So there is not one solution fit all. This is why we provide more than a solution bade on age, a solution based on what the parent really want to do. So the goal is to empower parents. Again, I think I shared this experience, talking about -- because that's a important point. Talking about the possible issues that can raise from the experience online.
That's not the end of the story. I think there is a lot of progress that can be done in the context of YouTube, for example, and in the context again in the context of Chrome, in particular with regard with Chrome. The natural evolution of Chrome is becoming an operating system. So in the old Chrome ecosystem ‑‑ I can tell you we are focused on that and working hard to fully understand all the challenges that were described today and we are working very hard to tackle them.
But as you said, mobile is the new frontier. Everything is going to be mobile. Mobile is going to be the way for us to access or do online experience. And so it is very important to keep this focus, these interests on the topic, and any feedback on the use of our tools, so if the feedback is that we didn't know you had tools to make safer the experience on Android. It's very important for us.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Marco, for this industry perspective and for describing us what you're doing. Clemens, could you click once more ‑‑ these are the four points we wanted to discuss with you and I think that it is easy to start with what we appreciate from the situation right now, I think I would like to give the floor to Luca and Lennart again because you heard in your statement saying what you appreciate, communication and having access to the huge resources of information, and what do you think you would also appreciate on that situation that parents can control but they must not control? Can you? Just start with what you appreciate on being online and maybe on being not controlled by your parents.
>> LENNART NICKEL: Maybe it's the freedom to go to every website I want. What is very important for me because when I realized this website is not -- doesn't have any good content for me or I don't need them, it is the wrong issue or something like this, I can change because I know where the dangers are and what sites I want to take a look at. But, this freedom has two sides and I don't think you should 100% say it is good because we are ‑‑ we are old enough to say this is the website which has good content and this is a bad one. But for younger generations, it is maybe not that easy.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Would you like to add something?
>> LUCA TRONCONE: And I think freedom to -- in the Internet is very important for us, especially in our age. But as Lennart said, the younger generations have their problem with choosing the right contents for them and I think just to remember what you said, sorry, I forget your name, is how you can ‑‑ what our children is doing with bad parents. So I think in our school, we have the median pardon and maybe you heard about it. It is a group of people in our age talking to the new people in our schools.
(Laughs)
Thank you. And I think this is one of the most efficient ways to teach them, to brief them, to prepare them for the Internet. That we are young people are talking to them and explain to them what is good and what is not. Because not everybody is talking to their parents.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Marco, is it right that what chrome provides, it could also be used by peers? So youth could supervisor or help other young users to become more knowledged and more acquainted?
>> MARCO PANCINI: This is why I was speaking about family safety and supervised profiles. So without going into the details about supervised profile, it is a profile that is under or is shared and evaluated in terms of the behavior that is profiled by a peer. It can be a teacher. It can be older brother. It can be a parent, and again, it is very flexible and the goal is to have a shared experience. So, it is not controlling. It is actually the person that is using it knows that this profile is shared so the experience is shared. So it is also a measure of trust for sure. Without the trust element between the different factor involved in the activities, it is impossible to have debate.
>> JUTTA CROLL: If it's consensual then it is in line with privacy you have been promoting? If there is a consensus about this shared experience on the Internet? You would say so.
>> ABHILASH NAIR: I agree. I also have to say, what is private or what is regarded within acceptable norms of privacy is very much dependent on where you are. So some societies value privacy more than other societies and would want their children to have more privacy than other societies. It's hard to draw a harmonized standard across the world.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Claudia, could you commend on what the children you have been interviewing in your study, what they appreciated most from the Internet? Did they talk about feeling endangered, identity theft that was mentioned, private data a real concern of the young people and which age have they been the ones you're talking to in the interviews.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: We conducted interviews with the children from 6‑17, and the older ones mentioned topics of privacy problems or identity theft or also bullying, for example. But they also mentioned that they want to talk about their problems with their parents, that they want to see their parents as a partner, who are able to help them in a problematic situation.
But, on the other hand, I realize that the older adolescents like these guys here, have been very reflective regarding online use and as you said, they seem to be able to deal with most of the risks they get in touch online. But, the younger ones definitely need help or support by parents, teachers, peers, and others.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Yuliya, I think this counts also for the most vulnerable people you have been talking about and who could be their guide? Do they also have peers who can step in when the parents could not fulfill their tasks? Or do you see any responsibility for example in social work?
>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you for this question. Concerning vulnerable people, what we have served during the last two years of our research, they use a lot ‑‑ well, they are present online in social media more often than others, actually, and they play and use social games a lot. So, this can give us ideas of course of what they do online or maybe which kind of tools we need to develop in order to have a particular approach issues to the awareness raising.
But also I think it's the question of empowerment and the feeling of empowerment. And I completely agree with the comment made by the lady, that we need to empower also parents. Maybe this is the issue and social, of course, who work with the particular kind of children, vulnerable children.
And to answer your question, what we have served during our social research is that they are quite close to their brothers or sisters. This was not observed with regard to their parents, but brothers and sisters.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I now give the floor to my colleague who has a comment from a remote participant. Please.
>> JOHANNA PREUß: Amelia is commenting Impact. What would be key in building an intelligent risk management approach as to identify each group's strength, recognizing that the rights of a child also extend to the online platform, that young people are good innovators and combining all the elements to have an engaged approach.
I think parents and educators are at an advantage to help young people develop resilience while interacting online, because they have more experience in the world. Coupled with the right technical experience, they are able to impart the general skills needed to translate the same wisdom off line to online concepts.
Young people are also in a good position to have each other due to peer to peer support that we see happening from time to time. The voice of the children and young people in these conversations is crucial to identifying the potential risks and possible solutions as seen from their perspective.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you it was more a statement than a question. I think that was into our question about appreciating and the best of what is, because it was focused on the strengths of young people or the strength of all groups. And if I got it right, it also called it strength of the parents, that they have some experience in the real world, which helps them to judge what is best for their children but also the young people's strengths to cope with the risks as well. So do we have any other comments from the floor or questions maybe? Can we give the mic? Can you please identify yourself before your speaking? Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Mandy and I just have a comment answering a couple of people, actually, and specifically for Luca and Lennart. We did some work in Georgia and asked youth what they felt would be successful for them if they came in contact with a problem. They felt that they could go to their peers rather than their parents and teachers. So, they developed these youth moderators. They wanted to call that themselves. And they were trained.
(Loss of Audio)
>> JUTTA CROLL: -- I think it's a little bit technical. Marco?
>> MARCO PANCINI: Can you please clarify exactly, because it's more about the tools or it's more about the general -- what should be the general policy notes to give a better experience for children online, safer experience for children online?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: They are using mini phones. Their writings are very small and the children are focusing more on that phone that affect their eyes also.
>> MARCO PANCINI: Okay. I don't have an answer for this. I'm sorry.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I think I've been dealing with promoting Internet access to the whole society for more than 15 years, we have also been confronted that there also might be health risks when using these tools. But in the end, I would say that with the new developments, especially when you have a touch screen, for example, where you can enlarge the fonts and you can read it, it is so convenient to use that. And it is even accessible for not well‑sighted people, for handicapped people.
So I don't think that we are going into a future where it is less healthy to use these devices. I think that we have more and more innovation that make it easier to use, more usability, and so I don't think they do damage to the health of the children as well as to any other person in the world.
I think we will summarize because we are nearly at the end of our session. And I would like to invite the panelist to have a look at the four questions that we had for our discussion, and maybe you can focus on envisioning what might be also innovating. With only two sentences, what do you envision will happen within the next 3‑5 years? And what should be innovated that it makes it more comfortable and more safe to use the Internet on mobile devices for children and youth? Maybe we start now with Yuliya on my right side and then continue with the whole panel. Just two sentences.
>> YULIYA MORENETS: I think it's really the question when we speak about risk management as well about the empowerment and the development of innovative tools using the appropriate data. So I would encourage the research and specifically using different types of ages to adapt the research on different types of children of ages of children and vulnerable groups.
And I would say to answer your question, maybe as a suggestion, I would definitely think that we have a need to develop the national strategies child online protects strategies and to include empowerment questions and risk management questions and to have different feelers and an appropriate approach at the national level.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Myla, it's youR turn.
>> MYLA PILAO: I think our vision is no matter how ambiguous it is, the world is safe for us to exchange a lot of digital communication and information. And if there is one thing we can innovate, really is how we can rebuilD the trust and confidence on that gadget and really enable a way that can protect 3‑5‑year‑old kids and adults as well.
>> I like to answer this question from a technical standpoint and I think we have to be more honest to talk about technical solutions and to say what can the solution do and what can they not do? And this is my wish for the future to be more honest not say we have a solution and it is not a solution.
>> MARCO PANCINI: From our point of view, it is a shared, responsibility of family safety, investment from our side, building tools that can empower families to experience online and assure their experience online.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Marco. Abhilash?
>> ABHILASH NAIR: I agree. And I think the goal which we need to work towards is to make kids smarter and resilient rather than shielding them from the Internet. As technology advances, they will have more and more access to the Internet and mobile gadgets. And I think legislation is no solution but the law should step in where necessary to ensure that the relevant stakeholders do their bit to ensure child safety.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you. I just got the information we have a remote comment for the final round so we take that and then I hand over to the young guys.
>> JOHANNA PREUß: Kala from ITU is asking me to read the following: First, educate parents on how to manage concerns related to Internet usage, including spam, data, theft and inappropriate contact such as bullying and grooming and describe what actions parents can take and how they can raise concerns on inappropriate use.
Second, set up mechanisms and educate parents to become involved in their children's ICT activities, particularly those of younger children, for example, providing parents with the ability to review children's privacy settings and with information on age verification.
Third, collaborate with educators to build parents abilities to support and speak with their children while being responsible digital citizens and ICT users and lastly, based on the local context, provide materials for use in schools and homes to educate and enhance children's use of information and communication technologies and help children develop critical thinking that enables them to behave safely and responsibly when using ICT services.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for that statement from CALA from ITU. And then I give the floor to Lennart and Luca again.
>> LENNART NICKEL: It would be a solution to create a group of youth like we have at our school, who are trained by a professional to educate and speak with the new children at school, because they can react to the personal situation of every child, a different way than an adult can do that. And so, the dialogue is more personal and it is more easier to react on every specific situation and to speak with them and help them dealing with their situation.
>> LUCA TRONCONE: And we think that parents should start to realize that a total control is an illusion and it is also no need. There is no need for 100% control because I think younger children do need some protection in the Internet, but if the children grow older, they need more freedom, more and more so they can find their own limits in the Internet. And then the role of the parents should be a partner in the background who says we trust in what you're doing.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you. So Claudia, it's up to you to have the last statement.
>> CLAUDIA LAMPERT: I think in the next years, we have to keep an eye on the very young children, because we see that also the very young and also toddlers are beginning to use the mobiles and the tablets of their parents. So I think they will begin to use the Internet very early as well. And we have to empower the children and the parents to handle risks of cost but I think we shouldn't forget the opportunities the Internet have, and we have to empower parents and children as well to use the opportunities as well. And I think finally we have to improve the dialogue between children and adults but also between children, adults, Internet, service providers, and to share the responsibility of children and online safety.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you very much. Thank you to all my panelists for sharing their thoughts with us and for driving the discussion. And thank you to the audience. To my conclusion, I see many, many people I have not yet seen in child online protection sessions during the IGF and also during the last years' IGF. So I hope that we have contributed to raise more awareness of the challenges, but also of the opportunities that mobile user to mobile environment can provide to the young generation, and that control is one part but as it was said by Luca, we do not need 100% control. We need guidance and education and empowerment so that they can do their steps on their own. And thank you very much for being here. We will be here for the next two days. We will be ready to answer your questions if anything comes up to you and thank you and have a nice day. Bye‑bye.
(Applause)