Making the internet safer for our customers
February 5th is Safer Internet Day and it’s a good opportunity to reflect on how we’re supporting customers to create safe online experiences for their families. As part of our on-going contribution to life in the UK and Ireland, we want to make sure that all of our customers have access to the tools and information they need to in order to use our products safely.
This is something that has always been important to us and we led the way some years ago with our parental PIN controls for Sky TV customers, to give parents control over what content could be accessed in their homes. Now, like all the major Internet Service Providers, we offer parental controls to our Sky Broadband customers free for as long as they want them.
But we’ve also taken additional steps to help protect children, like applying default blocking of inappropriate adult content on our public Wi-Fi network (The Cloud), because we know that parents are worried about what their children can access when they’re not at home. But the most exciting initiative to me is the work that we’re doing directly with young people to discuss and inspire safer internet use.
Watch our video below to see how we’re offering school groups (aged 8-18) the opportunity to come to our specially designed Sky Skills Studios and engage with issues of cyberbullying and online safety through a free learning experience that’s linked to the curriculum. As reporters, experts or eye-witnesses, we’ve seen these young people use their unique perspectives to create their own Sky News reports using the internet in a safe and secure way. They can also share their reports with their friends and families which can be a powerful way to make the learning last.
Since we opened the doors to Sky Skills Studios in September 2012, the social networking and cyberbullying module has been our most popular amongst visiting schools with 830 young people completing it to date. I’ve been inspired by how much these young people have grown their understanding of keeping themselves safe in a digital age through the Sky Skills Studios experience. I encourage any school group that has not attended to book themselves in by visiting www.sky.com/skills.
As well we’re going even further, developing a new parental controls ‘whole-home’ solution for launch later in 2013. In many homes it’s very normal now for the internet to be accessed by a wide range of devices like televisions, gaming consoles, tablets and smartphones so our new product will provide protection for all connected devices in the home.
On the 10th anniversary of Safer Internet Day I am very happy to say that we a doing more than ever to support and inspire safe and positive internet use. To find out more, visit sky.com/security.
