March 2016
E-safety
Dear Parent/Carer,
Thank you to those who completed the short online e-safety survey.
In terms of e-safety risks, digital footprint, trolling and grooming came out as the areas parents would like more information about.
Internetmatters.org is an excellent resource with sections on sexting, grooming,cyberbullying and more besides: extract overleaf about grooming is taken from their website).
I’ve also included information on trolling from You can also try
The information on digital footprint at the end of this document is from Thinkuknow.co.uk.
Vodafone produce a magazine called Digital Parenting. This is a free publication and is available from Vodafone shops or you can download it from their website:
There is an e-safety session for parents on Wednesday April 27th at 6.30pm in the Main Hall which will cover some of the technologies children, young people and their families are using; some of the challenges and issues they bring (including your digital footprint) and some practical ideas and tools to help you to stay in control.
Yours faithfully,
L Wrigley
Miss L Wrigley (Deputy Headteacher)
How does online grooming work?
It’s easy to pretend to be someone else on the internet, so children can sometimes end up having conversations with people whose real identities they may not know.
Groomers may go to a social network used by young people and pretend to be one of them. They might attempt to gain trust by using fake profile pictures, pretending to have similar interests, offering gifts and saying nice things to the child.
Once they have the child’s trust the groomer often steers the conversation towards their sexual experiences, even asking them to send sexual photographs or videos of themselves. Some may try to set up a meeting, or even blackmail children by threatening to share the pictures or videos with the child’s family and friends.
Online groomers are not always strangers. In many situations they may already have met them through their family or social activities, and use the internet to build rapport with them. Sometimes children don’t realise they’ve been groomed, and think that the person is their boyfriend or girlfriend.
Is my child being groomed?
Online grooming may be hard for parents to recognise because it can happen when children are at home. Also, groomers may specifically warn children not to talk to anyone about it. There are a number of signs to be aware of (although a lot of them are quite common among teens), but look out for increased instances of:
•wanting to spend more and more time on the internet
•being secretive about who they are talking to online and what sites they visit
•switching screens when you come near the computer
•possessing items – electronic devices or phones – you haven’t given them
•using sexual language you wouldn’t expect them to know
•becoming emotionally volatile.
Talk about grooming with your child
Grooming can be a tricky subject to talk about with your children but the tips below may help:
Be approachable
Let them know you are there to help them if they get into trouble online – and if they are concerned about something they can come to you.
Talk to them about their online friendships
Find out what sites they go to, where they met their online friends, how they communicate and what information they share. Make sure they know that having thousands of online ‘friends’ isn’t always safe.
With older children
Teenagers may be very protective of their online network and feel you are interfering with their private lives. Take a look at this video from CEOP, which is an excellent source of advice for communicating with older children.
Tell them about online grooming
Explain how easy it is to pretend to be someone else online, and why an adult may wish to approach them.
With younger children
Talk about grooming as you would stranger danger – a stranger is anyone you don’t know, whether in real life or online. Tell them they shouldn’t talk privately or give personal information to anyone they don’t know. Discuss with them what ‘personal information’ is.
How do I protect my child from being groomed?
The best way to deal with grooming is to prevent it happening by making sure your child is well-informed, uses privacy settings on social networks and knows that they can talk to you if they feel unsafe or worried. Teach your children how to be safe online:
Keep personal information private
Private details which could identify them in the real world – name, age, gender, phone number, home address, school name, photographs – should only ever be shared with people they know.
Know who their friends are
Talk to them about being cautious about what they share with people online. Remind them that even though people they’ve met online might feel like friends they may not be who they say they are.
Be safe in real life
Never arrange to meet someone they only know online without a parent present.
Tell someone
If something makes your child worried or uncomfortable online their best course of action is always to talk to an adult they trust.
If you believe your child is being groomed:
Report it to the authorities
If you think your child – or another child – could be in immediate danger tell your local police at once.
You can report any concerns about online grooming to the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Command.
Report any child abuse images you find hosted by websites to the Internet Watch Foundation.
If your child wants to talk to someone in confidence they can call Childline on 0800 1111 or Get Connected on 0808 808 4994 (text 80849).
Parents can call the NSPCC’s free 24/7 adult helpline on 0808 800 5000, email or text 88858. You can also contact the Stop it Now! helpline (0808 1000 900) where you can seek advice anonymously.
Trolling
Trolling has become the latest phenomenon to impact upon social media networking sites and is by far the most vicious and damaging to young people and adults alike.
Sites such as Facebook, online forums, blogging sites and newspapers comments have all become a platform and a stage to bombard people with insults, provocations and insulting threatening language. This causes huge distress to the recipient of such messages. Supporters of trolling see it has harmless fun but for the majority of people it affects, it is far from fun.
Top Tips to deal with Trolling
- Resist the urge to respond to abusive messages; this inflames the situation and demonstrates it has upset you
- Do NOT delete any of the messages. Save, copy or paste messages to your inbox or send to an adult for safe keeping
- Report any incidences of trolling to the moderator on the site in which the message has been sent; as an example, if it is via Twitter, or Facebook, report it detailing exactly what has been said. The providers of the social media platforms have a legal and moral duty to protect their users
- Tell an adult you trust, your parents, carers, teacher, youth worker or someone you trust. It does not matter who you tell, as long as you tell someone!
- Do not suffer alone; trolling is a form of bullying and it is inexcusable
- Inform the school as even if it is taking place outside of school, it may be from someone in school who is known to you and could impact on you at a later date
- Report it to the police with copies of the saved messages
- Confide in trusted friends and if the same is happening to your friends, encourage them to report it
Trolling is a form of baiting online which involves sending abusive and hurtful comments across all social media platforms. It is another term used for bullying as no matter how you dress it up, it incites people to make comments to people that elicit further comments such as “go away and die” or “you are so disgusting, I hate seeing you around”. The messages are meant to cause the most distress they can and no consideration is given to the victims by the people who troll online. Trolls go to great lengths in making their messages as hurtful as they can so that the recipient of the messages that are sent believe and are convinced that what has been said is true. The difficulty is that most of the people who troll online send the messages anonymously and therefore makes it difficult to identify who the sender is. The person on the receiving end of these comments often feels isolated and does not tell anyone that they have been receiving such distressing messages.
Most, if not all, messages sent to cause distress, are linked up to Facebook. For instance, Ask.fm can be directly linked to Facebook, so any message sent to a person being bullied via Ask.fm, will automatically feature on the wall of their Facebook account. This adds to the distress felt by the recipient of the message as it can be viewed by a mass audience, some of which, even though they may be deemed to be ‘friends’, will join in with the abusive messages.
The internet is governed in the UK by the Communications Act 2003 and also covers messages sent by text, e-mails and mobile phone calls. Under Section 127 of the Act, it states that it is an offence to send messages that are ‘grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.’
Following digital footprints
The things you put online can be seen by lots of people and might stay online forever. They are like digital footprints – a trail that people can follow, picking up pieces of information about you.We all leave digital footprints and with every new profile, photo or comment we add new ones. People that you know, and people you don’t, can learn a lot from them. Do you know what yours say about you?
Your footprints can show you at your very best or very worst. Lots of people are finding out that our posts can have serious consequences long after we’ve forgotten them. This is one reason why to use most sites you can share information on you need to be over 13. If you’re under 13 you shouldn’t be using them.
Remember, if you have posted something you regret - it’s never too late to take control.
5 questions you should ask before you post
It can be really hard to keep on top of all the things we post online but taking a moment to think before you post helps prevent silly mistakes. Ask yourself:
1 What do I look like?
If you didn’t know you, what would think about this post? What would you think about the person who posted it? Things that we might share with friends as a joke can look very different to someone else, and that might be someone you’re trying to impress – a girl, a boy, even an employer or a university recruiter.
2 Is this ink permanent?
When you share something online, you can lose control of it. Even if you delete a photo or post you can’t be sure it hasn’t been copied or downloaded by someone else. Think about how many people you’re sharing with and whether they will take care of what you share. Don’t forget it’s easy for other people to copy what you share online, change it and share it without you knowing.
3 Am I giving away too much?
The more you share, the more people can learn about you. Could they use your posts to bully you?
4Would I want this shared about me?
It’s important to think about the impact what you post online might have on others. Do you have your friend’s permission to share that funny picture of them? Could that jokey comment you posted hurt someone’s feelings?
5 The Billboard Test.
Before you post something online, think: would you be happy to see it on a billboard where the rest of your school, your parents, your grandparents and neighbours could see it? If not, think twice about sharing online.
Safer sharing
Sharing things you’ve done with your friends is part of the fun of the internet so make sure you know how to do it safely.
Mind your privacy.
Most websites, apps and social networks you can share information on have ‘privacy settings’. These help you control what you share and who you share it with. So, it’s your choice to decide whether your friends, friends of friends or everyone can see what you post.
Choose your friends wisely.
It’s always best to only share with friends you know in the real world. Remember too that what your friends share about you and their privacy settings online will also affect your digital footprint.
Remove and report.
Think you shouldn’t have made that comment? Make sure you know how to remove anything you regret posting from any sites you use. If someone’s posted something about you that you’re worried about and refuses to take it down, make sure you know how to report it. Most websites will have a ‘safety centre’ explaining how to do it. Get links for popular websites safety centres.
Know yourself online.
It can be hard to keep up with the things we’ve done online so regularly Google yourself. That way you’ll know what other people find out about you, as well as things others might have posted about you.
Shut down or delete.
If you stop using a website that you’ve posted information on remember to deactivate your account.
Worried about something you’ve shared?
It’s so easy to share online, that sometimes you might post something and wish you hadn’t. If you’ve posted something you regret you should delete it from your account as quickly as you can.
If someone else has posted something about you, most websites have a way for you to ask them to remove ‘content’ – like videos, pictures, comments or profiles – that upsets you. This is called making a ‘report’.
It’s important to know that making a report doesn’t mean the content will definitely be removed. Just like in school, most websites have a set of rules which they expect people using their site to obey. If you want to have something taken down from a site you should check to see if it breaks one of their rules – these are usually called ‘Terms of Use’ or ‘Community Guidelines’.
Talk to someone
ChildLine is a free helpline for children and young people. You can contact ChildLine about anything. No problem is too big or too small. Whatever your worry, it's better out than in.
ChildLine is a private and confidential service. Confidential means not telling anyone else what you’ve said. This means that whatever you say stays between you and ChildLine.
They would only need to tell someone else if:
•You ask them to
•We believe your life or someone else’s life is in immediate danger
•You are being hurt by someone in a position of trust who has access to other children like a teacher or police officer
•You tell us that you are seriously harming another young person
Call them on 0800 1111. The number won’t appear on your phone bill.
You can also visit to speak to a counsellor online.
Report it
If someone is trying to use what you've posted online to harm you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, worried or even frightened online you should tell an adult you trust, or report to CEOP. Whatever may have happened, you won’t be in trouble.
CEOP helps young people who are being sexually abused or are worried that someone they’ve met is trying to abuse them.
If you’ve met someone online, or face to face, and they are putting you under pressure to have sex or making you feel uncomfortable you should report to CEOP.
This might be someone:
•Making you have sex when you don’t want to
•Chatting about sex online
•Asking you to meet up face to face if you’ve only met them online
•Asking you to do sexual things on webcam
•Asking for sexual pictures of you
•Making you feel worried, anxious or unsafe
If this is happening to you, or you’re worried that it might be, you can report this to CEOP.