Online Safety

Safer Internet Day 2023

This year we once again took part in Safer Internet Day! Our teachers made sure we had space to talk about what devices we use to access the internet, what we do when we are online, what we like about using the internet and what our worries are. We recorded our thoughts and added them to the Safer Internet Day ‘Video Wall’ where industry leaders and online safety experts will listen to our voices!

Click here to watch the videos on what each class did for Safer Internet Day

Our children now live in a 'Global Village' and it is important that we work together to ensure our children are safe both in the real world and online.

How we keep children safe online

At Captain Webb Primary School, children learn how to stay safe online by being aware of their conduct (their own behaviour online), knowing what is, and how to find, appropriate content and the risks of contact from both people they know and people they don't know.

Our online safety curriculum is led by Education for a Connected World and relevant objectives are tied in Computing and PSHE lessons too. We block an entire week of theme work for children to learn about age specific aspects of online safety during 'Safer Internet Week' and the school is visited by several outside agencies (such as the NSPCC, Google and the local police) to learn about current online safety issues. Our Student Council plays an active role in discussion and decision making with all aspects of safety, including online safety.

We play an active role with parents, meeting regularly with anyone who may have concerns about their child's safety on the internet. If you have any concerns about online safety, please do not hesitate to get in touch and come and speak with one of our Online Safety experts.

Tips for keeping your child safe online:

Know what your children are doing online and who they are talking to. Ask them to teach you to use any applications you have never used
Keeping the computer in a family room means that you can share your child’s online experience – and that they are less likely to act inappropriately (i.e. via webcam).
Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends — personal information includes their messenger ID, email address, mobile number and any pictures of themselves, their family or friends. If your child publishes a picture or video online, anyone can change it or share it. Remind them that anyone may be looking at their images and one day a future employer could!
If your child receives spam/junk email & texts, remind them never to believe them, reply to them or use them. It’s not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don’t know. They won’t know what they contain — it could be a virus, or worse — an inappropriate image or film.
Help your child to understand that some people lie online and therefore it’s better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
Always keep communication open for a child to know that it’s never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.
Teach young people how to block someone online and how to report them if they feel uncomfortable.

Useful Websites

You may find these websites useful if you wish find out more about internet safety:

www.ceop.gov.uk - The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre is dedicated to eradicating the sexual abuse of children. They are a Government agency that is part of UK policing and very much about tracking and bringing offenders to account either directly or in partnership with local and international forces.

www.thinkuknow.co.uk - The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has set up its own educational website which has been designed and written specifically for children, young people, teachers, parents and carers.

www.kidsmart.org.uk- Kidsmart is an award winning internet safety website for parents and those working with children. It has been developed by the children's internet charity Childnet International and has excellent information on many of the technologies used by children, with guidance on how to ‘stay safe’ online.

http://parents.vodafone.com/ - Vodafone have developed this website in conjunction with mumsnet. It is very accessible and provides information and guidance to parents about understanding their child’s digital world and about getting more involved. There is even an on-line test to see how much you know!

Social media privacy guides

If your child is using social networking sites to chat to friends and family or share their latest selfie, take a look at this list of social media guides to get you up to speed on the most popular platforms and help them set the right privacy settings.

Social Media Parental Controls and Privacy Settings | Internet Matters

This website shows App information for the most popular social media, video, photo, Llfestyle and gaming apps used by kids today.

App Reviews for Parents and Caring Adults | Protect Young Eyes

Physical Security Systems we have in place

In addition to teaching our children how to stay safe online we have installed, on our internet and IT systems, several security systems to block and filter out any inappropriate content. The following are some of the in-built security protection systems put in place, on our behalf by T&W:

1. Password management: This is critical, as this is where we all need to play our part. Passwords can be hacked easily if they do not have a good level of complexity, so to help protect your data we use a good, complex passwords. We never share password or leave them lying around.
2. Email protection – All emails go through a filtering system (Sophos) to ensure they do not contain a virus or from a known phishing source. Sophos is a tool that checks the content of the email very quickly and will let us know if it is safe to open.
3. Internet Filtering – We use a product called Smoothwall, this protects against access to certain internet sites and content that you would not want your children to see.
4. Monitoring of activity - Senso is a cloud based, real time monitoring of activity on school owned devices, designed to highlight [to school staff] users who may be vulnerable or at risk to themselves, at risk to others or behaving inappropriately. Senso indicates a potential concern by raising a “violation” when a keyword, acronym or phrase typed, matches against those found within our libraries. It sends automated alerts to the DSL’s.
5. Anti-Virus Software – Windows Defender. This is designed to detect and remove viruses and other kinds of malicious software from schools computers or laptops.
6. A Firewall - At its most basic, a firewall is essentially the barrier that sits between a private internal network and the public Internet, it monitors and filters incoming and outgoing network traffic based on our organisation's previously established security policies
7. Multifactor Authentication (MFA) – This is where you not only have a password but use a secondary device (like an app on a phone) as additional confirmation of the users identity. This increases security because even if one credential becomes compromised, unauthorized users will be unable to meet the second authentication requirement and will not be able to access the system.
8. Geofencing - This helps protect devices and accounts from access from certain ‘high risk’ geographical areas.