News & Announcements 08/02/2010 Tuesday, 9 February is Safer Internet Day!!! This Tuesday the European Commission and NGOs across Europe and the world (60 countries) are celebrating Safer Internet Day.  Safer Internet Day has the purpose to make the Internet a safer place for children. For the European Commission it is a good occasion to highlight thje many initiatives taken by the EU over the past years to strengthen protection of minors (the Safer Internet Programme, the promotion of self-regulatory initiatives, financial support for hotlines to which children and parents can report harmful internet content or behavior) The motto of this year's day will be "Think before you post" - all data posted online (such as pictures or other personal data) remains online. A video clip to raise awareness about this can be downloaded here:  http://www.saferinternet.org/web/guest/safer-internet-day At last year's Safer Internet Day 18 companies (such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, StudiVZ, MySpace, etc.) signed the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU  (see IP/09/232 ) which ask social networking sites to: - set profiles of under 18 to "private" by default and make them not searchable via search engines - provide an easy to use and accessible "report" button, allowing users to report inappropriate contact or conduct - respond to notifications of illegal content or conduct. - review illegal or prohibited content/conduct through moderation tools, filtering software or community alerts. One year on, on this year's Safer Internet Day the European Commission is presenting a report that evaluates how these Safer Social Networking Principles have been implemented by the 20 signatories (since last year 2 more companies have signed the agreement). One report summarizes the findings for all the 20 companies. In addition, there are individual reports for each company. Checking compliance with the safer social networking Principles was done on the basis of self-declarations submitted by the companies as well as by real user-testing on the websites. The main conclusions of the report are that although some action has been taken to implement these principles, social networking sites still need to do more to protect privacy and personal data of minors online. Part I General Report testing of implementation of Social  Networking Principles January 2010 Part II Testing of 20 providers of social networking services  in Europe January 2010 Memo Safer Internet Day Press Release