Tag Archives: Safer Internet Day

Tips for upping online safety this Safer Internet Day

Parenting was especially challenging in 2020. Our families needed to learn new habits like social distancing, wearing masks and frequently washing our hands. As a large part of our everyday lives moved online, with online learning becoming the main mode of schooling for many, it was necessary to teach our children to take extra precautions as well.


I am part of a team at Google that teaches online safety habits to people from all walks of life. Parents have always been concerned for the digital safety of their families. Recent research that we did alongside our Trust Research team in Asia-Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico) found that parents with children attending school online were more concerned about online safety than ones whose children attended school in-person.


As a father of three kids who use the internet in very different ways, instilling safe habits can be a challenge. So today, on Safer Internet Day, I would like to share some tips to address the top three parental concerns when it comes to keeping our children safe online. 


  1. Protect their digital identities.
    The privacy and security of their children’s information was the top concern of parents we surveyed. Parents cited concerns around scams or hacking of their child’s accounts. Here are some simple ways to safeguard your kids’ information: 


  • Teach your children how to choose strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed. Avoid simple passwords that use names, birthdates, or even favourite cartoon characters. And don’t forget to check your own passwords!

  • It is also useful to stick to platforms that have a strong reputation for user safety. For instance, using an email service like Gmail comes with built-in safety filters to detect phishing emails, blocking 99.9% of phishing attacks from ever reaching your inbox.


  1. Know who they talk to.
    Social isolation is a difficult outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our children connect with their friends online, whether through messaging apps or voice chat while playing games. It is important for parents to be aware that these channels can also be used by ill-intentioned strangers to reach out to our children. Just as in real life, it is important to be aware of who our children talk to online. 


  • Try to talk to your kids about the games they play or the videos they watch, and also the people they play with online. I always remind my kids to come to me immediately if they face any situation online that makes them feel uncomfortable. In India, 74% of parents with children attending school online during the Covid-19 pandemic expressed increased concern about online safety. But interestingly, 34% or more than a third of parents interviewed have never spoken to their children about online safety. We need to work hard to reassure our children that we are here to guide and protect them. 

  • When assessing if a game is suitable for your child, it is important to check not only the content of the game, but also whether the app allows online communications with others. Some multiplayer games allow only a few options for social interaction, like a thumbs up rather than a text chat. This reduces risks of unwanted social interactions by quite a lot.

  1. Offer appropriate content at the appropriate age.
    The fear of children encountering inappropriate content has long been among the top concerns of parents in surveys. There are family safety features that parents can use to help guard their children from content that may not be suitable for their age. In India, our survey showed  that 71% of parents are currently using online family safety features. Here are some features that you can start using today: 


  • Turning on SafeSearch on Google helps filter out explicit content in Google’s search results for all searches, including images, videos and websites. SafeSearch is designed to help block explicit results like pornography from Google search results.

  • Manage your child’s device by creating a Google account for your child and using Family Link. This allows you to add filters on Google Search, block websites or only give access to the ones you allow or track the location of your child if they have their own device.

  • Many parental controls are available on YouTube Kids. You are able to limit screen time, only show videos that you approve or select suitable content based on the age of your child.


Some other time-tested tips include allowing children to use the internet only in common areas in the home such as the living room. But the tough part is leading by example!

At the end of the day, the core of our parenting journey lies in the relationships we build with our children. They require our guidance on the internet as much as they do in the real world. Tiring as 2020, and now 2021, has been, I am grateful that I have had more time with my family and to appreciate what each of them brings to my life.


Let’s work together to make the internet a safe place for our children to learn, create and explore.


Posted by Lucian Teo, Online Safety Education Lead

#PehleSafety: Doubling down on our commitment to keeping our users safe online

At Google, we take very seriously the responsibility to build trust in the internet and make it an environment that’s safe for everyone. We know people are using Google at different stages of their internet journey -- from people experiencing the Internet for the first time on their new smartphone, to long-time Internet-savvy users -- and they look to us to have their backs every step of the way.


All Google products are built on a strong foundation of security that automatically protects you and your data from a wide range of threats; from our custom-built infrastructure that protects our data centers and servers, to layers of advanced encryption that protect user data across Chrome and Gmail. We are constantly on the lookout for risks and we automatically block a wide range of security threats from ever impacting you. 


For example, our automatic Gmail spam and phishing filters block 99.9 percent of suspicious or dangerous emails before they reach you. We also  block billions of bad ads (those that violate policies on our own and partners’ sites.) We block an average of 100 bad ads per second, so you’re better protected as you browse the internet.


Vested in our users’ online safety 


We believe that education is a crucial aspect of online security. Over the course of the last year we launched a far-reaching campaign to inform our users about online security, and the steps they can take to keep their internet experience safe. We worked with top YouTube influencers to spread the word on online safety, and launched powerful, step-by-step tools like the Security Checkup and Password Checkup that help you strengthen your Google Account security and address issues in minutes. Hundreds of millions of users visit the Security Checkup each year.


Our products are designed to surface the most authoritative sources of content, but in some cases people with malicious intent are able to seed content on the Internet that is designed to mislead people. We use cutting-edge AI in our automated systems that help detect and remove such content at scale.


Recommitting ourselves to online security with #PehleSafety


Building on this momentum, we are happy to announce our #PehleSafety campaign that kicks off today. We are launching a comprehensive public outreach and communications campaign that will both educate people about best practices for staying safe online, as well as walk them through specific actions they can take to lock down and protect their online presence.


We continue to work with government bodies to help spread the message of online safety more extensively. We have also launched an extensive internet security campaign along with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), aimed at reaching out to millions of end users and educating them about best practices for staying safe online.


The safety of our users remains our highest priority, and we are committed to working toward protecting our users, products, and everything that is so valuable about the internet.

Posted by Saikat Mitra, Director - Trust & Safety

Building a safer web, for everyone (WIP)


Today is Safer Internet Day, a moment for technology companies, nonprofit organizations, security firms, and people around the world to focus on online safety, together. To mark the occasion, we’re rolling out new tools, and some useful reminders, to help protect you from online dangers of all stripes—phishing, malware, and other threats to your personal information.


1. Keeping security settings simple

The Security Checkup is a quick way to control the security settings for your Google Account. You can add a recovery phone number so we can help if you’re ever locked out of your account, strengthen your password settings, see which devices are connected to your account, and more. If you complete the Security Checkup by February 11, you’ll also get 2GB of extra Google Drive storage, which can be used across Google Drive, Gmail, and Photos.
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Safer Internet Day is a great time to do it, but you can—and should!—take a Security Checkup on a regular basis. Start your Security Checkup by visiting My Account.

2. Informing Gmail users about potentially unsafe messages

If you and your Grandpa both use Gmail to exchange messages, your connections are encrypted and authenticated. That means no peering eyes can read those emails as they zoom across the web, and you can be confident that the message from your Grandpa in size 48 font (with no punctuation and a few misspellings) is really from him!

However, as our Safer Email Transparency Report explains, these things are not always true when Gmail interacts with other mail services. Today, we’re introducing changes in Gmail on the web to let people know when a received message was not encrypted, if you’re composing a message to a recipient whose email service doesn’t support TLS encryption, or when the sender’s domain couldn’t be authenticated.

Here’s the notice you’ll see in Gmail before you send a message to a service that doesn’t support TLS encryption. You’ll also see the broken lock icon if you receive a message that was sent without TLS encryption.
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If you receive a message that can’t be authenticated, you’ll see a question mark where you might otherwise see a profile photo or logo:
Unauthenticated Avatar Image_FINAL.png

For more information, check out the Gmail and Google for Work blogs.

3. Protecting you from bad apps
Dangerous apps that phish and steal your personal information, or hold your phone hostage and make you pay to unlock it, have no place on your smartphone—or any device, for that matter.

Google Play helps protect your Android device by rejecting bad apps that don’t comply with our Play policies. It also conducts more than 200 million daily security scans of devices, in tandem with our Safe Browsing system, for any signs of trouble. Last year, bad apps were installed on fewer than 0.13% of Android devices that install apps only from Google Play.

Learn more about these, and other Android security features — like app sandboxing, monthly security updates for Nexus and other devices, and our Security Rewards Program—in new research we’ve made public on our Android blog.

4. Busting bad advertising practices
Malicious advertising “botnets” try to send phony visitors to websites to make money from online ads. Botnets threaten the businesses of honest advertisers and publishers, and because they’re often made up of devices infected with malware, they put users in harm’s way too.

We've worked to keep botnets out of our ads systems, cutting them out of advertising revenue, and making it harder to make money from distributing malware and Unwanted Software. Now, as part of our effort to fight bad ads online, we’re reinforcing our existing botnet defenses by automatically filtering traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets, comprising more than 500,000 infected user machines. Learn more about this update on the Doubleclick blog.

Online security and safety are being discussed more often, and with more urgency, than ever before. We hope you’ll take a few minutes today to learn how Google protects your data and how we can work toward a safer web, for everyone.


Posted by Gerhard, VP Security and Privacy

Take a Security Checkup on Safer Internet Day

Online security is on everyone’s mind these days. According to a recent Gallup poll, more people are worried about their online accounts being hacked than having their home broken into.

Security has always been a top priority for Google. Our Safe Browsing technology identifies unsafe websites and warns people before they visit them, protecting more than one billion Chrome, Firefox, and Safari users everyday. 2-Step Verification adds an extra layer of security, beyond your password, to your Google account; it’s like a second padlock on your account’s door. And our research teams regularly release new findings about nefarious online activity, like Gmail account hijacking attempts, so people can stay informed.

We have many protections in place to keep people, and their information, secure, but there's also a lot that you can do to protect yourself. Today, on Safer Internet Day, take a quick Security Checkup, an easy way to review and manage your Google Account’s security settings.
Here are some of the important items you can review during your Security Checkup:
  • Recovery information: Adding a phone number can help us get in touch if you’re locked out of your account. We’ll only use your phone number to protect your account, unless you say otherwise.
  • Recent activity: This is a quick overview of your recent sign-ins to Google. If you see any activity from a location or device you don’t recognize, change your password immediately.
  • Account permissions: These are the apps, websites and devices connected to your Google account. Take a look and make sure you trust—and actually use—all of them. You might want to remove an old phone, or that dusty app you never use.
It takes just a few minutes to make sure your information is accurate and up to date. Visit your Account Settings and take your Security Checkup today.

Posted by Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager