The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Educating students on internet safety

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Wednesday, Jul 29, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Educating students on internet safety

Meera Srinivasan

NASSCOM, along with police, plans internet safety campaign for students

— Photo: S.R.RAGHUNATHAN

SAFETY MATTERS: Making youngsters aware of safe internet practices is vital, say experts.

CHENNAI: A. Anusha is about 14. As soon she gets back from school, she logs on to the internet at home. She checks e-mail and visits a couple of social networking sites to look for updates.

“Whether it is her classmate’s birthday party or her school annual day rehearsal, her friends make it a point to take pictures and share them with the class through one of the social networking sites. Then they’d spend hours seeing them again, posting comments and so on,” says her mother A. Usha.

With teenagers such as Anusha increasingly spending a lot of time on the net, the issue of cyber safety has come to the fore.

It is important for students to be aware of the need for internet safety, says K. Purushothaman, Regional Director, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).

In order to equip students to become an informed user of the internet, the NASSCOM, along with the cyber crime wing of the city police, will hold an internet safety campaign for students in the coming months, he said. “We want the student community to be aware of issues such as hacking and phishing e-mails,” he told The Hindu.

Commissioner of Police T. Rajendran is also keen that a cyber safety campaign be organised involving city students, said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime) M. Sudhakar. “We want to raise awareness levels so that students do not succumb to the dangers of unsafe internet practices,” Mr. Sudhakar said.

Different initiatives are being taken to ensure a safer cyber space. Google India, for instance, has initiated a nation-wide internet safety campaign ‘Be NetSmart’ last year. Not revealing one’s personal identity to strangers on chat, avoiding posting photographs on unsafe portals and restricting access to personal accounts to a trusted circle are tips that experts give.

Aparna Kumar, a college student, also thinks it is important for students to know safety measures.

“We need to keep changing our passwords now and then,” says the third year student of M.Sc Software Engineering. “Many accounts tend to get hacked, so we need to be careful” she says.

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