« Company-Specific Online Safety Initiatives
AT&T
AT&T, the nation’s leading broadband provider, has a long-standing commitment to protecting children online and safeguarding their Internet experience.
Raise Awareness
To increase awareness of the importance of Internet safety for parents and youth alike, AT&T offers a national traveling education program that works with young students in classrooms. It also offers a full library of supportive Internet safety and security tips, and interactive safety games, all available at www.att.com/safety.
The AT&T Hometown Tour has visited more than 100 communities nationwide and has worked with more than 20,000 students from Connecticut to California on Internet safety lessons, programs, and workshops geared toward elementary- and middle-school-aged students. The Internet safety programs engage students in important discussions about safety tips relative to their everyday online activity. Students participate in fun hands-on activities that focus on key Internet safety skills, such as protecting computers against viruses, hackers and spam, as well as reviewing age-appropriate, good-computing habits, such as proper downloading and research-referencing. The game also emphasizes keyboard skills, potential dangers associated with social networking, and lessons on stranger-danger.
Law Enforcement
AT&T is committed to working cooperatively with local, state and federal law enforcement in their efforts to protect children online. AT&T supports law enforcement in its pursuit of child predators and online child pornography and is an active partner of the congressionally mandated National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in its mission as a resource center for child protection.
Internet Content Ratings
To help protect children from harmful content, it is now more important than ever to ensure that parents are equipped with the tools necessary to make informed choices about the content that their children are viewing. Through its membership in the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) AT&T actively supports voluntary efforts to self-label Web sites and to develop technical solutions that allow such labels to be recognized by We browsers and search engines. AT&T helps ICRA to expand these capabilities beyond the Internet to work with all forms of digital content.
Internet Safety Tips
As outlined in the AT&T Internet safety tips, which are available at www.att.com/safety, the first step to creating a safer online environment for today’s children is to reinforce that the Internet is a public place accessed by millions of people around the world. AT&T encourages parents to help children understand that using the Internet in the privacy of their home does not guarantee a protected and stranger-free environment.
Other tips include:
- Teach children to be as cautious of strangers online as they would be of strangers in their neighborhood, the school yard, or city park. As chat rooms and forums provide online anonymity and secret identities to all users, some Internet users may be pretending to be someone they are not.
- Parental controls, like those provided by AT&T Yahoo!® High Speed Internet, allow customized security settings for kids, young teens, and mature teens. With parental controls, adults can monitor and permit (or reject) Web-browsing,
e-mail, instant messaging and access to chat rooms.
hriefs@attnews.us
312.751.3534
AT&T’s Online-Safety Tools
Glossary
Here is a list of the latest activities that are keeping children occupied online. Terms might be a bit confusing to parents unfamiliar with web jargon and evolving technology, so the definitions are provided.
Internet Safety 101 for Parents
With the increasing use of broadband access, the benefits of the Internet are greater than ever. But, do you know enough about Internet safety to protect your children in cyberspace? Take this quiz to find out. Then learn about online safety tips for protecting your household.
Tip Sheet
To help you have a safer online experience, the AT&T Internet Safety Connections program provides this at-a-glance listing of safety, security and privacy tips for families who are online.
Internet Safety Game for Kids
It can be difficult for children to understand the dangers of the Internet, but information presented in a fun, inviting format sometimes makes it easier to learn. This Internet safety game for kids is designed to teach elementary school children about safety and security while surfing the web. In the process, they can help the online safety hero capture an Internet evil-doer who is out to destroy a fictitious Internet town!
