COFACE Empowers Parents on Children's Online Privacy

COFACE is a pluralistic organisation, at the heart of civil society, which aims at promoting family policy,
solidarity between generations and the interests of children within the European Union. It defines family
policy in Europe as being the family dimension of policies, programmes and initiatives developed
at European Union level («family mainstreaming»).
COFACE © 2012 www.coface-eu.org

Connecting generations and parenting
• Over 75% of EU children use the internet (EU Barometer)
• 49% of children have internet access from their own computer in their bedrooms
(EU kids online)
• Parents have been “catching up” with the digital natives over the years
• Article 18 of the UNCRC provides that “States Parties shall use their best efforts to
ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities
for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may be,
legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development
of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern”.

A lot of resources and tools exist to ensure that children have a positive experience
online, but parents play a major role the actual use of these tools.

The role of parents takes various forms among which: setting up and make use of tools
available to them and discuss with their children the challenges that they can encounter
online.


The role of COFACE and family organisations
• Raise awareness of parents around the EU about topics such as
online safety, positive parenting and existing tools:
– In Belgium, both the “Ligue des Familles” and the “Gezinsbond”
developed a partnership with Child Focus to organize seminars and
events for parents about e-safety and e-skills

E-Safety
Kit INSAFE
Brochure


Children and online advertising
• “Children belong to one of the most vulnerable groups of consumers. But
although children are not ‘[adult] consumers’ as they cannot make
informed choices, they are exposed to extensive advertising.” (October
2011 EU parliament report on a “new strategy for consumer policy”)
• Online advertising has grown by 15.3% in 2010 and has reached 17.7
billion € in the EU.
• Ads and marketing online is a very innovative sector and strategies used
to ensure that an ad has the most visibility and impact evolve all the time.


Targeted advertising
Targeted advertising has also grown over
the past few years but despite some
advantages for consumers, tracking
children and gathering data about children's
online activities poses serious ethical and
privacy related questions.


Targeted advertising: a few examples


Contextual advertising: a few examples


Targeted advertising

April 2012
Source: Social Fresh


Protecting children’s privacy and
exposure to advertising
• COFACE drafted an article
about targeted advertising
and some available tools to
protect children’s privacy and
exposure to advertising for
Safer Internet Day in February
2012.
• The article was circulated to
all our Member organisations
and via our newsletter in
February.
• On our website, a summary of
the article is available online
as well as links to tutorials on
how to set up some useful
tools on your browser.


Protecting children’s privacy and
exposure to advertising
• The article focuses on add-ons and integrated browser tools that help
manage exposure to advertising (blocking, filtering…) and protection of
private data (managing tracking).
• Three main browsers are reviewed: Internet Explorer, Firefox and
Chrome.
– Firefox and its “Do-Not-Track” header as well as add-ons such as AdBlock
Plus.
– Chrome and it’s “keep my opt-outs” extension
– Internet Explorer and its integrated “Tracking Protectin Lists” feature.
• Each browser’s features are assessed according to what they can or
cannot do and their relative performance and effectiveness.
• A word of caution is addressed to parents in order to ensure that they
understand the limits of these tools.
• Finally, a concluding remark encourages parents to make a use of
browser features in order to better protect their children online, diminish
their exposure to advertising and secure their private data.

The objective of the article was to empower parents to choose a tracking
protection and ad blocking feature that suits their needs best.


COFACE’s future work

• COFACE member organisations have shown great interest in
articles and information about online safety since they lack
expertise on technical questions.
• COFACE will explore the various topics related to online safety
which might interest its members and provide practical tools,
information, tutorials and multimedia material to empower member
organisations and enable them to raise the awareness of parents
on these topics.
• Among the topics envisaged: social networks (privacy, spam and
phishing, apps, features such as the “like” button…), smartphones
(apps, parental control, managing expenses…)


For further information, please contact Martin Schmalzried: mschmalzried@coface-eu.org
COFACE is supported under the European Union Programme for Employment
and Social Solidarity – PROGRESS (2007-2013). http://ec.europa.eu/progress

COFACE Empowers Parents on Children's Online Privacy

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COFACE Empowers Parents on Children's Online Privacy