Recognising National Child Protection Week

This week is National Child Protection Week. And it's an apt time to have a refresher on how we here at Google approach safety online.

When it comes to online safety, Google's approach is to:
1. Empower people with tools to help them manage their online experience.
2. Educate people about how to stay safe online.
3. Protect people by working with law enforcement and industry.

We work closely with a network of child safety experts who advise us on how to promote safety and combat abuse in our products. As part of this, we offer a SafeSearch tool for users to remove unwanted content. We understand that many people don't want to have adult content included in their search results, especially when children are using the computer. Google has developed its own SafeSearch tool, which uses advanced technology to block pornographic and explicit content from search results. Users can customise their SafeSearch settings by clicking on the “Preferences” link to the right of the search box on Google.com.

Education is critically important. We strongly believe in promoting safe behaviour and prohibiting illegal content and abuse in our products. We have an online safety resource, Tips for Online Safety (www.google.com/familysafety), which offers resources for families on how to use Google safely, and quick links to tools like SafeSearch; and the YouTube Safety Centre (www.youtube.com/t/safety), which includes advice on flagging videos, keeping personal videos private, cyberbullying, spam, phishing, and protecting identity.

We work together with law enforcement and industry. We use databases from designated organisations to remove websites containing child sexual abuse images from our search results. And if we discover child pornography or are made aware of it, we respond quickly to remove and report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) or the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

Google cooperates with child safety investigations, and has a legal team devoted to this effort 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We respond to thousands of law enforcement requests for assistance, and hundreds of subpoenas, each year. We also provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials investigating online crimes against children through forums such as the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) National Conference and the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT).

By working together, and providing quality education, we can all enjoy a happy experience online.

Posted by Iarla Flynn, Public Policy and Government Affairs