Ministry of Telecom to ban children from surfing the Internet

Last week Ministrer of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Schegolev said the Ministry will "work on" the idea to ban access to the Internet for children under 10 years of age.

This idea was proposed by Alexey Andreyev, editor-in-chief of Webplanet.Ru, at IT-conference "Safe Tomorrow of RuNet” opened on June 17, in Uryupinsk. The event was hosted by Kaspersky Lab. Among the attendants were the Internet security experts, representatives of the Federal government and the some prominent Russian bloggers.

At first, Igor Schegolev said the telecom companies already have the solution for the children safety on the Web - providers can filter the content with "white list" system of good sites updated with parents' feedback. But Alexey Andreyev argued this solution won't work well because the main goal of telecom companies is to get more customers (and children among them). At the same time, there is lots of research showing Internet gives more distraction than knowledge to youngsters. So in would be better to ban the Web access for children under 10 years of age - the same way kids are banned from driving cars untill the proper age.

The Minister of Telecom supported the idea, saying that "the suggestion is good, and we should consider it". The educational function of the Internet, according to Schegolev, is not as great as it seems at first sight. The Minister believes that the World Wide Web contains a lot of threats to children.

According to the last year research, which was conducted in Ukraine, only 11 percent of parents monitor the online activity of their offspring. As a result, 14 percent of children send messages to pay bonuses in online games, without thinking about the cost; 22 percent regularly surf adult websites, while 28 percent easily agree to send photos to network friends; 17 percent of Ukrainian children easily give out information about their families, including home address and work schedule of parents; 11 percent try to get drugs on the web.

Experience shows that children's access restriction to some websites is a technically feasible task. Let’s say, a British provider Tibboh has recently been offering a wireless 3G-access with the ability to block certain content, depending on the user’s age. For instance, it will not let children under 12 years of age visit some social networks.