Be afraid, be very afraid
Symantec, maker of Norton security software, has released the first volume of the Norton Online Living Report (NOLR) revealing that people are spending ever more of their social time online.
Three quarters of the UK adults in the survey had converted an online friend into an offline one. While a significant proportion of adults and children enjoy their online relationships at least as much as their offline ones.
The significant finding regarding security was that most parents are concerned about what their sproggs get up to online and a lot of them haven’t got a clue what that is. A significant minority of kids – who owned up to it – said they lied to their parents about what they do online. No!
Of course, the sinister side to all this is the possibility of kids being approached by predatory adults online and lured into suspect offline encounters. Apparently only four per cent of adults believe their kids have been approached by strangers online, whereas the real figure is more like 20 per cent. They both look on the low side to us.
Inevitably, Caroline Cockerill, Norton online safety advocate for Symantec, said: “In order to make our children’s time online as safe as possible, there are a number of recommendations to follow. Installing and constantly updating Internet security software is a key factor in helping to shield our families from a variety of unwanted materials.”
To be fair, she did stress that the protection does not stop there. “Now more than ever it is important that parents fully understand the rich online world that children have access to, and are aware of the social as well as technological measures that need to be undertaken to ensure that they are protected. This begins with an awareness of the Web sites that our children now use on a daily basis, and an open and frank discussion about the online risks which children may face,” she added.
The report also revealed that around one in ten UK adults owns a smartphone and that sometime this year, the global sales volume of smartphones is expected to exceed laptops.
With this in mind it was revealed that Norton Smartphone Security is due to launch in March and will apparently be the first consumer mobile security offering to provide a solution for both Windows Mobile and Symbian OS in one product. It will feature antivirus, a firewall and anti-spam for SMS and cost £19.99.
