Moldovan cabinet approves new measures to protect children from Internet traps

Chisinau, 23 May /MOLDPRES/ - The companies providing Internet access services will have to give users possibility to set applications for filtering the content with negative impact on children. Also, these companies should have information on safety in the virtual space on their websites, under a draft on the amendment of the law on the protection of children from the negative impact of the information, approved by the government today.

According to a study titled, Safety of Children on Internet, carried out by the SocioPolis Centre of Investigations and Consultancy in late 2017, each fifth child aged between 12 and 15 years had his/her password/account of the profile on the social network broken. At least 18.6 per cent of children were blocked by groups on social networks. As much as 16.3 per cent of children faced involuntary accessing/watching pictures with sexual character.    

Among the risky actions undertaken by teenagers on the Internet, there is the fact that one third of the children look for friends in the online environment, 31.2 per cent purchase things in virtual shops and 13.4 per cent buy online games. Also, children sent photos/ video sequences to people known only in the online environment, 12.1 per cent entrust the password from the email or from the social profile to other people, 8.3 per cent exchange personal data (phone number, home address, data about parents) to people on the Internet.   

The authors of the draft also said that the alarming thing is that practically each tenth child of those 35.9 per cent who had discussed sent photos to people known only on the Internet and received indecent proposals from these persons.  

The amendments proposed are necessary, as at present, the legislation does not stipulate clear-cut measures for the safety of children in the virtual space, the Economics and Infrastructure Ministry said. According to the ministry, the filtering of the content from Internet cannot be imposed in a democratic state, but only offered as an optional service. The newly proposed approach refers to informative measures, of raising the awareness on behalf of Internet services providers through their own web-pages, applications which protect children from web-pages with inadequate content, ensures access only to safe pages.    

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor L. Alcaza)