Government's plans to protect kids' online - service providers should be responsible too

As the government launches an advertising campaign aimed at encouraging parents to help their children use the internet safely a new survey reveals teacher's fears about e-mail in the class-room.

The survey shows that teachers are concerned that giving school pupils e-mail addresses will expose them to unsuitable so-called "spam" e-mail. Servers capable of generating millions of e-mail messages a day send out junk messages with contents ranging from marketing offers to hardcore pornography. The research carried out by messaging and e-mail software developer Rockliffe has shown that 84% of teachers are concerned that pupils may receive unwanted e-mail with a sexual content and 79% about approaches to pupils from unknown adults trying to set up meetings.

Phil Willis MP, Liberal Democrat Education Spokesman commented "I believe that safeguards must be in place to protect children from the dangers on the internet"

The Welsh Assembly cabinet earlier this year put on hold plans to give all school children in Wales e-mail addresses because of fears that they may get into the hands of paedophiles.

Educating parents is only a partial solution. The problem can also be reduced if ISPs (Internet Service Providers) use appropriate software to filter out inappropriate messages by looking for specific words, bar certain types of attachments, or block messages from certain senders. In addition they can enable "alias" e-mail addresses to be used in schools. This means that abusers cannot predict the e-mail address of their targets by using, for example, a .@school.co.uk address format.

"By implementing safety features, ISPs can greatly reduce the risk that children using e-mail will receive inappropriate material. It also reduces the need to take up parent's and teacher's time supervising children's e-mail use" commented Alun Davies, Rockliffe's European director "When setting up e-mail mailboxes, parents and schools should ensure not only that appropriate filters are in place, but that they are regularly updated".

Rockliffe is a leading developer of scalable messaging and e-mail solutions for Internet Service Providers, Application Service Providers and corporations. Rockliffe was established in 1995 and is based in California's Silicon Valley with European headquarters in Leeds, UK. Rockliffe has more than 3,000 thousand customers hosting more than 10 million mailboxes. These include leading ASPs such as Digex and Intel Online Services, unified messaging providers such as Call Sciences, and large enterprises including AT&T, Cambridge University, and UK government departments. In April 2001, Rockliffe announced a strategic relationship with Compaq Computer Corporation to jointly develop and market Rockliffe's MailSite for the Compaq NonStop Himalaya platform

Rockliffe, MailSite, and Rock-Solid Software are registered trademarks of Rockliffe Systems, Inc. All other registered names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.