Blog – Latest stories tagged 'e-safety'

“If you don’t go to bed, the bogeyman will come and get you!”

“The bogeyman will come after you, if you keep sucking your thumb!”

Did you hear these phrases when you were a child? Maybe they were said to you or your brothers or sisters. They were common traditional phrases used by parents to frighten young children into behaving appropriately or to cajole them into doing what their parents asked them to do. Not exactly politically correct and, in these modern times of high definition, realistically scary characters or monsters in films or games, very unlikely to work.

A few years back, however, a phenomenon appeared on the web that could be considered the modern day ‘bogeyman’, the only difference being that it wasn't parents that invented it, it has appeared as a consequence of youth culture’s fascination with all things horror and ghoulish.

In the summer of 2009, a poster by the user name of “Victor Surge’ contributed two black and white images to the ‘Something Awful’ internet forum. The images depicted groups of children being watched from the shadows by a very tall, thin figure. Surge also added text, purporting to be from eye-witnesses, describing abductions of children. Surge gave the character the name “The Slender Man”

As well as being very tall and thin, the Slender Man had unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms and was usually dressed in a dark suit and tie. It was regarded as male and possessed a white, featureless face, which only added to the creepiness of the character.

The Slender Man captured the web’s collective imagination and, as these things so often do, it soon when viral, spawning online fiction called “Creepypasta”, fan art and cosplay. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before fan-made videos started to appear on the ‘Something Awful’ forums and this only help to feed the rapidly growing ‘mythology’ that was building around the whole phenomenon.

As the web community’s interest in Slenderman grew, the boundaries between fiction and reality blurred, as a consequence of the variety of conflicting online perspectives. This had the effect of obscuring the origins of the character and offered the whole saga an air of authenticity.

In May this year, however, tragically the whole urban legend became something entirely different when two 11 year old Wisconsin girls allegedly lured their friend to woods near their home and repeatedly stabbed her in an act that was apparently carried out “…to impress Slenderman” who, they insisted to investigators, was real.

Shortly after this incident, another took place in Ohio, when a mother came home from work and was attacked by her 13 year old daughter with a kitchen knife, wearing a white mask. During the attack the mother said of her daughter “…it was as if she playing a role, it didn’t feel like her” and afterwards she found some very “dark” writings and drawings created by her daughter referencing Slenderman - she had even created a whole world within the online game ‘Minecraft’, for the character to live in.

This incredible story demonstrates tragically how powerful the influence of the internet can be and how a viral phenomenon can so easily manifest into something that, to vulnerable young minds, can gain authenticity and appear real. It is why it is so important that parents and teachers need to be vigilant and monitor what young people are watching, reading and browsing. It is why films and video games have age-ratings - they are not there as something to snigger at and dismiss, they are there for very good reasons and should be treated seriously.

"There is a point to be made that e-safety education also needs to incorporate digital literacy, with a emphasis on understanding the context and veracity of information on the Internet. That children need to be trained to critically appraise the information they are reading in the same way we would hope to train them to be media aware enough to understand the political bias in a newspaper or the reliability of 'facts'" - E-safety Support

8/9/14 - There is an online game which can be downloaded associated with this urban legend which can be found at www.slendergame.com

Since the inclusion of e-safety in the section 5 inspection briefing, schools now risk missing Ofsted outstanding ratings due to poor e-safety strategy.

With indicators of inadequate e-safety provision including a lack of staff training, stating that “staff training is consistently the weakest area of a schools online safety provision”, along with no planned curriculum content amongst others, it is clear that Ofsted are looking for schools to see e-safety as a whole school issue.

To find out how your school would fair against the Ofsted standards considered outstanding or inadequate, start by asking yourself these 5 questions.

How would your school respond?

Following an inspection audit, St Wilfrid's School's Digital Leaders teacher (and E-safety Support Premium Plus member) commented:

The e-safety part of the review left the inspector with no matters for concern or improvement; she said that ‘we didn’t seem to realise how good we actually were as a school’. She loved our parental engagement ideas and other things that I have in the pipeline. In the final report she wrote against the ‘E-safety’ section that we ‘exceeded Ofsted e-Safety requirements by far’ and the last word was ‘Congratulations’. We’ve obviously done some good work, but thanks and congratulations should go in part to your good selves also.

We would love to hear how your school would respond to the Ofsted 5 question - Complete our anonymous 5 e-safety questions survey to let us know.

The National Crime Agency is urging members of the public to take action which will help fight the effects of two specific cyber threats.

In a globally co-ordinated awareness campaign, crime fighting forces in the UK, along with the FBI and collaborators in a number of other countries are encouraging members of the public to take steps which will not only help protect themselves from risk, but also cause significant disruption to the effectiveness of the network which supports the malware around the World.

According to the National Crime Agency, GOZeuS and CryptoLocker are two systems estimated to be responsible for the loss of hundreds of millions of pounds globally. While the two systems are distinct in the way they operate, they both take advantage of security holes on a user's computer.

Put as simply as possible, GOZeuS operates by sending emails to ‘victims’, seemingly from a familiar contact (so they look genuine), but which contain links to the malware. Once the link has been clicked, the malware is downloaded and then operates in the background, waiting for the opportunity to collect banking or personal information. This information is fed back to the criminals using a network of infected machines.

If GOZeuS considers the information it finds not to be financially rewarding, CryptoLocker in activated. This system encrypts the files on the machine and then offers to unlock them in return for payment – in essence a ransom for the release of the files.

The more members of the public that are able to take steps to protect their computers, the more chance there is of the network of infected computers (or BotNet) being disrupted and this in turn will help to reduce the effectiveness of both malware systems.

There are some simple steps that can be taken to help protect your computer – which also apply to general e-safety. These include:

Further information is available from CERT-UK. There are also helpful tips on the Get Safe Online website

If you would like to discuss Malware with your students, it is covered in the lesson plans and assembly plans available to E-safety Support Premium and Premium Plus members.