Project overview

There is increasing concern from parents and children’s charities about the ease of access to harmful and inappropriate content on the internet.  Parents should be provided with a wide variety and accessibility of tools to enable them to manage the content that their children have access to.

The project examines the current parental controls and filtering software available across internet-enabled devices and looks at the level of uptake.  Parents should be able to choose the type of parental controls that suit their family situation and level of knowledge.

The project group considers the evidence of how parental controls are deployed, seeks solutions to common barriers to their uptake, and problems that can arise with blocking software for example, over-blocking.

Active choice

In his 2011 review 'Letting children be children', Reg Bailey recommended parents make an ‘active choice’ on the content their children access from internet-enabled devices.  The Prime Minister has taken a personal interest in the progress of the implementation of this recommendation.  In practice ‘active choice’ means that parents are presented with an unavoidable decision of whether or not to activate pre-installed parental controls at point of sale or when an internet-enabled device or television is first switched on.

The parental controls project is working with industry, academia and charities towards the greater availability and adoption of active choice and parental controls within the following groups:

  • Mobile phones
  • Desktop, laptops and tablets
  • Internet-enabled televisions
  • Home broadband
  • Public WiFi
  • Gaming

Next steps

In April 2012 the project brought together key representatives from the value chain of desktops, laptops and tablets, mobile and internet-enabled television for roundtables to progress the work on active choice.   The industries have agreed to work closely with prominent retailers to start delivering active choice at point of sale.  A series of deliverables have been set with the value chain, with UKCCIS secretariat working closely with Intellect, the British Retail Consortium and organisations to implement.   

The project has also started looking at addressing public Wi-Fi.

Project members

Board champion:  Following a recent resignation, the UKCCIS Executive Board is currently considering nominations for this position.
Project lead: Dan Wood, Head of Communications and Public Affairs, The UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE)

Project representatives include:

  • Anti-virus guard (AVG)

  • British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

  • British Standards Institution (BSI)

  • British Telecom (BT)

  • Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP)

  • Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety (CHIS)

  • Department for Education (DfE)

  • Facebook

  • Intellect UK

  • Jagex

  • McAfee

  • Mind Candy

  • Research in Motion (RIM)

  • Symantec

  • Vodafone