John is Secretary of the Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety, comprising all of the UK's major professional child protection and child welfare organizations. He is also a Senior Expert Adviser to the ITU’s Child Online Protection initiative. In 2001 John was a founding member of the British Government’s Internet Task Force on Child Protection where, inter alia, he chaired the sub group that developed a kitemark for internet safety software. John was also a member of the education ministry's Universal Home Access Task Force. On this Task Force John chaired the sub group addressing the safety component of the overall offering. He has also acted as an expert adviser and evaluator for the EU. John is on the Executive Board of the new UK Council for Child Internet Safety, the body that succeeded the Task Force.

John was formerly the Internet columnist for Prospect magazine and has written about the internet for The Observer, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and many newspapers and periodicals, both in the UK and overseas. In June 2010 John was given an OBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s Birthday Honours for his services to child protection on the internet. In May, 2006, John was named by the New Statesman as one of 50 "Modern Heroes". The New Statesman citation related to his work making the internet safer for children. In 2003 John was named by New Media Age as one of the UK's 50 most influential people in the new media industries. Along the way John was also a founding trustee of DEMOS, one of the UK's leading, independent Think Tanks.

John is a Director of Horsesmouth Ltd. a charity which runs an online career and life mentoring scheme. He is also a pro bono Technology Adviser to Breakthrough Breast Cancer He was formerly a member of Microsoft's Advisory Board for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. John is a consultant to a number of commercial concerns in the technology space.

28 September, Tuesday, 9.20 – 10.00

Plenary session: Understanding potential risks on social networking sites

Children and young people who publish too much or inappropriate information about themselves can put themselves and others at risk from sexual predators, bullies or unscrupulous commercial activity.

All the big American social networking sites specify 13 as the minimum age at which a person can be a member. They do this because of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act 1998, principally designed to shield younger children from inappropriate advertising and marketing practices. 13 became the standard for children’s privacy.

A survey published by Harris Interactive in June 2010 found that 37% of US youth between the ages of 10 and 12 have an account on Facebook. In March 2010 the UK’s telecoms regulator, OFCOM, found 19% of all children aged 8-12 had a profile on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo. This rose to 22% when looking at all social networking sites, most of which also stipulate 13, or 25% if limited only to home users. 

11% of these 8-12 year olds made their profiles public, so essentially anyone could view everything they had put up there. It is good to know that 89% made their profiles private or limited access only to a list of pre-determined friends and family but 11% is still far too large a proportion not to have done so and let us not forget the 89% should not really have been there in the first place. 

In the same study OFCOM showed that 37% of 5-7 year olds in the UK who use the internet at home had visited Facebook, although they did not necessarily have or establish a profile.

Something is obviously not working and the COPPA position is currently being reviewed in Washington. We await the outcome with great interest because the US defaults in effect become Europe’s defaults also.

28 September, Tuesday, 14.30 – 16.30

Parallel session: Mobile phones - privacy and safety concerns for children and young people

Presentation title: The new breed of location services

The development of mobile phones and other portable internet enabled devices has allowed for and encouraged the emergence of technologies which make it possible for an individual’s whereabouts to be traced and tracked through their use of those devices. Applications can show where someone is right now, where they were at a particular moment in the recent or distant past, or show a record or pattern of their movements again over a more or less extended period of time.

Information about a person’s physical location, is potentially highly sensitive. Where it relates to the physical location of a child it is even more so.

Location is also an aspect of behaviour. Thus, in an online context, location data also raise potential concerns about behavioural advertising practices. Could location data be used deliberately to target and exploit young people either for commercial or other purposes? Could location data expose children and young people to potentially exploitative or harmful situations even where there is no deliberate intent?

Anyone collecting or broadcasting data about someone else's physical whereabouts should be obliged to observe the very highest standards of data security, yet it is already apparent that this is not always going to be the case.

However, because every known location services paid for by advertising it means the apps are free to the end user, available for download by anyone who can click a mouse. That includes children.

Can we look forward to children blithely linking location services to their social networking profiles, adding yet another and qualitatively new layer of risk?

Some of the location providers specify 18 as their minimum age, others specify 13. Neither has any mechanism for checking or enforcing such a rule.

Parents and teachers need to know about these new services, and above all children and young people need to know about them and understand the risks.