Online safety: a macro challenge 👮

Do you change your passwords often? Do you have strong antivirus software? Do you pay attention to the photos you share on social media? Do you believe everything you see in your feed?

With more than half a million likes on Facebook, the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP, one of Portugal's national police forces) has been working to improve digital literacy and to warn people about the dangers lurking on the internet, which affect victims of all ages.

At Indigit's invitation, Superintendent João Moura, Head of the Protocol, Marketing and Technical Advisory Unit at the PSP's Press and Public Relations Office, talks to us today about internet safety.

"The presence of the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP) on social media has been hugely successful with the public in recent years, especially on Facebook, which is still 'the' social network in Portugal.

From the very start, we chose to mix information and creativity, sometimes in a way that is quite disruptive for a century-old institution, and we have reached 661,230 followers to date, all organically (we have no paid reach or paid content).

Some of our posts have reached more than 3 million accounts, which in practice means many more people. That tells us why we are online: to create a 'community Facebook' that lets us inform, prevent and also entertain.

Instagram is also an interesting case: in just 12 months, we reached 49,200 followers. Online safety is a very broad, even strategic, subject, and it is high on the agenda. Just look at how much global brands, international organisations and governments spend in this area, treating it as an investment rather than a cost.

Through social media, Escola Segura (Safe School), Idosos em Segurança (Safe Elderly) and other community and prevention programmes, the PSP aims to cover two major areas of online safety awareness: self-protection, and 'behavioural' online safety.

The first covers the more technical issues that the user can control: using a strong and varied password, investing in good antivirus software and a good firewall, keeping security settings up to date, and so on.

The second is much broader and involves the behavioural and situational side of the web and social media: addiction, dangerous viral challenges, cyberbullying, online scams, online sexual extortion and more.

In the first, users control the self-protection measures they adopt. In the second, things are somewhat out of their control. That is why, in our view, three things are essential: digital literacy, prevention and digital inclusion. This is what is called 'defence in depth': several layers of security, both passive and active, together with a conscious 'mental security' in people.

This gets harder with younger audiences. Phenomena such as the Blue Whale challenge, Netflix's Bird Box film, addictive games such as Fortnite or Pokémon Go and sending "nudes" (widespread and sometimes strangely normal among young people) carry huge risks.

Cyberbullying itself is a scourge, as more and more digital-native children are victims of it and threatened by it. Among older people, the main issue is online scams involving the purchase of goods and the rental of property (holiday homes, for example).

For young people, it is the craving for likes and viral reach, with the dopamine hit that comes with it. For older people, it is being dazzled and caught in the traps of scams, with seemingly great deals and flawlessly built fake websites.

That is why the challenge is enormous and involves a network of partners: first the users themselves, then schools, teachers, guardians and parents, the PSP, local councils, various associations and also the Ministries (of Education and of Internal Administration).

In our view, you can never have too much prevention, given the new paradigm on its way with 5G, augmented reality, virtual reality and the internet of things. And that paradigm is not far off."