Safer Internet Day 2023: How to stay safe online

Every year, on 7 February, a campaign to highlight the importance of online safety takes place: Safer Internet Day. The event is now in its twentieth year of raising awareness of current and emerging safety issues surrounding how we use our digital devices online.

Safer Internet Day is celebrated in roughly 180 countries and territories worldwide, drawing attention to cyberbullying, identity theft, and how to use social media safely.

Check out the website, where you will find ‘multilingual resources’ and ‘a global online community’. The event aims to empower everyone to use the internet responsibly and to ensure we’re all getting the most out of our experience using online technologies.

We’ve rounded up a few of our favourite animations to help you use the internet safely. Watch our animation on how to stay safe online and (potentially) become a cybersecurity pro, learn about a new way to tell if the identity you are interacting with online is genuine or a scam, and a way to protect your privacy when image-sharing online through self-sovereign identity, a new identity management system below.

Stay safe online and become a cybersecurity pro

More and more of our lives are happening online. Work, entertainment, shopping, education—all of these depend on cybersecurity to run safely and smoothly.

So, how can you make sure you’re using the internet safely? Keep yourself safe online and watch to find out how this could even lead to a career in cybersecurity.

How can we tell if the identity we are interacting with online is genuine, or a scam?

TAPESTRY (trust and Privacy over a Decentralised Social Registry) has launched a new blockchain-based service for proving the provenance of online digital identity, which can be an assistive tool to help non-expert users – like you and me – make better decisions about trusting unknown online third parties.

The service harnesses digital personhood (DP): the various signals created through users’ digital interactions throughout their life as a basis for evidencing the provenance of identity.

This animation shows how TAPESTRY’s tools enable users to make more effective decisions on whether to trust unknown third parties online and spot behavioural deviations in their social media footprints indicative of account hijacking.

Privacy-preserving image sharing through self-sovereign identity

Sharing photographs online has never been simpler. Unfortunately, this makes it too easy for others to use pictures without the photographer’s permission.

Researchers at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security are using an identity management system known as self-sovereign identity in their web app. Unlike traditional identity systems, SSI allows users to control and manage their identity. This will enable photographers to register their images while still preserving their privacy.