Safer Internet Day 2023 & CC-DRIVER
University of East London Team launch “Crossing the line into Cybercrime” education and awareness raising resources
The CC-DRIVER project produces cutting-edge research to understand children’s risky, harmful and illegal behaviours online, to provide evidence-based thought leadership on how to prevent harms and promote digital well-being, and contribute to the conversation at the national and international scale. The CC-DRIVER research project team at University of East London, Institute for Connected Communities, are supporting Safer Internet Day initiatives by providing key resources and educational materials and intervention resources. It is important to educate young people and adults about knowing what types of online behaviours are risky, harmful, or criminal. Read more about our work on issues surrounding cybercrime definitions in our published journal article and policy brief.
University of East London CC-DRIVER partners at the University of East London, Institute for Connected Communities, have conducted various stages of research. Firstly, we have interviewed 36 Cybercrime experts, to gain expert opinion on why individuals (in particular young people) might become involved in risky, harmful, or illegal behaviours online. Read more about this work in our blog post. Secondly, we have conducted a survey of approximately 8,000 young people across nine European countries, to gain insight from young people’s self-reported behaviours and investigate how various different ‘human factors’ may be related to risky, harmful, or illegal behaviours online. Read more about our findings from this survey in our CC-DRIVER 2021 European Youth Survey research report and in an news article published in the Guardian. Finally, we are conducting interviews with cybercrime offenders in UK prisons, to gain insight directly from offenders about what led them to become involved in online crime. Our findings contribute to the conversation about child online safety and youth cybercrime at national and global levels.
CC-DRIVER have translated the findings from our research into educational materials which we are sharing as part of Safer Internet Day 2023 on Tuesday 7th February 2023: find see these resources here on the Safter Internet Day website and here on CC-DRIVER website. These have been shared Safer Internet Centres across all of Europe, in the hope of sharing these evidence-based interventions with young people and reducing online crime at national levels. These resources have also been shared here and endorsed by Europol’s EC3 European Cybercrime Centre.
Informed by our research, we have developed a “What are cybercrimes?” poster, to download or print. This poster describes what cybercrimes are, gives examples of different types of criminal behaviours online, and gives examples of what individuals can do to reduce their risky online behaviours. One of our main findings, corroborated by previous research, is that harmful online behaviours are normalised and one of the reasons maybe why most people don’t realise what they are doing online can be harmful to themselves or others and may be against the law.
2. “Crossing the line into Cybercrime” Youth Quiz and Score Sheet
We have developed a ‘Crossing the line into Cybercrime’ quiz and score sheet informed by our research, to educate young people (from the ages of 12 and up) about potential online risks and what measures can be taken to reduce and avoid behaviours that are risky, harmful, and associated with online crime. To take the quiz: download the quiz and either print and write your scores or complete them by looking at the screen and taking note of your scores. Then check out your scores!
We have developed a ‘Pathways into cybercrime’ poster, to download or print. This is a checklist resource for parents, caregivers, and educators, based on our latest research findings. This resource is to help inform parents, caregivers, and educators about potential online risks that young people might be taking, the various factors that are associated with online risk-taking and what potential measures can be taken to reduce and avoid behaviours that are risky, harmful, and associated with online crime.
