The Information Commissioner’s Office is calling on parents to treat their children’s online privacy like road safety and stranger danger as part of a major new campaign designed to “start simple conversations about protecting their personal information online”.
The “Switched on to Privacy Campaign” has also triggered calls from the children’s commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza not to let tech companies “off the hook” and force them to prioritise children’s safety.
The move coincides with the publication of new research which reveals three-quarters of parents fear their child cannot make safe online privacy choices, with over a third (35%) believing their child would “share personal information in exchange for game tokens or rewards”.
The study, which quizzed 1,000 UK parents with children aged four to 11 years, also found that 22% of children have shared personal information such as health details with AI tools and 24% have shared their real name or address online, with eight and nine-year-olds most at risk.
While the most obvious elements include children’s name, age, and where they live, the ICO is warning parents that revealing browsing history, purchases, photos, voice notes and social media or gaming activity is just as potentially damaging.
The regulator said a single click could “unveil friendships, interests, moods and even sleep patterns, creating a digital footprint that can last forever – or even be exploited by people with bad intentions”.
It added that “many parents feel underprepared”, with 46% of survey respondents stating they “don’t feel confident protecting their children’s privacy online”, 44% “try but aren’t sure they’re doing enough” and 42% “probably don’t spend enough time checking their child’s privacy settings”.
The ICO’s research suggests online privacy is one of the “least discussed online safety topics”, with 21% of parents having never spoken to their children about it and 38% discussing it less than once a month. In contrast, 90% of parents have discussed screen time in the past month.
ICO deputy commissioner Emily Keaney said: “The Internet offers amazing opportunities for children – but every click can leave a hidden data trail and these digital footprints can last forever.
“We wouldn’t expect our children to share their birthdays or address with a stranger in a shop, because we’d explain stranger danger to them from a very young age, but kids these days are growing up online.
“We know that where children’s details – like their name, interests and pictures – aren’t protected, the potential risks are serious: unwanted contact from strangers, grooming and radicalisation.
“Children’s online privacy requires a whole society approach. We have taken and will continue to take action to hold tech companies accountable for their role. There’s a role for parents too but the problem is that many families have never been shown how to talk to their children about online privacy.
“This is where the ICO comes in. We want parents to feel empowered and children to feel digitally confident, because only then will they be able to start to trust in how their data is used and be part of the whole society solution that is needed for online safety.”
Dame Rachel de Souza added: “We all have a role to play in protecting children from these dangers, many of which we as adults are also still learning to navigate.
“Too often we are playing catch up, this is why it is important that parents feel confident having early, everyday conversations with children about the risks of being online and how to respond if something makes them uncomfortable.
“But we cannot let tech companies off the hook. They must be held accountable for putting profits before protections and must be required to design services that prioritise children’s safety and privacy by design, rather than treating children’s safety as an optional tick box exercise, after harm has already occurred.”
In February, the social media platform and content aggregator Reddit dubbed the “front page of the Internet”, was hit with a £14.47m fine for breaching the so-called Children’s Code.
The penalty, the largest ever handed out by the regulator over children’s privacy issues, comes amid an investigation launched last year into three sites over how they handle children’s personal information and age assurance measures.
Imgur-owned MediaLab was fined £250,000; the TikTok investigation is continuing.
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