Security over privacy is in the focus of NSPCC campaigning challenged by David Spencer, VPNCompare's News Editor.
In general, encryption helps to keep people safer online, messages are more secure and less vulnerable to hackers and online surveillance. But with encryption social messaging platforms (like Facebook Messenger) lose the ability to see what is going on and have less option to protect child users.
The NSPCC’s Head Of Child Safety Online Policy, Andy Burrows, said: “children and young people’s accounts not to be encrypted unless and until a platform can demonstrate that in moving to encryption it doesn’t compromise the duty of care.”
NSPCC aims to protect children from grooming, which usually happens on social platforms, but this aim may undermine our online rights. The majority of children are not victims of grooming but could suffer from hackers and online spies if their messages left open. Encryption protects us from a huge range of online threats. This gives the controversy of the NSPCC campaign, should our children be safer online by undermining their privacy?
Remarkably children’s online privacy is a hot topic in the US as well, where Google was just banned by $200 million after its YouTube service violated a children’s privacy law. The biggest fine ever issued for breaking the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, because they collected children’s online data without permission.