ProTechThem: Building Awareness for Safer and Technology-Savvy Sharenting

特别是在过去的15年里，新的“在线身份”的创造（我们在网络空间获得的社会身份）和扩大我们的“数字身份”的可用性（我们的属性，传记甚至生物身份的数字存储）除了带来许多好处外，还带来了新的和正在出现的风险和犯罪脆弱性，因为身份信息可能以多种方式被滥用并造成严重危害。这方面的现有研究迄今为止一直侧重于非法获取个人信息（例如通过黑客或社会工程技术），但忽视了个人自愿在线共享身份（和潜在敏感）信息的危险行为。在这方面，一个特别令人感兴趣但又特别被忽视的领域是与分享未成年人的身份和敏感信息有关的领域，这些未成年人往往在所谓的“分享”做法中被父母和监护人善意地过度暴露在网上。除了忽视儿童拥有（或不拥有）在线身份的愿望所带来的负面心理影响的风险之外，还有关于修饰和虐待儿童的潜在风险以及身份犯罪的潜在风险（如身份欺诈和身份盗窃），特别是要记住，几年后，今天的孩子将在生活的许多方面使用数字身份，需要一个干净和精心策划的数字身份完全成为我们社会的许多方面的一部分。拟议的项目结合了传统和创新的跨学科方法，以进一步推动这一新兴的调查路线。该项目通过更好地了解共享实践，其动机以及与之相关的风险来实现这一目标。它提供了一个更好的了解现有的技术和监管漏洞和差距，使潜在的有害共享做法。它还使人们更好地了解父母和监护人（我们的“目标人群”）对这一问题的看法。因此，该项目可以更有针对性地开展提高认识活动，改进我们目前用于研究、预防和减轻共享做法负面影响的工具。这项研究的结果将对社交媒体用户（特别是我们的目标人群）具有重要意义，可以提高认识，促进持续的行为改变，以最大限度地减少网络风险。这些结果也将有助于执法部门更好地处理可能由某些共享做法（如梳理和身份犯罪）促成的犯罪。更一般地说，拟议的方法将提高我们对社交媒体中存在的犯罪机会的理解，支持新的调查途径。通过整合来自犯罪学和计算机科学的见解和专业知识，拟议的项目还对展示跨学科方法的发展和促进道德在线研究的最佳做法具有重要意义。该研究项目围绕七个累积工作包进行结构化，以使研究团队能够建立一个坚实的原始数据体系（目前研究人员无法获得），同时也促进与非学术受众（主要是执法人员，父母和监护人）的参与和有效沟通。在整个项目中，我们将得到我们的项目合作伙伴（英国安全互联网中心; Kidscape;阿尔马dei Carabinieri）的支持;与温迪·霍尔教授和其他利益相关者一起，项目合作伙伴也将成为我们咨询委员会的一部分。

Especially over the past 15 years, the creation of new "online identities" (the social identity that we acquire in cyberspace) and the expansion of the usability of our "digital identity" (the digital storage of our attributed, biographical or even biological identities) have entailed, alongside many advantages, also new and emerging risks and crime vulnerabilities, as identity information can be misused in many ways and create severe harms. Existing research in this context has so far focused on the illegal access to personal information (e.g. through hacking or social engineering techniques) but has overlooked the risky behaviours of individuals willingly sharing identifying (and potentially sensitive) information online. In this context, an area of particular interest that has been particularly overlooked is the one connected to the sharing of identifying and sensitive information of minors, who are often overexposed online in good-faith by parents and guardians in so called "sharenting" practices. Beyond risks due to negative psychological repercussions in ignoring children's desire to having (or not) an online identity, there are concerns regarding the potential for grooming and child abuse, and the potential for identity crimes (such as identity fraud and identity theft), especially keeping in mind that today's children, in a few years, will be those employing digital identities in many aspects of their lives, and will need a clean and curated digital identity to be fully part of many aspects of our society.The proposed project combines traditional and innovative cross-disciplinary approaches to further this emerging line of inquiry. The project does so by offering a better understanding of sharenting practices, their motivations, and the risks associated with them. It provides a better understanding of the existing technical and regulatory loopholes and gaps enabling potentially harmful sharenting practices. It also develops a better understanding of the perception of the problem by parents and guardians (our "target population"). The project can therefore enable better targeted awareness-raising activities; an improvement of the tools we currently have to study, prevent and mitigate the negative impacts of sharenting practices.The result of this research will be of significant importance for social media users (and specifically for those in our target population) by raising awareness and promoting sustained behavioural change to minimise cyber risks. The results will also be of relevance for the work of law enforcement in better addressing crimes potentially facilitated by certain sharenting practices such as grooming and identity crimes.More in general, the proposed approach will improve our understanding of criminogenic opportunities available in social media, supporting new avenues of investigation. By integrating insights and expertise from criminology and computer sciences, the proposed project also has important implications for demonstrating interdisciplinary methodological developments and promoting best practice for ethical online research. The research project is structured around seven cumulative work-packages to allow the research team to build a solid body of original data (currently not available to researchers) but also to promote engagement and effective communication with a non-academic audience (primarily, law enforcement, and parents and guardians). Throughout the project, we will be supported by our Project Partners (UK Safer Internet Centre; Kidscape; Arma dei Carabinieri); together with Dame Prof. Wendy Hall and other stakeholders, the Project Partners will be also part of our Advisory Board.