As a founding member of Internet Matters, BT has invested over £5 million since 2010 in filtering controls and education to help children and young adults use the internet safely.
Looking forward, BT has launched a new goal to reach 10 million people in the UK with digital skills training by 2025 through their Skills for Tomorrow programme, building on their existing partnerships and programmes, including Internet Matters.
BT continues to support Internet Matters, utilising their expertise and resources to help raise awareness of online safety across their customer base and across the UK. Through BT’s Skills for Tomorrow programme, anyone can access the Skills for Tomorrow portal via the BT website and select from a range of digital skills courses, including both online and face to face courses. These courses are provided by a small group of partner organisations, including Internet Matters, and are designed to meet the needs of anyone in the UK who feels under-equipped, uninformed or just plain confused about digital technology.
In addition to these online resources, BT and Internet Matters continue to collaborate on staff initiatives and upskilling. On Safer Internet Day 2018, working with Internet Matters, EE trained thousands of frontline employees at over 600 retail outlets, preparing them to offer support on safety features on devices and parental controls.
More recently, on Safer Internet Day 2019, BT hosted the UK Safer Internet Centre’s youth event, to start conversations about how young people can connect, create and share content safely in a digital world.
Internet Matters houses easy to follow guides for BT’s free parental controls for home and mobile, public wi-fi, and on-demand TV content. We feature PlusNet’s SafeGuard and how this allows parents to block numerous categories of online content such as pornography, gambling and hate sites. We also include EE’s Content Lock which helps to keep children safe online by blocking 18-rated content.
In addition to that, we include EE’s Set Up Safe service which is a simple service for parents whose kids have smartphones. There is advice on spend controls and content locking, as well as EE recommended profiles for kids of different ages. With hand do’s and don’t and useful safety advice, Set Up Safe is there to make sure children are safe on the EE network.
It can be hard to keep up with advice on how to keep our children safe given the relentless pace of development of digital technologies. We’re excited about our continued partnership with Internet Matters as we continue to see a real benefit in providing a one-stop shop where parents feel confident in getting simple, effective and practical advice – allowing them to take simple steps that make a real difference.
Technology alone cannot ensure the protection of children online. So, together with Virgin, Talk Talk and Sky, BT invested in creating Internet Matters to reach 90 percent of UK homes to provide education and advice to parents to help children build their online resilience. It is an organisation that continues to be essential in helping the UK lead the way in child internet safety.
We’ve teamed up to create the ‘Nice Device List’ – with tips on parental controls and online safety.
Visit our broadband & mobile networks parental controls how-to-guides to learn how to set controls on your BT, EE, and Plusnet networks.
See control guidesBT Skills for tomorrow
Learn new digital skills for all areas of life
BT Parental Controls
Easy way to keep your children safe online
BT Wi-Fi Protect
Free filtering service to screen out inappropriate content
EE Content Lock
Helps block 18-rated content on mobile network
PlusNet SafeGuard
Internet content control for your household
For more information on keeping your children safe online, head to the BT Skills for Tomorrow portal.