MARCH Cyber Scam Newsletter
In this month's edition, we're raising awareness of holiday scams, fake Royal Mail emails, Vaccine scams and fake supermarket giveaway scams!
Many games involve players communicating with people all over the world - which experts say makes children vulnerable to predators.
However a team of gaming and crime experts across the UK are set to investigate the issue in a new partnership which aims to safeguard young people from sexual exploitation.
It will be led by academics at Abertay University in Dundee.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have also joined the effort and will help design changes to games that should keep children safer online.
It will also include input from key games industry contacts.
Dr Darshana Jayemanne, of Abertay's school of design and informatics, is leading the project and said the partnership would focus on solutions to a number of challenges facing the industry.
What issues will be looked at?
The project was launched with a roundtable discussion at Abertay on Monday.
Representatives from London-based Space Ape Games, the InGAME (Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise) research and development project, and Beano Studios all attended.
Key issues discussed included the UK government's digital charter - a rolling programme of work which agrees on norms and rules for the online world.
It states that people have the same rights and expect the same behaviour online as they do offline.
The partnership has also examined new standards for games designers laid out by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which was published earlier this year.
It covered issues such as switching off location tracking, parental controls and the avoidance of "nudge techniques" which can encourage children to provide unnecessary personal data.
At the time of publication, the ICO said its proposals reflected people's growing mistrust of social media and online services.
Attendees also exchanged views on the recent Commons report on immersive and addictive technologies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-50226260?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk&link_location=live-reporting-story
