Telenet fully commits itself to safe Internet for all children
Mechelen, February 19, 2024 – Telenet is committed to providing safe Internet access for children. For that reason, in addition to its existing services, Telenet will develop a completely free tool for Telenet and BASE customers to protect young children from inappropriate online content. Through this commitment, Telenet confirms its full support for the approved Parliamentary resolution initiated by representative Michael Freilich on this issue.
Context
The Internet plays a crucial role in our daily lives, offering countless opportunities in the fields of education, communication and entertainment. However, Telenet recognizes that unrestricted Internet access can pose certain risks for children. A Parliamentary resolution submitted by representative Michael Freilich that called on the Belgian government to take steps to protect young children from inappropriate online content was recently approved. Safe Internet access has always been a priority for Telenet and it is now supported by its Safesurf and Safespot+ offerings, among others. Telenet will now go one step further by developing a comprehensive solution to protect children from inappropriate online content.
Safe Internet already inherent to Telenet's current offerings
Currently, Telenet already offers several services to provide a safe web environment for all customers. Safesurf is a solution that works in the background and ensures that recognized phishing websites are blocked in the customer's home network.
In addition, Telenet also offers Safespot+, a comprehensive solution that focuses on protecting customers' home networks, devices and digital health (parental control). Thanks to the parental control function, customers can designate which devices are used by whom, and can subsequently filter specific content and choose when their children can access the Internet. Safespot+ is included by default in Telenet's ONEup bundle. For other customers, the service is offered for €8 per month. Our Safesurf and Safespot+ products block approximately 2 million threats per day.
At the end of last year, Telenet and BASE deployed a new platform to protect their customers from "smishing," a form of phishing via SMS messages. The new platform is a self-learning tool that recognizes a variety of patterns, such as phone numbers that send lots of messages or suspicious links that are being sent around. Since its launch, over 10 million phishing messages have already been detected and blocked. A similar system for fraudulent phone calls also already exists. This system intercepts around 125,000 fraudulent incoming and outgoing calls on our network per month.
Free parental control tool
Telenet and BASE aim to protect their customers' children from harmful content on the Internet by offering a parental control system for fixed and mobile Internet. For that reason, Telenet and BASE wish to offer their customers a free package, to which customers can voluntarily subscribe (opt-in system). The development of this package has already commenced. Once available, Telenet and BASE will launch an information campaign to clearly and transparently inform their customers about the existence of this free package. The system will provide effective parental control functions to filter and block undesirable content.
Dieter Nieuwdorp, Chief Commercial Officer of the Residential & SOHO Business department:
"With the increasing digitalization of our society, the importance of cybersecurity is also increasing enormously, in particular regarding the protection of our children from inappropriate content. Telenet and BASE have a crucial role to play in this and are already offering solutions today. However, we do not hesitate to take the lead, and so we are going one step further by developing this free package. In this way, we are taking responsibility and we wish to strive for a safer web environment for our youth.”
