TalkTalk

Working together to achieve more: TalkTalk and Tinder Foundation

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TalkTalk have long been a partner of Tinder Foundation, and one we’ve always been very proud to work with. Chief Executive Dido Harding has been a vocal supporter of digital inclusion, and the work of Tinder Foundation, and I’ve always welcomed the advice she has provided us as we’ve grown as an organisation and expanded our work to support almost 2 million people to improve their digital skills.

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Recently, we’ve been building a strategic partnership with TalkTalk that we think will have a real impact on supporting digitally excluded people to improve their skills, and particularly help them to keep themselves safe online.

Through the UK online centres network, we’ve supported over 250,000 people to improve their digital skills just this year, and so we’ve got a pretty good understanding of what people are worried about, what’s holding them back, and the barriers and concerns we need to tackle. We see so many people who are really worried about being able to keep themselves safe online, and who are being held back from experiencing all of the positives about the online world due to their concerns about online safety and security.

Next week is Get Online Week, and there will be thousands of organisations all over the country supporting people to improve their basic digital skills through tackling some of the barriers people face to getting online, and by showing them how the internet can be made relevant for them. We’re delighted that, thanks to our partnership with TalkTalk, we’re able to provide these organisations with a new online learning tool that will help them to break down some of these barriers, and to help people learn how to keep themselves safe and secure online.

The course will be hosted on our Learn My Way platform, recently relaunched, which contains a whole host of courses to help people get to grips with the skills they need to get on in a digital world. The website, and all of the courses on it (including this one) have been designed in consultation with the people who will benefit from it, and the new internet safety course is a great addition to it.

This is just one small bit of a wider partnership with TalkTalk, which will ensure we can reach many more people, and support them to use the internet safely, without worry. As a small charity with big ambitions, the support of an organisation like TalkTalk is crucial to helping us to expand our impact, and so we’re delighted to continue working with them to develop new solutions.

Security and fear – it’s time to educate

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This morning I was invited to a very insightful panel discussion run by TalkTalk in partnership with Freud Communications about cybercrime. Cybercrime and issues around internet security have been on the rise recently; from Sony to TalkTalk themselves. Google and McAfee estimate there are 2000 cyberattacks every day around the world, costing the global economy about £300bn a year. A journal which I picked up today at the event (The Brewery Journal – well worth a read) reflects these figures: according to the 2015 UK Crime Survey there were an estimated 5.1 million cybercrimes and frauds last year in the UK alone, costing the UK economy £27 billion a year. It all seems very scary, but significantly lowering these figures is not impossible; we just need to educate.

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Image courtesy of The Brewery Journal

 

“97% of cybercrimes happen due to human frailty”

This is what Matt Hancock MP, the government minister who is responsible for cybersecurity, said this morning and he’s not wrong. Digital is something that isn’t going away and it’s really important for people to be smart and informed on the approaches they need to take when using the internet.

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Image courtesy of The Brewery Journal

 

I regularly meet vulnerable and socially excluded people when I visit our community partners, and they have concerns about internet security.

Our very popular resources on Learn My Way are great for educating learners about cybersecurity. In our beginners section we have Using the Internet Safely to introduce newbies to the dangers surrounding the internet and tell them the right steps to take to avoid these dangers. For those who are ready to move on to the more advanced stuff we’ve got Staying Safe Online and Keeping Your Information Safe, which show learners how to keep their tech safe from viruses. It’s also really important that we’ve backed hints and tips on keeping safe inside our other relevant online courses – we don’t expect people to know they need to do the explicit safety courses – we support them to keep their data safe on Facebook (in the Facebook course), to be clever when online shopping (in the online shopping course), and to set up good passwords and avoid phishing in the email course. If you’re internet safety savvy it’s easy to surf the web every day with no problems.

Raising Awareness

Today Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, said that it’s important not to hide away and that we should be talking openly about this important issue. I firmly agree and I was thrilled to hear that the government is building a new cybersecurity centre and that the Cyber First scheme will be recruiting 1000 graduates – a good move in the fight against cybercrime.

Raising awareness is also at the forefront of the fight. Campaigns like Safer Internet Day and European Get Online Week are two causes which we support and promote here at Tinder Foundation, the latter of which is taking place next week. ‘Trust and confidence’ is one of the key themes surrounding this year’s campaign, aiming to raise awareness around online identities and cybersecurity to help people become more confident internet users.

Of course, we can’t wipe out cybercrime and hackers completely. As much as we’d like to, that’s just impossible. But what we can do is raise awareness and educate people. I felt inspired by something that Dido said today and thought I’d use it to finish this blog (apologies to Dido if I haven’t remembered this exactly): “I’m hopeful that the virtual world can be every bit as safe as the physical world (which isn’t completely safe, as it never can be).”

We’ve helped 1.8 million vulnerable and socially excluded people make positive changes to their lives through learning how to use the internet. We help them to keep safe, but I think we can do more. So, what’s next? We’ll get out to our community partners and talk to some of our users and work out what ‘more’ might be.