A new initiative to divert young people away from criminality has been launched after cyber attacks designed to block access to schools’ networks or websites more than doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was a 107 per cent increase in reports from the police cyber prevent network of students as young as nine deploying DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks from 2019 to 2020.

Many referrals into the NCCU’s Prevent team are for children of secondary school age, with the median age at 15 and the youngest at nine.

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DfE: 'We're seeking views on proposed changes to the statutory guidance ‘Keeping children safe in education’ 2021, with a view to making changes for September 2022.

Why your views matter
The consultation will seek views on revisions to ‘Keeping children safe in education’, the statutory guidance that sets out what schools and colleges should do and the legal duties with which they must comply to keep children safe.'

Read more and access survey.

Facebook owner Meta says it has banned seven surveillance companies for targeting users on its platforms.

A new report by Meta says about 50,000 users will receive warnings about the "malicious activities".

It accused surveillance firms of actions like creating fake accounts, befriending targets and using hacking methods to harvest information.

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Eilish particularly criticised the way pornography can depict women's bodies and sexual experiences.

"I didn't understand why that was a bad thing - I thought it was how you learned how to have sex," Eilish said about watching, adding her mother was "horrified" when she told her.

"I was an advocate and I thought I was one of the guys and would talk about it and think I was really cool for not having a problem with it and not seeing why it was bad."

The singer-songwriter said she believed viewing the content while so young had "destroyed" her brain and caused her to suffer nightmares.

Eilish said it is a "real problem" that porn could skewer wider understandings of what is normal during sex, including around consent.

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The parents of a 15-year-old autistic girl who died by suicide after her school did not monitor her online activity have described the circumstances of her death as a “catastrophic failure” as they warned the Department for Education (DfE) against complacency.

Frances-Rose Thomas, known as Frankie, took her own life at home in Witley, Surrey, on 25 September 2018 after reading a story that involved suicide on a school iPad, which had no safety features.

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Schools and parents should do more to support students who are being sexually harassed through platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, while the tech companies need to clamp down on non-consensual sexual images being sent to young people, according to new research released on Monday.

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