NEW DELHI: About 18 per cent of children have said that they have been victims of bullying on internet.

This is revealed by a survey report ‘Cyber Crime -2013 – Kids (India),’ published by software company Symantec which covered a sample size of just 203 kids.

Parliament was told this week that a website (secureyourpc.in) for children, home users and elderly is available for safeguarding their computer systems and learning the risks on internet. 

Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there had been some media reports that children are becoming victims of depression because of cyber bullying.

The Home Ministry had issued an Advisory on Preventing & combating Cyber Crime against Children on 4 January 2012, advising States/Union Territories to specifically combat the crimes in the forms of cyber stalking, cyber bullying, child pornography and exposure to sexually explicit material etc. 

The Information Technology Act, 2000 has provision for dealing with cyber crimes targeting children. 

The government has implemented Information Security Education Awareness (ISEA) programme including the programmes conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Internet & Mobile Association of India (IMAI) and Data Security Council of India (DSCI) for security awareness and training in the area of information security.

Specific workshops have been conducted for school children on making them aware about risks on internet and adopting safe internet browsing practices. In these programmes around 710 workshops have been organised across the country covering large number of organisations, schools, students and teachers. During the workshops, awareness kits have also been distributed. Security awareness material like posters, DVDs, cartoon/animation videos have also been developed and widely distributed.

A dedicated website for information security awareness (www.infosecawareness.in) has also been developed and content is available in English and Hindi language.