The In­ter­net is rapid­ly chang­ing, pro­vid­ing Caribbean cit­i­zens with new op­por­tu­ni­ties, but al­so cre­at­ing new risks for chil­dren, par­ents, teach­ers, politi­cians and busi­ness­men.

Cy­ber crime, cy­ber bul­ly­ing, sex­ting, da­ta se­cu­ri­ty and cor­po­rate sur­veil­lance have emerged as head­line risks not just in the board­room but al­so in the class­room and the liv­ing room.

Over­com­ing the new breed of chal­lenges is a com­plex task, re­quir­ing a va­ri­ety of ap­proach­es by an ecosys­tem of af­fect­ed stake­hold­ers.

On Feb­ru­ary 10, the 12th Safer In­ter­net Day at­tempts to high­light the work be­ing done to make the In­ter­net safer for all.

"This is a huge­ly im­por­tant event in pro­mot­ing the safe and re­spon­si­ble use of the in­ter­net and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy by chil­dren and young peo­ple," says the Safer In­ter­net Day of­fi­cial web­site. "All over the world peo­ple will be cel­e­brat­ing with a theme this year of 'Let's cre­ate a bet­ter in­ter­net to­geth­er.'

The web­site is a glob­al on­line com­mu­ni­ty plat­form where coun­tries and or­gan­i­sa­tions are show­cas­ing the ac­tions they are tak­ing lo­cal­ly, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to make the glob­al In­ter­net safer.

Cre­at­ed in 1999 by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion (EC), the Safer In­ter­net Pro­gramme aims to pro­mote safe, re­spon­si­ble use of the in­ter­net by chil­dren and young peo­ple, and pro­tect­ing them from il­le­gal and harm­ful con­tent and con­duct on­line.

"All stake­hold­ers–in­di­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments–have a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure a safer In­ter­net," said­Bri­an Collins, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions South­ern Caribbean, in me­dia state­ment re­leased on Feb­ru­ary 9.

"To cre­ate a bet­ter In­ter­net to­geth­er in­volves more than sim­ply pro­vid­ing ser­vices. It in­volves ed­u­cat­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety on the prop­er and most se­cure use of the In­ter­net. This in­cludes the very young as well as se­nior cit­i­zens."

"As the In­ter­net be­comes even more ac­ces­si­ble and user-friend­ly, the youth and the el­der­ly are of­ten­times the tar­get of on­line preda­tors," said Collins. "As a com­pa­ny, our goal this year is to pro­vide our users with the knowl­edge and tools to help safe­guard them­selves. The In­ter­net pro­vides ex­cel­lent learn­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, but it al­so opens the door to a high­er de­gree of risk. Of­ten­times this can be avoid­ed com­plete­ly."

The re­lease in­clud­ed tips for par­ents and guardians to help pro­tect their chil­dren from on­line preda­tors and un­want­ed con­tent.

Keep the com­put­er in a high-traf­fic area of your home

Re­mem­ber that In­ter­net tech­nol­o­gy can be mo­bile, so make sure to mon­i­tor cell phones, gam­ing de­vices and lap­tops

Surf the In­ter­net with your chil­dren and let them show you what they like to do on­line

Talk to your kids to know who is con­nect­ing with the­mon­line

Set rules for so­cial net­work­ing, in­stant mes­sag­ing, e-mail­ing, on­line gam­ing, and us­ing we­b­cams

Nev­er share your pass­word or ac­count num­bers over an e-mail or in­stant mes­sage

Do not fol­low links from e-mails when con­duct­ing fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions

Al­ways be wary of callers, pop-ups, web­sites or e-mails ask­ing for per­son­al in­for­ma­tion

Cre­ate se­cure pass­words and change them of­ten

In­vest in an­ti-spy­ware and an­ti-virus soft­ware

Re­port (sus­pect­ed) in­ci­dents of iden­ti­ty theft­to the po­lice