Molly Russell and Olly Stephens: Families unite to slam online law delays

  • The parents of teenagers Molly Russell and Olly Stephens said they were frustrated by repeated delays to the Online Safety Bill.
  • The two families have warned that more youngsters face the same fate unless the government takes swift action.
  • Ian Russell, Molly’s father, compared the way social media companies currently operate to “putting cars on the road without testing them on crash dummies first”.
  • For more on this story, visit the BBC website.

Twitch says it’s getting better at detecting and blocking younger users

  • Twitch are cracking down on accounts belonging to users under the age of 13 in an effort to protect children on the platform.
  • A Bloomberg report revealed ‘rampant child predation’ on Twitch and found a total of 279,016 children were targeted by alleged predators on the platform.
  • Twitch is going to introduce mandatory phone verification requirements to “potentially vulnerable accounts” before they can start livestreaming and will also prioritise reports involving users under 13.
  • For more on this update, please visit the Verge website.

Russian Cybergangs stole over 50 million passwords this year

  • According to a report by Group-IB, at least 34 Russian speaking cybercrime groups using malware have collectively stolen 50,350,000 account passwords from over 896,000 individual infections in 6 months.
  • Between January and July 2022, stolen credentials were for cryptocurrency wallets, Steam, Roblox, Amazon, and PayPal accounts, as well as payment cards.
  • According to the report, Telegram was the platform used to coordinate the attacks.
  • For more on this story, visit the Bleeping Computer website.

Pre-school offering ‘does not go far enough’

  • According to the National Education Union report ‘Danish Lessons’, offering all 3 and 4 years old in Northern Ireland a year of pre-school is not enough to help working parents.
  • Research from the Ulster University in 2020 suggested costs of childcare in Northern Ireland were among the highest in Europe.
  • Around 60% of children in Northern Ireland currently get 12.5 hours of funded pre-school education in a week, which is distinct from childcare.
  • The ‘Danish Lessons’ report is the result of a study visit to Denmark by union members of the NEU and early years specialists.
  • For more on this, please visit the BBC website.