Online security angle gets coverage for Ask.fm

Need news? Talk about online security, a perennial concern, especially when youths are concerned. 

The question and answer social network Ask.fm has announced an online Safety Centre to help Internet users develop online safety skills. The company analysed how consumers interact with social media and developed a central hub that provides information on what it has put in place to promote the safety of users.

Source: Ask.fm website

The Safety Centre is a place where parents, carers, teachers, and users themselves can search for information on how the site works, online safety tips, and the company's strict terms and conditions, says Ask.fm.

Ilja Terebin, Ask.fm's CEO, said: "The safety and protection of our users, especially younger ones, is of paramount importance to us and we now have a place where people can learn more about this crucial topic. We will constantly review how risks to users change and will update guidance in order to ensure they remain alert to changing behaviours online."

The site hosts more than 90 million registered users across 150 different countries, and users ask and answer more than 35 million questions a day. In the past few months the company has demonstrated its commitment to the protection of users by introducing a series of safety protocols. These include increasing the number of moderators on its team, making the reporting of inappropriate content easy and straight-forward, and developing a number of layers to catch and automatically remove illicit content.

In addition, the company reviews every picture and video uploaded on Ask.fm. They are assessed by independent moderators and, if deemed inappropriate, will be removed within an average of 15 minutes.

The company recently joined the Internet Watch Foundation, an organisation that has fought  illegal online content since it was established in 1996.