Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 30, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
At the Federal Chancellery, Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel today gave the starting signal for the internet platform http://www.fragFINN.de during a press conference. This internet offering was created especially for children and forms the basis of a secure browsing space for children on the internet. This offering is being created as part of the „A Network for Children“ initiative, which is supported by the Federal Government, the
Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers e.V. (FSM), as well as companies and associations from the telecommunications and media world. In the protected browsing space, children can engage with interesting and child-appropriate content and learn how to use the internet medium through independent navigation without being exposed to potential dangers.
The children’s offering fragFINN.de is based on an extensive whitelist of child-appropriate internet offerings and, by means of a search function, gives children the opportunity to retrieve information suitable and interesting for them. In addition, news specially prepared for children, particularly child-appropriate internet-sites and safe chats are offered. The whitelist can be integrated into existing child protection programmes or accessed through a separate programme developed for this initiative, a browser plugin.
In addition to the creation and continuous further development of the whitelist by the FSM, a second goal of the „A Network for Children“ initiative is the financial support of innovative and high-quality children’s offerings. For this purpose, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth are providing more than 1.5 million euros per year for the time-period of initially three years. This is intended to significantly improve the internet landscape for children.
Representatives of the project participants state: „We are very pleased that we can implement this
project, which is important to society as a whole, in cooperation between business and politics and are delighted about the broad support.“
The further development and editorial support of the content of the fragFINN.de site
are carried out by the FSM for the project period and continue to be supported by the founding-members of the platform, AOL Germany, Arcor, Cybits AG, Deutsche
Telekom, Egmont Ehapa Verlag, 1&1, GMX, Google Germany, Heinrich Bauer
Verlag, Lycos Europe, Microsoft Germany, O2 Germany, Ragnar Tessloff GmbH & Co.
KG, Super RTL, Vodafone Germany and WEB.DE. In addition, the
initiative is supported by the Association of the German Internet Industry (eco), the Association of Private Broadcasting and Telemedia (VPRT), the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM).
