By Colleen Tressler

The Federal Trade Commission, working in partnership with cybersecurity experts, online marketers, consumer advocates, and federal officials, has launched a new interactive multimedia consumer education campaign to help consumers stay safe online.

Launched in October 2005 and maintained by the FTC, OnGuardOnline.gov includes videos, tutorials, and interactive quizzes on a wide range of topics related to computer security and online safety. Easy to navigate and offered in English and Spanish, the Web site also tells consumers how to file complaints with the FTC or other agencies about various types of Internet-related problems. The site is part of a broad public-awareness campaign that also includes TV, print, and online ads.

The FTC encourages companies and nonprofit organizations, both large and small, to use or adapt the free materials at OnGuardOnline.gov in your communications efforts. Here are some ideas on how to use this important information:

• Link to OnGuardOnline.gov from your Web site. Free buttons and banners are available on the site.
• Include OnGuard Online information in your newsletters. Use one of the ready-made articles or write your own.
• Distribute OnGuard Online publications in your workplace, to your constituents, or at conferences and professional meetings. Campaign staff can provide print mechanicals and design files for a brochure titled “Stop Think Click,” which you can reprint with your organization’s own branding.
• Include OnGuard Online’s tips, messages, and URL on product packaging, shopping bags, or receipts.
• Create your own Web page for consumers about how to use the Internet safely, and link to OnGuardOnline.gov.

A number of organizations have already partnered with the FTC to develop and promote OnGuard Online. Microsoft helped develop the OnGuard Online branding and contributed a series of security videos for the site. In October, it placed advertorials promoting OnGuard Online in major newspapers, and MSN will run OnGuard Online banner ads. In addition, i-SAFE, a congressionally chartered organization that provides age-appropriate curricula to schools, is incorporating the campaign’s messages into i-SAFE curricula and is distributing OnGuard Online materials at its events. Another well-known Web presence, eBay, is posting a letter to its members promoting OnGuard Online, as well as buttons linking to the site.

In Oregon, U.S. Attorney Karen Immergut and State Attorney General Hardy Myers have convened the Oregon Safe Cyberspace Initiative. Comcast and Qwest, participants in the initiative, are sending hundreds of thousands of bill stuffers to their customers in Oregon with information on safe computing.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service will place magazine ads asking consumers to “Stop, Think, Click.” People who call the toll-free number in the ads will receive a copy of the “Seven Practices for Safer Computing” brochure. The Direct Marketing Association is cobranding the “Seven Practices” brochure and sharing copies with consumers and the association’s members.

If you would like to discuss an idea for how your organization can partner with OnGuard Online, please email OnGuardOnline@ftc.gov.

Colleen Tressler is a senior consumer education specialist with the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection.

 

Ponemon Institute