As the UK’s largest provider of school websites, website security is of course an issue of utmost importance to us, and your security as customers is paramount. Here’s a list of our recommended tips to help keep you safe online!
1. Never give out your password to anybody.
This is the single most important piece of advice we can offer. It doesn’t matter how strong or weak your password is, keep it to yourself. Never send it in emails or store it in text files on your PC. And remember, Webanywhere staff will never ask for your password!

2. Make sure you know where you’re entering your password.
Ensure the website you’re using is the correct one at all times – sometimes login pages can be “spoofed”, so you might be taken to paypal-com-log.in, rather than paypal.com/login. These are sites designed to capture your username and password.
3. Use a different password for every site.
If you use the same password on every website, don’t. Don’t do this. Often, attacks on websites are “dictionary” based, meaning they’ll take existing lists of usernames and passwords from other hacked websites and try them on new ones. If you use the same password for everything, this makes all your accounts vulnerable if one of them is compromised.
4. Use a password manager.
In conjunction with point 3, a password manager can help generate and store secure, unique passwords for every site you visit. We can recommend LastPass for this.
5. If you see something, say something.
If you think your account has been compromised, contact us as quickly as possible on either helpdesk@webanywhere.co.uk or 0800 862 0131 (free from landlines and mobiles). Similarly, if you get an email asking for your password, let us know – again, official Webanywhere emails will never ask for your password! Students can also report problems using the Jotter Safety Shield button.
It’s important to always be careful what you’re doing online – the Internet can be a potentially dangerous place, but by following these tips you should be able to keep yourself safe from the vast majority of attacks out there. If you’d like more information, please contact us at education@webanywhere.co.uk.

With this week being Anti Bullying week in the UK we thought we’d help you teach students about bullying with this brief but clear presentation on what bullying is, what to do if you’re being bullied and the golden rule on being happy. It’s about 10 minutes long and includes some fun animations suitable for primary school children, KS1 and KS2. Click the link below to request a download of the presentation.

Anti Bullying Presentation

There are a huge range of risks online for students, staff and schools when using the Internet. Fortunately there is a wide range of (generally) free online resources available to help us understand the risks, implement policies to mitigate them, and teach people to make sensible decisions online.

We’ve highlighted 6 resources that everyone working within education and with children online should be aware of, in order to prepare for using the internet and understanding what to do when coming across any potentially harmful content.
Childnet are a non-profit organisation who work to ensure the internet is a safe and enjoyable place for children. They produce a great range of free resources to help staff and students learn more about risks and how to understand and manage these in school www.childnet.com.

KidSMART is part of Childnet and provides useful resources such as lesson plans, leaflets, posters, activity days and interactive games for teaching eSafety as well as information for parents www.kidsmart.org.uk.
SWGFL are a another not for profit charity trust and a recognised leader in e-safety, not just in the South West. Policy templates, checklists and a wide range of learning resources for both staff and students are available for free www.swgfl.org.uk.
ICT4Collaboration are specialists in providing technology services to educational organisations and are part of the Yorkshire and Humberside Grid for Learning. They provide local ICT training events all across Yorkshire as well as useful online resources www.ict4c.co.uk.
IWF is the Internet Watch Foundation. They are the UK Hotline for reporting criminal content online, including child sexual abuse content and criminally obscene adult content. If you have content of this nature reported to you it is important that you do not investigate or try to access it. Just go to the IWF website at www.iwf.org.uk and report it. The process is anonymous and confidential.
CEOP, The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, part of the UK Government’s National Crime Agency, is an organisation consisting of police officers who work to prosecute online child sex offenders, including those who produce, distribute and view online child abuse material. CEOP operate a similar online reporting tool for incidents such as grooming or people acting inappropriately towards children online. This can be found at www.ceop.police.uk.
Related Content
Webanywhere eSafety – Visit our dedicated eSafety pages to find out more about the issue and how to prevent any online issues.

With the recent hacking of Sowerby School’s website, we’ve had a few customers contacting us concerned that the same could happen to them. We want to reassure all of our customers, whether they use School Jotter or any other of our products, that your security is our primary concern. The vulnerability through which Sowerby’s website was hacked is not present in any of our software, so you can rest assured that your content is as safe as it can be.
That said, there are certain precautions that we recommend all users should take. While a lot of these are common sense, users are often vulnerable to “social engineering” attacks, and we want to make sure you’re as safe as possible. We sat down with Webanywhere security and development expert Arthur Howie who had a few tips for us.

1. Never tell your password to ANYONE

Your login password should be a private string of characters that only you know. Any person with whom a password is shared is a potential vulnerability in the system. Our technical support will never ask for your password.

2. Don’t use the same password for multiple things

For convenience’s sake, it might be tempting to use the same password on your email accounts as on your school website’s login. This is very bad practice and means that if someone unscrupulous gets access to one of your passwords, all of your accounts are potentially compromised.

3. Make sure your password is complex but memorable

For example, don’t use “password1” – this is not good practice at all and is very vulnerable to “dictionary” attacks, where a hacker might try lots of common passwords. Your password should be a mixture of upper and lower case characters as well as non-alphanumeric ones if possible (ie #!£$%& etc). This will make you much less vulnerable to these attacks. It’s good practice to change it every few weeks as well. A great way to make a password secure while still being easy to remember is to simply make them long phrases.

4. Don’t use an easily guessable password

It can be tempting to use the name of a pet or loved one as a password as these are usually uncommon words, but you really shouldn’t. This is information that is easily searchable on the web and will be one of the first things an attacker tries.

5. Make sure your “secret question” is something only you know

In order to reset your password you’ll often need to answer a “secret question”, the answer to which you’ve previously set. This might be something such as “What school did you attend” or “Who is your favourite singer”. This information can often be gleaned from social media accounts or other sources, leaving you vulnerable, so make sure it’s not publicly available information – in 2008 Sarah Palin’s email was hacked in this way.

6. Ensure your antivirus is up to date

On any computer where you’re going to be entering personal information, make sure you’ve installed antivirus software – this is often available for free through your institution or even your personal bank. Without one, software could be installed without your consent and potentially capture sensitive login information.

7. Be careful what you click on

NEVER click on a link you’re unsure of. An email that purports to come from your bank or the government might simply be trying to “phish” your data. Antivirus software can sometimes prevent against this by scanning links ahead of time, but it’s no substitute for proper practice.
All that’s needed to keep yourself and your school safe online is to take the necessary precautions. We’re confident in our security at Webanywhere, and we want you to feel safe as well. If you have any concerns or questions regarding security or anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 3200 750, or email helpdesk@webanywhere.co.uk.

Last month, Webanywhere invited schools and teachers to take part on a e-safety questionnaire (you can see our original blog post here) – and last week, we compiled the results. If you took part- thank you! You’ve helped us build a picture of the state of e-safety in UK primary schools – and here are the results.
The survey revealed that, astonishingly, 63% of teachers don’t feel they have any influence over whether a child uses social networking sites, such as Facebook. Facebook, incidentally, has a minimum user age of 13.
And almost a third – 30% – feel they haven’t had adequate training on how to deal with cyberbullying.

The survey also revealed that 55% were aware that between one and five pupils had been a victim of cyberbullying at their school in the past 12 months.
The purpose of this questionnaire was originally to get a better insight into how schools feel about -and are affected by – e-safety issues. However, since seeing these results we decided to speak one of our customers about the issue – as well as an independent e-safety expert.
Jo Corrigan, Headteacher at Eastlands Primary School in Rugby – who hold an SWGfL 360 safe accreditation and has two members of staff registered as CEOP Ambassadors – took part in the survey and said: “The teaching and learning of internet safety is extremely important from an early age. Key to educating the children is ensuring staff are appropriately trained.
“At Eastlands Primary School we try to develop innovative ways of engaging parents and children with the safe use of the internet – for example, ‘speed-e-learning’ workshops.”
John Carr OBE, Secretary of the UK’s Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, said: “Teachers can’t teach if they don’t feel confident in relation to the subject they are meant to be teaching about. This survey shows that too many teachers do not feel they have been given proper support to enable them to do their job. That has to be fixed, as a matter of priority.
The full results of the survey, in colourful pier charts, can be seen below. If you’d like to find out more about e-safety, or if you would like to learn more about our free e-safety events, please email info@webanywhere.co.uk.

How important is e-safety to you?

That’s the question we’re asking primary school teachers this week, in one of the largest surveys we’ve ever done.
As Webanywhere’s e-safety events continue across the country (the next one is in Liverpool – find out more about it here) we want to know more about how this hot topic affects schools. The feedback we get – and any comments received about the subject – will help us to improve our events as well as our products, and cater to teachers’ needs even better.
If you’d like to take part in the survey – it’s just four multiple choice questions, so won’t take long – you can find it here.
Plus, every school that completes the four questions will get our online rewards system, School Merits, for free!

Webanywhere’s recent string of Nurturing Online Learning events have been a huge success – and we’re now planning more for March and April.

During February, to coincide with Safer Internet Day, we’ve visited Manchester, Swindon, Halifax and London – with two more events, in Carlisle and Birmingham, scheduled for this coming Monday. Each event, joint-hosted by Webanywhere and a local primary school, covered e-safety and cyberbullying, and Ofsted requirements for school websites. Both sessions of each event were delivered by CEOP Ambassador Tracey Gentle.
During each session, cyberbullying was covered in detail: What it is, how teachers can spot it, and how your school can prevent it in the future. Then, Tracey helped teachers make sense of Ofsted’s ever-changing list of requirements for school websites, discussing each area in plain English and giving suggestions as to how, aside from pleasing the inspectors, a school website can benefit from meeting the requirements.

At each event, a local school presented their website and explained how they used it to its full potential – engaging parents, pupils and other teachers.
If you missed our recent events, we’re now scheduling follow-up sessions for late March and April. Most will cover e-safety and Pupil Premium, and will take place in Oxford, Liverpool, Norwich, Chelmsford, Blackpool and a follow-up event in Birmingham.
To keep up to date with our latest event news, and to find out when the dates of the new sessions are, keep an eye on our events page (www.webanywhere.co.uk/events) and our Twitter handle (@webanywhere_ltd).

Teachers are becoming open to the possibilities for social media tools in the classroom. In the hands of the right educators, they can be used to engage in creative ways and inspire discussion among even the softest-spoken students. However popular social networking and content sharing sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are often blocked by schools because its content can’t be moderated – even though they can be a good source of high-quality teaching resources.
Student Jotter is a system for e-portfolios and secure social networking that enables teachers to incorporate safe, secure social media into their lesson plans. Teachers can share their lesson plans, quizzes, videos, podcasts and other resources in a shared library. A community section allows teachers and students to network and collaborate with other members who share the same educational interests.  Class discussions are no longer intimidating for some students to participate in.

Everything is hosted in the cloud for free. Some great tools are included:  An online gradebook, customised quizzes, secure messaging, classroom blogs, the ability to track assessment and a customised profile page.  Student Jotter also enables students to easily share their work projects with classmates.
The interface is easy to navigate and teachers can monitor and edit any of their students’ messages and blogs posts. They can also control how private they want the e-portfolio to be; student-and-teacher only,  allow parents to log in with a password, or make them publically available.
In summary, School Jotter is a better way for teachers and students to organise themselves, and a place to put their work.
Is your school using social media for teaching and learning? What resources do you use? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

It is called sharenting!!

That is a big word for those parents who innocently share too much information about and images of their children. Even the posting of a sonogram to your social media account can provide too much information to strangers who should not have that data.

The result is what many schools have been warning parents about- the danger of cyber bullying. Too much sharing can lead to a myriad of abuse from their fellow classmates as well as other children who gather on those websites designed for students to hang out.

According to the schools, this oversharing can put your child or children at risk of harm through mugging, theft and other bullying options.

What Are The Dangers Of Sharing Pictures Or Videos Of Your Children On Social Media?

The biggest danger will be exposing your children to predators. Even when you have strict privacy settings on your social media account, those privacy settings do not stop close friends from sharing your information on their not-so-strict social media accounts.

That sharing can lead to many dangers for your children. Plus, even strict privacy settings can be hacked by expert hackers who will use the information you post for nefarious schemes.

It is possible that oversharing can lead to identity fraud later on in your child’s life. Most likely, the exposure of your children to the public can lead to cyber bullying that brings devastating results.

What Is Cyber-Bullying?

Cyber bullying is more digital than physical. While it leads to physical results, cyber bullying takes place solely online using a phone, laptop, tablet or PC. It is where one or a group of individuals share false information about the targeted child.

This activity is done just about anywhere information can be shared online. Gaming rooms, texts, apps, social media outlets and more. Plus, the content is designed to harm another individual through negative, harmful, false, or mean content.

Even e-mails are not excluded from being a format used to cyber bully someone else. That negative content is not just written but can be done through altered or unflattering or embarrassing photos and videos.

Cyberbullying takes place in almost all online activities with just about any type of data possible.

How To Deal With Cyber-Bullying?

One of the most important steps you can take is to check your local laws. There may be some anti-cyberbullying laws that will guide the school in what action they can legally take.

Also, the school can develop its own policies directing teachers and the administration on how to respond to cyberbullying. These policies can lay out the discipline to be used or if expulsion is appropriate to stop students from being cyberbullies.

Also, schools can create a safe atmosphere that allows bullied students privacy to report cyberbullying. Encourage students to find someone they trust to share what is going on. Those trusted individuals can be parents, a teacher, school counsellor, and even a privacy contact page on your school web design.

One of the drawbacks to fighting cyberbullying is that only the targeted student and those the messages are meant for know it is taking place. Most often parents and school officials and teachers have no idea what is going on till a child becomes brave enough to talk about it.

How To Protect Your Child From Being Cyber-Bullied?

There are several steps you can take to help protect your child from being cyberbullied. Here are a few suggestions to get you on the right path:

– educate your children to identify cyberbullying and then teach them not to respond in kind. Instead, teach your children to be respectful to others whether in person or online

– teach your children not to respond to cyberbullies but keep the information saved as evidence it is taking place. Also, instruct your children to block cyberbullies

– set boundaries- this is where you create rules for internet and phone use as well as what internet sites they can go to and which ones are off limits.

– help your child create privacy and location settings and instruct them that participating in cyber bullying is wrong and unacceptable if they participate in it

– monitor your child’s online activities and know how to identify cyberbullying

– document everything- take screenshots, record dates, times and the nature of the cyber bullying and other documentation so you have evidence if needed.

When you need guidance in this delicate issue, contact our company. One of our priorities is protecting children from cyberbullying.