Family Online Safety Institute

Vice President AOL, Chief Security Officer
Bebo

Rachel is passionate about the potential to harness social networking services to facilitate social innovation, increase positive social capital, deliver support services, democratise information exchange and to educate. She is chair of the EU Safer Social Networking taskforce which developed a set of best practice standards (Safer Social Networking Principles) for the online industry, these were launched in February 2009.

Rachel has led the development of the Be One platform (www.bebo.com/beone), which is a centralised repository of non-profits, support organisations and charities. Bebo actively encourages voluntary organisations to set up a presence online (whether that be on Bebo or elsewhere), the philosophy underpinning this approach is to ensure that young people have 24/7 access to services and support they may need.  This involves working with support organizations to enable the delivery of those services from within the online communities where the majority of young people are spending increasing amounts of time. The organisations that Bebo works with, include for example, B-eat Eating Disorders, icould, Peace One Day, RockCorps, and Kids Helpline.  

Prior to joining Bebo, Rachel was Director of the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire and chaired the Public Awareness Group of the Home Secretary's Internet Task Force on Child Protection, where she facilitated a partnership approach across the mobile and fixed internet industry, child welfare organizations, government, parent and teachers' organizations to develop a number of web-based programmes to educate about internet safety.