LOS ANGELES — Two studies into online age verification and the abuse of newsgroups by those seeking child abuse images are the first recipients of grants provided by the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR).
Innovate Identity and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) will both receive $5,000 to fund research that will look into key aspects of online responsibility and provide reports in the second quarter of this year that IFFOR expects will further policy discussions in these areas.
Innovate Identity is an independent consultancy that will use IFFOR's grant to create a white paper on best practices used in the digital economy for assuring the age of individual Internet users.
Increasingly, there are both business advantages and legislative requirements around identifying the age of users, but doing so presents a complex policy issue where technical requirements need to be balanced with ease-of-use and privacy.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) will use its grant from IFFOR to complete its research into how online newsgroups are used by those seeking child abuse images.
The IWF is working another not-for-profit U.K. charity, the Lucy Faithful Foundation (LFF), to review how sex offenders use newsgroups to find and disseminate images of children being sexually abused by interviewing those within the LFF's rehabilitation program.
"Both these grants will enable cutting-edge research into issues of online responsibility," IFFOR chairman Clyde Beattie said. "These two were chosen by the grant committee of the policy council from a group of six applications. They represent an opportunity to provide real value to policy decisions, the Internet, and gTLDs in the future."