Seeing a heightened need to strengthen Internet safety post the pandemic, Google on Wednesday announced ramping up of resources in India to respond to online threats, including the launch of an updated Google Safety Centre in eight Indian languages, and introducing the global kids safety program in the country.
Stating that it has stepped up its commitment to online safety in India, Google said it has significantly increased its resources dedicated to India’s Trust and Safety teams, including product policy analysts, security specialists, and user trust experts that support more than 10 languages, enabling its central teams to benefit from the local nuance and inputs.
“This will help Google India continue its campaign against existing and emerging abuse areas, such as misinformation, fraud, threats to child safety, violent extremism, phishing attacks and malware. This will also further strengthen Google’s global Trust & Safety operations of over 20,000 people spread across the world who are dedicated to identifying, fighting, and preventing online harm,” it said.
“We know that customer support fraud has been a prevalent issue in India. This is where scammers are using social engineering techniques to dupe users into making financial transactions and this is often resulting in huge losses of money for victims and this type of abuse. So, to protect our users, we’ve taken a holistic approach,” Kristie Canegallo, vice-president, Trust and Safety, Google, said at a virtual briefing.
She added that her team was working closely with the product teams to improve the user experience by introducing more in-product warning messages. “We’ve also enhanced our enforcement capabilities by using machine learning to try to stop abuse before it happens. And we’re partnering with regulatory bodies to try to actually stay ahead of scammers,” Ms. Canegallo said.
Further, the company has launched the global ‘Be Internet Awesome’ program for kids in India, wherein it will partner with Indian comic book publisher Amar Chitra Katha to offer Internet safety lessons through popular comic book characters across eight Indian languages.
It added that launch of the newly expanded Safety Centre in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, and in Bengali, Tamil, and Gujarati by the end of the year, will serve as a single destination dedicated to educating and empowering Google’s users on the importance of digital safety covering important topics like data security, privacy controls, and online protections.
“The Internet we experience today has exceeded all my initial estimations. With lower barriers to Internet access, users across the world have benefited, but bad actors have also gained entry,” said Vint Cerf, vice-president and chief Internet evangelist, Google.
He added, “With the increasing user adoption and the contribution of digital connectivity in India’s economy, we cannot take the Internet for granted.” He said that since the pandemic broke, there is a heightened need to strengthen safety and security, reliability and privacy, and the overall resilience of the Internet and its applications.
Meanwhile, speaking at the conference, Sanjay Gupta, country manager and vice-president, Google India said, “We’ve gone from an India-focused company to an India-first company.”
He added that as technology becomes more accessible, the barriers are lowered for bad actors as well and hence, the work to enhance trust must go hand in hand. “We need to ensure that our children should continue to learn and explore the world safely with the Internet. Women must have equal access to the Internet opportunity without fearing for their safety and people across the country should feel assured that they and their money is safe when they’re online,” Mr. Gupta said.
