Website educates kids on premium-rate services

Icstis has today launched an interactive website specifically aimed at educating children about premium-rate services.

It is increasingly easy for children to access premium-rate services; 65 per cent of children aged eight to 15 own a mobile phone and the same proportion have internet access at home, while seven in 10 have access to digital TV at home.

With services such as ringtones, wallpapers, pay-to-receive texts, vote to save (or get rid of) contestants on TV reality shows and competitions, premium-rate lines are springing up all the time. Although many services can be accessed by landline, much of the misery of high costs comes from mobile connections

Last year one such content provider, Jamster, was criticised by the Advertising Standards Agency for not making it clear enough in adverts or on the website that customers buying the Crazy Frog ringtone were subscribing to a club.

This meant many people unintentionally subscribed to a series of downloads and credit was removed from their mobile account.

To help it fend off future complaints, the company launched Jamster First and Jamster Guardian that the company said gives parents complete control over how much their family spends on mobile content.

As the premium-rate watchdog Icstis said, children need to understand how to recognise premium-rate services and the different ways of accessing them, as well as appreciating the costs involved.

The site, which has support from various organisations such as Childline, the Internet Watch Foundation, Microsoft and the Metropolitan police, tackles potential issues head on before they become problems. It has been designed to give children all the information they need about the safe and sensible use of these services.