Panda Software receives the PC World 2005 award for the best initiative for its "Children and the Internet" campaign
The Panda Software campaign “Children and the Internet: don’t let them speak to strangers” was the worthy winner of the prestigious award for the best initiative by the magazine.
The IDG Communications groupmagazine held the PCWorld 2005 awards on 7th June in Madrid. These prizes are awarded by the editorial team to outstanding companies, products or initiatives over the past year.
Panda Software was recognized for its “Children and the Internet: don’t let them talk to strangers” awareness and information campaign by receiving the PC World 2005 award for the best initiative. According to the jury: “The proliferation of child-related crimes over the Internet has set a lot of alarm bells ringing in organizations and bodies designed to protect youngsters. […] With its Children and the Internet campaign, Panda Software has been concentrating its efforts on providing users with the appropriate information, tools and advice to protect children”.
Panda Software has recently run its “Children and Internet: don’t let them talk to strangers” campaign, an important project which has appeared on radio and television and in the press, advertising the initiative and providing information aimed at preventing any illegal activity of this nature via the Internet. The project has highlighted just how defenceless children are when happily surfing the net. Internet has unfortunately become the ideal environment in which to commit this kind of crime, which is no longer restricted to the virtual world, but worryingly, ever more present in the real one. The statistics are especially alarming: one in five children who use chat rooms have been affected by this phenomenon.
The award to Panda Software was received by the company’s General Secretary, Miguel Mariscal, who in his acceptance speech drew attention to the situation, saying “We have undertaken this Campaign in order to warn parents and guardians of the dangers that young people are faced with on the Net and inform them of the tools available that provide adequate protection”.
Theawarding of prizes was of special importance to the publication as it has just celebrated its 21st anniversary. These were the sentiments expressed before awarding the prizes in the different categories to representatives from Toshiba, Sony, Lexmark, LG, HP, Canon, Fujitsu, Vodafone, SP/Grupo Sage, Microsoft and Panda Software.
Panda Software campaign “Children and the Internet: don’t let them talk to strangers” is aimed at making parents and teachers aware of the risks that children withoutany type of supervision are exposed to on the Internet. The initiative includes the support of the NGO Save the Children and is available in Spanish and English at www.menorenlared.com and www.defendyourchild.com, respectively.
About PC World
PC World is one of the oldest publications in the IT magazine sector. It has been in the market for over 20 years remaining loyal to its philosophy and way of dealing with information. Although such a long period of time might cause stagnation, the number of readers and subscribers show this is not the case. PC World has a circulation of 86,000 copies and almost 384,000 readers (OJD and EGM data). It is one of the specialist publications with the largest workforce and its test laboratory is respected for its analyses and comparisons.