Posted by SecExtra on February 18th, 2008

The former head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing at MSN has joined the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre to champion its work in making online environments safer for children and young people.

Natalie Mead brings 17 years of experience of the online industry and commercial marketing to the law enforcement agency when she takes up her post.

Natalie will work with industry to ensure that the new and emerging online technologies are not only safer for children to use but also more hostile to those sex offenders who would seek to harm them.

“I am thrilled to be joining CEOP,” says Natalie. “I have a passion for online and how the internet can help young people get more from their lives, but more importantly how working collaboratively with industry we can create safer environments for our children to explore.”

Natalie explains: “If tomorrow’s online technologies are made safer for children at the point of design - before they hit the market – we take a huge step forward in child protection. We can effectively leapfrog the techniques that online predators use when they attempt to groom children.

The internet is now the extra family member in houses all over the world and there has never been a more urgent time to ensure the online environments we visit are as safe as they can be.”

Alex Nagle, Head of Harm Reduction at CEOP adds: “Where children go child sex predators will follow. This is as true of the online world as it is in the offline world and CEOP is committed to making every child safer wherever they are. We are delighted Natalie is joining our team. With her strong marketing and internet background she is ideally placed to help us work with industry and to develop our safer by design initiatives

Natalie brings to CEOP a wealth of experience with her, particularly in introducing leading industry initiatives. This included the placement of CEOP’s ‘Report Abuse’ button within MSN Instant Messenger, a product used by millions of young people across the UK.