National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Moldova

The National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI) recommends to providers of publicly available Internet services to develop and publish guidelines on how parents, legal representatives, pre-school and school administrators can self-regulate the service of filtering Internet content with negative impact on children. This is a provision of the Administrative Board Decision approving the Recommendations on self-regulation of the service of filtering Internet content with negative impact on children, a normative act that entered into force when published in the Official Gazette, on May 18, 2018.

This decision was drafted pursuant to the requirements of the Action Plan on Promotion of Internet Safety of Children and Teenagers, for 2017 - 2020, approved by the Government Decision no. 212 of 05.04.2017 and aims to ensure that interested persons can protect people under age from harmful influence of certain information accessed from the Internet.

According to ANRCETI recommendations, the guidelines developed by the providers should contain information for users in the following compartments: general information about online safety of people under age; tools available for users to protect children from Internet content with a negative impact; ways of filtering Internet content; control over the use of mobile/computer equipment and Internet access; monitoring the use of mobile/computer and Internet; tools of selecting Internet content by children.

When developing such guidelines, providers are recommended to make use of studies and reports prepared by psychology and education experts, published on governmental and/or non-governmental websites. Providers are also advised to indicate in the Guidelines references to online platforms addressing the issue of Internet safety of children and teenagers, such as: https://siguronline.md, https://onlinesafety.info, https://contentfiltering.info, www.safeinternet.org, https://www.soros.md/publication, www.itu.int/cop, etc.

Providers may place their guidelines on official websites and in their commercial centers, will provide users with access to and updates of the information, where new Internet content filtering tools and/or methods are developed.

When drafting the recommendations, ANRCETI took guidance from best international practices. In most countries, Internet access providers develop and make publicly available codes of conduct, codes of good practice, guidelines, etc., providing parents and other interested persons with methods and facilities to filter Internet content with negative impact on children, to control and monitor the children's use of mobile/computer equipment and Internet access.

May 21, 2018