Welcome to the seventh instalment of our new series of blog posts from BeSecureOnline. In this instalment, we comprehensively review the user safety information provided by social networking sites. 

Today we turn our attention to Google.

Each site is scored across five key attributes:

1.     Interest in user wellbeing

2.     Execution

3.     Quality of information

4.     Confidence

5.     International emphasis

Profile

Back in May 2016. Google would have scored a lot lower than it did today as most of its safety and privacy policy was a pastiche of two different styles and content. This has been recently overhauled and appears to be fully in place now.

Google enjoys a monopoly in online search and AdWords advertising based search - their policies therefore need to be class leading in every way and beyond reproach.

Safety and Privacy Sections

The revamped sections look good, with loads of content and videos. The sections are clearly signposted and largely well-written. Though it is not clear whether it has been fully internationalised as yet. Good videos and animations are in place as well as links to other Google content. The site scores well here.

Summary

Not only is the content good but it is also well signposted, and relatively easy to find content quickly, which is vital. The new look of Google's safety centre can be checked out here. 

Overall

Google's safety centre is amongst the best now. A tighter integration to law enforcement is the next step, and Google perhaps needs to lead on this, instead of merely linking to law enforcement advice.

As we see it, it is time to bring the emergency services and the police into the 21st century with a law enforcement and emergency services "interactive button" with a "Report Crime/Incident" panel for laptop and smartphone screens. This could be integrated with the police and emergency services systems so that they can track the incident location and dispatch service members if necessary. It is the next logical stage for crime and incident reporting. The possibility of the police, healthcare agencies or other parties being able to assist immediately online or on a two way camera (via phone/laptop) is very exciting. 

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