The fourth Safer Internet Day, today, will be marked with events worldwide aimed at raising awareness of online child protection issues.

Safer Internet Day, organised by EU online safety initiative Insafe, will include a repeat of 2006's "blogathon", where children in 25 countries will showcase work being done in classrooms to alert them to threats. Sessions this year from Australia to the UK will concentrate on privacy, social networking etiquette, and safely sharing photographs with friends.

It comes the same day as Home Secretary John Reid said he was considering requiring sex offenders to register their email addresses and chat room handles. The announcement also comes in the wake of yesterday's unprecedented conviction of three men who had never met, but via the internet conspired to rape two teenage sisters.

The Home Office said any concrete plan would mean penalties for registered sex offenders who did not keep authorities up to date with their online identity. Presumably, this will be more than enough to stop them opening yet another Hotmail account.®

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• LiveJournal says sorry for blanket sex-talk censorship (1 June 2007)
• UK gov scraps youth ID card (28 February 2007)
• Paedophile trio locked up on chat room evidence (5 February 2007)
• MySpace passes age verification buck to parents (17 January 2007)
• Online dragnet catches missing child abusers (12 December 2006)
• UK police share data to foil child abuse (19 October 2006)
• Global 'blogathon' marks Safer Internet Day (7 February 2006)
• Internet Safety Day: promoting safer surfing (8 February 2005)