Sites that have been through the ICRAchecked process have been visited by one of the members of ICRA’s team, working to strict guidelines. Therefore the parent should feel confident that the label on the site will not deliver any surprises or dissatisfaction when using systems that make use of ICRA labels in directing children away from potentially harmful online content.
No. ICRAchecked means that the label on the site reflects the site’s content in terms of the ICRA vocabulary. The intention of ICRA labelling is to help parents protect children from potentially harmful material, and so many sites carrying ICRA labels are those whose webmasters recognize that their site content may not be suitable for children. An ICRAchecked site is therefore one on which the parent can have confidence in the label’s declaration of content.
No. It is purely a verification of label versus content, in terms of ICRA’s vocabulary.
No. Neither ICRA nor its members endorse any websites, their contents or their practises. ICRAchecked does not signify anything other than accuracy of the ICRA label.
The labelling on an ICRAchecked site should reflect the site’s content, be it an image, portrayal, or description. If the label says that a content-type is present, and the content is checked as being present, then the site may be verified as ICRAchecked. The label should strive to be equally accurate in terms of absent content; that is, content that is labelled as present but is in fact found to be absent at the time of the check. ICRA recognizes that non-static sites may need to make use of the category ‘may or may not be present’ in order to provide the best protection for children. Sites that are static in nature should not generally employ the ‘may or may not be present’ labels.
All sites applying for ICRAchecked must first get a green light in the label tester. The green light on the label tester is a signal of technical conformance, nothing more. The descriptors listed in the label tester results show what the label says. Acceptance of a website in the ICRAchecked database is a recognition that at the time of review, those descriptors accurately reflected the content to which they apply. As the system is based on voluntary self-labelling, we cannot physically prevent an illegal site from using the ICRA system. In contrast, we do control the ICRAchecked database and would not knowingly add an illegal site to it.
It is not FOSI’s role to determine what content is and is not legal. That task can only be undertaken by law enforcement authorities aided by the organisations around the world that constitute the INHOPE membership (www.inhope.org). If a site is submitted for review under ICRAchecked that FOSI believes may contain illegal content, that site will be reported through INHOPE. In such an event, a site will not pass the ICRAchecked review until and unless FOSI is informed by the relevant INHOPE member that the content is legal.
Yes. The ICRAchecked database only makes use of RDF data, not the older PICS labels. However, if present, a PICS label should match the RDF label.
As sites may be accessed from any point, labelling only the index page of a site is insufficient. The Link tag should therefore be present on every page.
Sites are entered into the ICRAchecked database for one year from the date of issue. If a site’s content changes in such a way that the label needs to change during that year, the site should be re-verified in order to uphold the validity of the ICRAchecked status.
Sites that are ICRAchecked have been visited at the time of submission by a member of ICRA’s team, working to strict guidelines. If you come across content on a site that appears to you to be in conflict with the label, ICRA will investigate the complaint. Full details of the complaints procedure are available from the links below.
Each entry in the database has a “valid until” date. This is set at 1 year after the initial review.
ICRA offers its labelling system freely as part of its core mission. However, maintaining the quality of infrastructure necessary to support the database places a high financial burden on the organization.
No. The data is available for free. However, there are restrictions on its use.
Individuals may use the ICRA website to make calls on the database to check the status of particular labels. The number of calls made is, however, limited to 10 per day from a single user (as identified by IP address).
Unlimited real time queries for data on a particular label and the full database are made available free of charge to recognized partners, including for-profit companies. ICRA will seek, however, to share the revenue that partners may generate from the data.
The database is published in RDF and offers two pieces of data about each labels file – its “valid until” date and the date on which it was last reviewed.
Exemplar Database Entries
To access the ICRAchecked database, please contact FOSI via the dedicated ICRAchecked link on our Contact page.
There are two reasons for this:
- To prevent icra.org being a place from which children can easily obtain data on sites their parents are likely to see as unsuitable.
- To ensure that ICRA, as part of FOSI, a non-profit organization, can benefit from revenue generated from its data.