21 Sep RAYUELA: Empowering young people on cybercrime threats through playing
21 Sep, 2020
Cybersecurity is one of the Commission’s priorities in its response to the Coronavirus crisis, with a constant increase of cyberattacks and different types of risks within the digital environment. RAYUELA project addresses this sensitive issue, offering an unprecedented response in full alignment with the key objectives of the Commission’s Research and Innovation framework programmes, focusing on the young audiences.
RAYUELA brings together Law Enforcement Agencies, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, legal experts, computer scientists and engineers to develop innovative methodologies for enhanced cybersecurity. The stakeholders involved are achieving a better understanding of the factors affecting online behaviour related to cyber-criminality aiming at raising the awareness of young adults on toxic behaviours they might encounter online. RAYUELA’s main goal is to better understand the drivers and human factors affecting cyber-criminality, thus empowering and educating young target groups to a more conscious and aware use of the Internet through gaming, in a preventive and mitigating action to reduce cybercriminal behaviour.
RAYUELA is focused on cybercrimes that are prevalent among young target groups:
- Online grooming: being harassed by adults who may take advantage of their vulnerability aiming at sex abuse, online distribution and/or live-streaming of child sex materials.
- Cyberbullying: young people turning into offenders who spread fake and/or personal information, photos to threaten and blackmail classmates.
- Human trafficking: digital communication technologies are widely used for trafficking for sexual exploitation.
The work plan includes some key activities:
- Building a knowledge base on cybercrime drivers for children and young adults.
- Technology assessment and IT threat.
- Development of an interactive story-based videogame.
- Implementation of pilot studies to collect and monitor data on users’ behaviour and online activity through gaming.
- Data analysis to identify patterns for profiling and analysis of online habits from potential young victims and offenders.
- Capacity building for cybercrime prevention and awareness: communication and dissemination actions to facilitate the prevention of cybercrime and foster awareness among young target groups.
The project will be implemented by 17 partners from nine European countries: Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Estonia, Portugal, UK, Latvia, Greece, and Germany.
ALL DIGITAL will support the delivery of the project dissemination strategy and exploitation activities at the EU level, through its international channels, networks and partnerships.
- Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain)
- Universidad Politécnica De Madrid (Spain)
- Tecnalia Fundation Research and Innovation (Spain)
- TIMELEX SCRL (Belgium)
- Bratislava Policy Institute (Slovakia)
- University of Tartu (Estonia)
- Polícia Judiciária (Portugal)
- Policía Local de Valencia (Spain)
- Police Service of Northern Ireland (UK)
- Ghent University (Belgium)
- Tilde Sia (Latvia)
- Ellinogermaniki Agogi Scholi Panagea Savva (Greece)
- UC LIMBURG (Belgium)
- ALL DIGITAL (Belgium)
- Zabala Innovation Consulting S.A. (Spain)
- Police and Border Guard Board (Estonia)
- NEC Laboratories Europe Gmbh (Germany).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 882828.