The Ertzaintza (the police force in the Basque Country), in the context of the European ENGAGE project, begins a 30-day campaign of messages to fight cyber crime through its social networks

The platforms of the Ertzaintza in social networks today launch the awareness campaign on the fight against cyber crime in the context of the European project ENGAGE, one of the projects funded by the European Union which the Basque police are involved in. It is about raising awareness and involving citizens and companies in the fight against crime committed using new technologies, the increasing numbers of which constitute one of the major police prevention challenges.

From July 10, and for the next 30 days, Ertzaintza will publish tips and messages in its Social Networks, in an informative way, aimed at increasing social awareness of the cyber threats that we can suffer in our day-to-day lives, with the continuous use of new technologies. It is an initiative of the European project called ENGAGE, where Ertzaintza works in collaboration with fourteen partners, including companies, institutions and universities from eight European countries, and which aims to involve society in the management and response to emergency situations.

ENGAGE seeks to amplify society's response and improve citizens' ability to cope with different types of disasters, including cyber crime. It has the additional aim of improving interaction between the different emergency services and citizens, for which a catalogue of solutions has been developed.

This campaign has been designed from one of the solutions of this catalogue with the aim of improving the awareness and preparation of citizens to prevent and know how to act if they are a victim of a cyber crime. This way, daily councils will insist on the need to protect themselves.

The Ertzaintza communication campaign has been designed in collaboration with Tecnun, School of Engineering of the University of Navarre, which will be responsible for analysing its results.

The campaign begins today with the message “strong passwords” and will continue for a month with various contents of good online practices to take care of the security of our devices, to prevent criminals accessing our data through phishing or malware, as well as to protect our privacy.