Central and Eastern Europe celebrates creative spark as three out of the four finalists in Microsoft’s ‘Surf the net – think Privacy’ video competition for 13 – 19 year olds come from the region

Munich, Feburary 2009

Pupils from Romania, Bulgaria, and a joint submission from Greece and Lithuanian, all made it through to the final four with their unique 30 – 90 second videos expressing their individual concerns and thoughts on the topic of online privacy. This is no small feat as a total of 27 countries were represented in the competition, which featured a total of over 7000 seconds worth of video, recorded in 24 different languages. Seven out of the top ten entries also came from the CEE region, with entries from Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic all making it through to the final stages.

The finalists were all invited to attend a prize ceremony in Brussels, where the overall winners of the competition were announced as pupils from Mihail Sadoveanu High School in Romania, whose video ‘ID’ provided a visual representation of the dangers of uploading personal data and identity theft.

For further information please visit the Microsoft Data Privacy Day website
Watch all shortlisted entries: http://www.dataprotectionday.eu/jury/
Watch the trailer of the award ceremony: http://www.dataprotectionday.eu/winners/competition.html

Data Protection Day was established in Europe in 2007 under a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Commission and is held annually on the 28th January. The event aims to increase awareness of privacy and data protection issues among consumers, organisations and government elite. With rising numbers of children accessing the Internet, often unmonitored, this year’s event, sponsored by Microsoft, and the video competition aimed to encourage young people to think about how often they upload personal information online and to consider how this information and personal data might be accessed and used.