Keeping the Internet’s bogeymen out!

Guest post from Simon Ellson.

The Internet is full of tricks and treats. It provides us with endless entertainment and opportunities to connect with one another, but it does also put us and our family in potential risk, 24 hours a day.

The recent Norton Cybercrime Report showed that online scams is amongst the top three types of cybercrime – even web-savvy adults fall for them! With little education, however, we can all learn methods to avoid such problems and stay safe.

But what about the children? How do we ensure that our kids stay safe online, without us peering over the shoulders? The same answer – education!

Whilst teaching kids to limit the information that they share with others and how to appropriately use security and privacy settings helps them to stay safe online, kids need to taught how to keep the door closed for the Internet’s bogeymen.

And how do we do this? Similar to how we teach our children the rules of trick-or-treating e.g. staying on the pavement, crossing the street carefully, avoiding unwrapped or homemade treats and coming home before it’s too late. We can teach children the internet’s equivalents:

1. Be careful about what they  click on – stick to well-known Internet sites and use search ratings tools like Norton Safe Web to avoid going to dangerous website

2. Teach your child never to respond to spam and to delete unwanted messages – Marian Merritt, Norton’s internet safety advocate, mentioned in a recent blog post that some of the most common scams that trick children are pop-up ads that:

  • Promise you can easily win great prizes like a tablet or gaming system
  • Claim to detect viruses on your computer and offer to clean them
  • Offer to speed up your computer

3.  Use security software on all computers as well as mobile phones and tablets.

4. Set up unique and complex passwords and ensure that your children share them with you but no one else.

5. Talk to your child about Internet scams, misleading advertising, spam Instant Message or social network friend requests, and other online tricks you know to avoid but they may not.

October 28, 2011 | Filed Under Family Online Safety, Identity theft, Norton Cybercrime Report, Security, Spam 

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