COLORADO SPRINGS — It’s no secret that we live in a digital age and much of our time is spent online. But how is this affecting our children? According to the Pew Research Center, 80% of parents say their child aged 5 to 11 uses a tablet computer.
Thomas Holt Russell, D.Ed (Hon), Cyber Education Program Manager, at the National Cyber Security Center shared tips with News5 on how you can protect your child’s social identity on the internet.
He says the best way to teach your child about cybersecurity is to have open conversations.
Russell says to make sure your child knows not to enter chat rooms or talk to strangers on the internet. It can seem harmless, but this simple conversation can protect your child. It’s very important to protect your child’s data because once the data is out, it can be manipulated by hackers on the internet.
“Like social security numbers, credit card numbers, some of the child’s personal information, these are things that need to be protected. You don’t want to put that information in the hands of strangers, so you need to watch your children carefully, where they’re going on the internet and who they are talking to,” said Russell.
“If you post pictures to the computer, those pictures stay there forever and those pictures also carry what we call metadata where someone, a bad actor as we would say, would be able to get that information and find out your location and everything else, just from that picture that you snapped.”
Another way to protect yourself is to be hesitant about connecting to public WIFI because it isn’t secure. You want to ensure you do not access any type of information that you don’t want anyone to see. If you’re in a situation where you cannot avoid using a public WIFI, do not open personal apps that release sensitive information.
For more tips on how to protect your child’s data, visit here.
