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As your children head back to school this year, buying new supplies and clothes is not enough. You also should be thinking about how to help them stay safe online and avoid being easy targets for online scammers.
Parents: Be Careful
- Creating accounts on websites without permission: Social media sites are ripe with strangers with intentions that may be quite different than yours. Many sites are designed to collect and sell unauthorized user details and behaviors to advertisers looking to engage in targeted marketing. Some kids may falsely create a birthdate to meet the minimum age requirement when creating an account. Know what your child is doing online and keep track of the social media sites and accounts to which they have access.
- Contests and giveaways: Contests and giveaways often collect a hefty amount of personal information on their entry forms. Many are thinly disguised ways of collecting personal or financial information that could lead to identity theft. Make sure your child doesn’t have access to banking or credit card information and supervise the filling out of any forms.
- Phishing: Adults are not the only ones who receive spam and junk mail. Kids often get junk mail, and since they don’t have much online experience, they are more susceptible to click on links and answer questions they probably shouldn’t. While…
