Most of the UK population has online access these days (about 93% of the population or around 60 million people). That could be from devices such as laptops, desktop computers and tablets (at home or at work), games consoles, and of course our mobile phones. Using the internet is a way of life for most people, even more so now that lots of people work from home – we use it for keeping in touch with friends and family through email, messaging services and video chat, we pay our bills and do our shopping, even use it to listen to music or watch our favourite television shows. The internet plays an important part of most people’s lives.
In the UK, a lot of people have their own computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone or internet connected television and if not, they will have access to one through their school, local library and their friends. But whilst the internet in a powerful and useful tool, it can also be a dangerous place and not just for the kids.
Parents and carers know the school and library computers should be relatively safe as they are generally locked down quite well with internet safety tools built in and inappropriate websites blocked. But when they are at home do you know what they are browsing on the internet or who they might be talking too? With teenagers seemingly having a mobile phone implanted into the palm of their hands, what are they doing for so long (and why can’t they keep that level of interest and concentration when it comes to homework)? How do you try to keep them safe online without sitting over their shoulder watching everything that they do? Is it safe to logon and let them to do their homework, chat with friends or play games without the need for constant supervision?
And the adults aren’t safe either, there are plenty of scams and fake websites that can be very convincing and can make you susceptible to identity theft and credit card fraud.
We all need to be a bit more security conscious and be able to use the internet as safely as we can. Everybody could do with learning a bit about the internet and how to use it safely, managing security settings, installing blocking software, learning how to spot phishing emails and not be so quick to type in our credit card or bank details and not give away so much personal information. Educating yourself with regards to internet security will help to keep you safer on the internet and make the online world safer for you, your children and everybody else.
There are plenty of dangerous risks and scams online, not just for children but adults also, such as:
- Inappropriate contact from others, this includes cyber-bullying
- Viewing inappropriate content not suitable for their age group (sexually explicit, violent, racist etc.)
- Risk of viruses and malicious software
- Revealing personal information (risk of identity theft, letting people know where you live etc.)
- Excessive bills from playing online games and purchasing add-ons
The internet can be a great place and the dangers shouldn’t put anybody off from using it, we just need to be aware of the dangers, how to spot them and what we can put in place to keep ourselves safer. There are plenty of resources available to help, with UK Safer Internet Centre a good place to start. Before you open up that browser and start searching the internet, don’t just have free reign for everybody, do a little bit of research and learn basic internet security.
Following a few rules can help you and your family safe online and give you a better peace of mind.
- Make sure you have an up-to-date anti-virus and antispyware/malware program.
- Set the privacy settings in your browser including blocking pop-ups.
- Have the computer in a shared room so you can keep an eye on children’s browsing.
- Install a third party parental control program.
- If you allow your child to have email and social media accounts (they really should be 13+ to have these) maybe set them up for them so that you have the usernames and passwords so that you can monitor the accounts, should you need to.
- Don’t use real names as a username.
- Don’t use personal information such as birthdays or pets names as passwords.
- Never share personal details – this includes those social media ‘quizzes’ where they can guess your age, or find your comedy name by revealing pets names, kids names and other personal information which can be collected to help gain access to accounts.
- Teach your child not to communicate with strangers and never arrange to meet in person.
- If the children want to enter a contest or join clubs check it out first and fill in the registrations for them/with them.
The first thing to look at should be your connection to the internet. If you are using a home internet connection, wired or WiFi, take a look at your router. It shouldn’t just be seen as a dust collector hidden away in a corner of a room that you wish wasn’t there. Yes, they are the connection between your devices and the wider world of the internet, but they also have lots of other functions than WiFi and internet connections. The first thing everyone should do is change the default passwords. A lot of routers these days now come with secure unique passwords and not Admin/Admin or Admin/Password anymore, but ideally you should change these to something that you can remember – and not something easily guessable. Use numbers, symbols, upper and lower case characters to make it as secure as you can (you can use sites such as Password Monster or Kaspersky Password Checker to check the strength of your password, other sites are available – just don’t trust any site completely as they can’t check that you haven’t used personal information or a password that you have used elsewhere). You can read more about strong passwords from Microsoft here. A lot of routers will also allow you to set usage times within their settings, as well as allowing or blocking specific devices – for example, you might want to block a specific phone at night so that it can’t be used whilst the user should be sleeping.
If you have children, the use of a parental control program on their devices or the family computer is a great method for blocking inappropriate content. You can set them up to bar or allow specific websites that your child can or can’t visit, block inappropriate types of website content and even set up usage times. There are a lot of programs out there, some free but most paid. If you are using a Windows PC then make use of the free Microsoft Family Safety account – it is built right into the operating system and allows you to manage screen time (including the Xbox and phone), filters and blocks inappropriate content, gives you weekly activity reports and on compatible devices can even show you where their device is on a map. Norton offer Norton Family (it does have a cost of £14.99 per year) which offers supervision of websites, videos, searches, mobile phone downloads etc. and I have personally used F-Secure Total (it costs from £34.99 to £49.99 per year to secure up to 10 devices) provides complete online security, privacy, and ID protection with parental controls.
As laptops and tablets have built-in webcams, I would also recommend a webcam cover. These are inexpensive stick on covers that can be closed when you are not using the webcam. Whilst it won’t stop a virus, malware or hacker gaining control of your webcam remotely it will stop any images being recorded as with the cover closed it won’t see anything.
Using the internet is fun, entertaining and can be very educational when used properly. Being aware of potential dangers, risks and scams whilst adding the appropriate level of internet security will help keep it safer for everybody. As parents/carers we should familiarise ourselves with all the tech in our homes and learn how to set, change and manage basic security settings on all devices we own and use, installing relevant internet security software to help when necessary, and make sure that we do keep an eye on what the children are looking at, who they are chatting to and teach them the dangers of the internet and what information they can and can’t give out (even if they think they know the person they are chatting to).
Be aware and don’t panic. If you receive an email that is urgent in its request, don’t panic and respond straightaway. Check that the email is from who it says it is – it might say PayPal but not have a PayPal address, check for spelling errors and just hovering your mouse pointer over a link in an email to see where the link would take you can prevent a lot of problems (if you get an email from your bank for example, if your hovered over the link, the web address would be something completely different). If you want to learn more about phishing scams, how to spot and report them then visit the government’s National Cyber Security Centre (or Google it), they have plenty of advice about cyber security.
Make sure that you talk to your children about the internet – its positives and negatives. In the event that something happens that they are uncomfortable with make sure that they know to speak to someone they trust about it (an adult family member, family friend or a teacher at school etc.). Make sure that they know to report bullying and abuse, to you and directly to the website or app.
If you need more information about online safety and making the internet safer for your children, or even for yourself, visit www.thinkuknow.co.uk or www.childnet.com. These are great resource websites for children, parents and teachers. You can always do a search from your preferred internet browser and search engine if you don’t want to click on any of the links within this article.
If you think your child is being stalked, harassed or groomed online, there is help available. Contact www.ceop.police.uk, the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) or your local police.
Stay safe online. Educate yourself and your children as much as you can about scams and safe internet usage. Don’t give out personal information where possible, especially in online quizzes and use different strong and secure passwords for each online account (you can use a password manager to keep track of them all), and certainly don’t let anyone know any of your passwords.
There is lots we can do to stay safe online and this article just outlines some simple things. Make use of the professional advice from the sites such as UK Safer Internet Centre and National Cyber Security Centre so that your use of the internet is as safe as possible.