Internet safety - are your kids safe online?

The reality

3 Steps to a Safe Home
A simple three step program for parents to create a safe online environment at home.

• Step 1: Choose a location for the family computer where you spend a lot of time such as the kitchen or the TV room. Face the computer screen so that you can keep an eye on what is going on.
• Step 2: Spend time online with your child. Find a few minutes every day to sit down with your children and surf a sports website, see what's new on Hi5, type a letter to a relative, organize family photographs online, or update the family blog.
• Step 3: Talk to your children about their online activities. Talk about the dangers that they need to watch out for - use foreign news reports (they are all online) of online crimes involving children.

Internet safety is not really a hot topic for parents and educators in Fiji - but it should be. Like the streets of Suva, the Internet is home to schools, galleries and museums, sports, silly fun, libraries, shops, and everyday people having everyday conversations. And also like the streets of Suva, the good things on the Internet share space with foul language, crime, violence, prostitution, and just plain bad people. While adults may fend for themselves on the mean streets online, children deserve and need the protection of their parents and educators.

One study carried out on Internet using girls in New Zealand in 2001 drew chilling conclusions.

The girls were age 11-19 and all living in New Zealand when they completed the survey.

• 68.5% were using the Internet most days.
• 33.5% have had a personal face-to-face meeting with someone they met on the Internet.
• 60% had done at least one potentially unsafe behaviour. (35.5% gave out personal information e.g. address/phone no., 26.5% sent a photo of themselves to someone they met, and 14.5% had posted a picture of themselves on the Net.)
• 95.5% use the Internet at home, yet 75% state that their use of the Internet at home is only occasionally (37.5%) or never (37.5%) monitored by an adult.
• 44.5% use the Internet at school, yet 58% state that their use of the Internet at school is monitored only occasionally (28.5%) or never (29.5%) by an adult.
• 22.5% report having felt unsafe or threatened while using the Internet (most commonly from sexual threats)."

[The Internet Safety Group, Girls on the net, 2001]

Understanding the dangers

Parents and educators need to be aware of the three classes of threats faced by children online.

1. Content threats - Content threats involve children being exposed to inappropriate or undesirable information, images, or digital audio/video recordings online. Such content ranges from pornography, violence, culturally objectionable ideas, or just plain incorrect information. For example, a child searching for information on "galleries" for a school project will find nudity and pornography.
   
2. Social threats - Social threats involve children being exposed to phishing attempts (attempts by online criminals to collect personal information about Internet users), the growing problem of cyber-bullying, or worst of all, online sexual predators. For example, adults have posed as children in chat rooms in order to gain children's trust.
   
3. Technical threats - Technical threats include inadvertently downloading computer viruses and spyware that can harm your computer and your data, leak personal information to online criminals, or allow criminals to take over your machine. For example, some computer viruses allow attackers to take control of your computer including reading all of your files and emails.
   

The solution

3 Rules for Online Street-Smarts
Three rules to teach your kids to make them Internet street-smart:

• Rule 1: Never give out information about yourself to strangers - especially not information that could help them locate you.
• Rule 2: Never meet in person with anyone that you have met online unless you take a parent with you.
• Rule 3: If an email or a chat session makes you feel uncomfortable for any reason, tell a parent or teacher right away.

There are many software packages available claiming to keep kids safe (see here for a partial list), and parents and educators should utilize these as appropriate. However, and I cannot emphasize this too much, there is no substitute for a combination of supervision, education, and "street smarts".

• Supervision - Supervised kids are safe kids. Parents should be actively involved in their children's Internet usage. See my three step home Internet safety program below.
• Computer literacy - While a degree in Computing Science is not necessary, a fundamental understanding of computers, mobile phones, and the Internet can help children, parents, and teachers avoid many basic problems online. These would include: not visiting untrusted websites, not downloading files from untrusted sources, not opening email attachments from untrusted sources, not plugging your USB stick into untrusted computers, keeping your computer up-to-date with software patches, and operating and updating your anti-virus software, to name just a few fundamentals.
• Information literacy - Information literacy refers to your ability locate information online, navigate to it, and ultimately evaluate its usefulness. This is a subtle skill that allows children and adults alike to see the difference between a fact and an opinion online, compare the information in two similar websites, understand the difference between a real person and a Hi5 persona, and how to find an expert on a subject. Information literacy also includes understanding how information can be properly used in order to avoid violating copyright law and charges of plagiarism at school.
• Online street-smarts - Just as kids can learn to react safely to the pitfalls of urban living, parents and teachers can prepare children to react safely to the dangers of the Internet. Once shown how, even young children can identify chain letters, spam email, and even most common phishing scams. See my three rules of online street smarts below.

Further reading
Fortunately, the Internet is rich with resources on Internet safety. Here are few places to start:

• NetSafe (http://www.netsafe.org.nz/) A New Zealand non-profit organization dedicated to providing Internet safety education.
• The Family Online Safety Institute (http://www.fosi.org/) An international organization focused on Internet safety. FOSI manages a self-regulated Internet content filtering scheme formerly known as The Internet Content Rating Association.
• i-SAFE Inc. (http://www.isafe.org/) A US organization promoting and coordinating a variety of Internet safety activities.

Photo by: richardmasoner