Privacy Matters: Teach Your Kids to Protect Their Privacy Online
You wouldn't offer strangers the keys to your home, allow them to read your children's personal journals, or let them rummage through your purse or wallet, right? So why give them online access to your family's confidential files, financial information, and most private thoughts?
Protecting your privacy on the Internet may take a little extra thought and effort, but it's worth the trouble. Failing to take the necessary precautions can have serious consequences—for you and your family. Getting careless about online privacy may lead to fraud and identity theft. It might even expose your kids to cyberbullies or, worse, sexual predators.
Why take the risk? Make time to learn the basics of Internet privacy, and then teach your children how to safeguard their privacy online. Here are a few key steps that will help:
Use security technology to help safeguard privacy
As a starting point, make sure your computer is running up-to-date security software: an operating system with good security; a firewall; anti-virus software; and an efficient anti-spyware program. Other technology options such as spam filters and phishing filters can also help to protect your privacy. Good security software can help block potentially damaging junk e-mail, detect and eliminate malicious software, and make it harder for potential intruders to locate and access your personal information.
Keep personal information private
Teach your children to be very cautious about sharing personal or financial information—such as addresses and telephone numbers, birth dates, Social Security numbers, or credit card and bank account numbers—over the Internet. Another good tip is to share only as much information as necessary to complete the transaction you want to perform. Most online forms have both required and optional fields. Leave the optional fields blank. To help protect your privacy, leave the optional fields blank instead of giving people more information than they need.
Delete spam
The best way to deal with spam is to delete it without opening it, and before you make the mistake of clicking on any links or attachments it contains. Junk e-mail that promises “free” products, unclaimed winnings from contests or lotteries you never entered, or big paychecks for little effort are likely to be come-ons meant to trick you in revealing personal information, which could lead to online fraud and identity theft. Phishing scams are even more devious. They use fraudulent e-mails that appear to come from your bank, credit card company, or a trusted merchant to gain access to your confidential information. Attachments or links in spam may contain malicious software that could damage your computer or destroy your files.
Create strong passwords and don't share them
Strong passwords that include a long string of letters, number and symbols can help protect your privacy. Help your children choose a password that will be easy for them to remember but hard for others to guess, and teach them never to share their passwords, not even with their close friends.
Read Web site privacy policies
Get in the habit of always reading a Web site's privacy policy before shopping or conducting business there, or agreeing to provide personal or financial information. The privacy policy will explain what kind of information the site requires, how it will use the information it gathers, and whether it shares such information with others or keeps it confidential. If a site doesn't have a privacy policy, or if something in the policy makes you uncomfortable, find another site that suits you better.
Use encryption
Set up your family computer to encrypt all files and transmissions to make it harder for potential intruders to gain access to confidential information. Encryption programs run in the background, so once you take this step neither you nor your children will notice the encryption occurring, but it will help to protect your privacy for as long as you leave it in place.
Use parental controls
Built-in family safety settings in operating systems such as Windows Vista, online game consoles and services such as Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, and an increasing number of other technology products make it easy for parents to monitor and control their children's Internet activities. Using family safety settings, you can help to protect your children's privacy by controlling the type of games they can play, the type of Web content they can access, and who can send them e-mail and instant messages.
