Cyber Safety
This post is written as a follow-up to a presentation at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension (Vestavia Hills, AL). During the presentation, we talked about a number of resources. We present those links here.

We talked four major topics:

  1. Knowing where your children are going physically.
  2. Knowing where your children are going digitally.
  3. Addressing cyber-bullying.
  4. Recognizing phishing.
  • Life 360 is an app that let’s you track the location of family members. You can find out more and download the app here.
  • Life 360 video is located here.
  • Life 360 demo composed by is user is located here.
  • MamaBear is an app that tracks the location of your children and monitors their messaging and social media activity. For more information and to download, go here.
  • “Friend” or “Follow” your children on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and anything other social media platform.
  • Tighten privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Strangers should not be able to see information about your child.
  • Stay away from video chat with strangers.
  • Google Hangouts or Skype are great for chatting with family or friends who are not close by. Learn more about Google Hangouts here. Learn more about Skype here.
  • Turn on and parental setting on your child’s computer and mobile devices. Here is a video for Windows 7. Here is one for Windows 8. Here is one for the Mac. Here is an article for Android. Here is an article for iPhone.
  • Examine the browser history on your child’s computer.
  • Explore Incognito mode (Chrome) or Private Browsing (Firefox) when using someone else’e computer.
  • Shift-Control-T brings back the tab you closed by accident (or tab someone closed to keep you from seeing what they were doing).
  • The dinner table is your best friend.
  • Be alert for phishing schemes. Reputable institutions will never ask for your personal information.
  • Have a good password strategy. Have a unique password for each site but a method by which you can keep up with them.

 

The resources and ideas this post presents are far from exhaustive. They provide a good start towards keeping young people (of all ages) safe in a digital world. What resources of suggestions would you like to add?