Safety Tips and Monitoring Tools

Pre Teens - Safety

Co-ordinate with other family members to implement some safety tips at your house to help kids online. Here are some of them, to start with:

Family Rules First

Practice Disconnect to Reconnect policy at home – no mobile devices and gadgets at the dining table.
Make sure you follow the set of rules set by your family while using internet. This way, you can have fun and stay safe online.
Be cautious while browsing and make sure to take help of parents while dealing with anything that could cost some money.
If anything you come across on the internet makes you uncomfortable, let your parents know about it, at once.
It is the World Wide Web with umpteen number of people across the world connected by computers. It is necessary that you treat people you don’t know on the internet community as strangers, the same way you would treat strangers on the street.

There are certain steps to be followed to ensure cyber safety and improved device security.

Ensure that the Internet firewall is turned on.
Update your computer patches.
Ensure that the antivirus software is up-to-date.
Ensure that the antispyware software is up-to-date.

Safeguard Your Personal Information

Never reveal information about yourself, especially vital information like your last name, your phone number, residing locality, or name of your school. Ask your parents first, if you must reveal such details.
Don’t e-mail your photographs to strangers.
Don’t reveal your password, except to responsible adults in your family.
It is strongly suggested that you don’t fill out forms online without consulting your parents. Be alert and look out for websites which seek personal information to use the same for commercial/malicious purposes.

Speak to your Parent, Don’t Keep Calm

If you feel uncomfortable with somebody saying something to you, sending you something or if you see something that makes you feel uncomfortable, voice it out to your parents at once.
Inform your parent if you are unsure of the genuineness of anything that you read or see online.

Managing Cyber Friends

Making plans to meet your Internet buddies in real life is usually a really bad idea – how people are in real life can be very different from how they are online. If you decide to do it anyway, have your Mom or Dad help make the plans and go with you.
Don’t arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone you meet on the Internet without parental permission.

Internet and Email Safety

Don’t open up e-mails, files, or Web pages that you get from people you don’t really know or trust.
Never to respond to a message from a company asking for security information including passwords, account logons.
Don’t open e-mails from people you don’t know. You should also be told to never open an attachment in an e-mail, even from someone they know, unless you have specifically requested it.

Teens - Safety

Information Protection

The internet is a boon when it comes to connecting people across the world and helping people communicate over long distances. But, you need to be aware that there can be potential danger when you are dealing with people online as you may not know what is happening on the other end.

Here are some useful tips that you may follow to stay safe while on the internet:

Make sure that you don’t reveal your personal information such as your name, house address and phone numbers to anyone you happen to meet on the internet.
Don’t share photographs of yourself, your friends or family to someone you know online.
If you are worried about something or someone being offensive or making you feel uncomfortable, alert your parents. Be alert and do not reveal your personal information at any cost, even if the person is asking you personal questions.
Plan to meet your online ‘friend’ for the first time? It is highly recommended that you take your parent or a family member along. You never knew the person in real life and the person may be different from what he or she posed as, online.
Don’t open up e-mails, files, or website links from people or unknown sources.
Don’t reveal your password to anyone.
Don’t ever reveal yours or your family’s personal information in a website, email, instant messaging systems, and chat rooms or on message boards, especially when you are unsure of the purpose.
Keep in mind that people may not be the same as they pose to be online. For instance, the little 12 years old girl you were chatting with can probably be a 25 year old man!

Parents - Safety

Teach Your Kids Online Safety

Technology being highly accessible, anyone who has a computer at home can easily access the internet. This includes your kids. So, it is very important to teach your kids about internet safety and the potential harm internet can cause when not used in the right way. Kids must be taught to be cautious while chatting, making friends, posting personal information and even while playing online games.

Here are some tips that every parent must follow to educate the kids about internet safety:

Make sure you keep a track of your kid’s online activity and inquire about your kid’s online experiences.
Be approachable and let your kids know that they must let you know if anything bothers them or if anything that they feel uncomfortable about on the Internet.
If your kids use applications or games that require them to login, help them choose the credentials that don’t reflect any personal information.
Instruct your kids not to reveal your address, phone number, name of the school or playground that they go to, or other personal information.
Educate your child to differentiate between right and wrong on the internet as he would in real life.
Ensure that your child knows that rules for good behaviour don’t change just because they’re on a computer. Educate your child about basic internet etiquette.
Make sure that your child respects others’ online property. Explain that it is not right to copy or circulate other people’s work such as music, video games, and other programs.
Do not encourage your kids to meet their online friends in person.
Explain to your child that people may not be the same as they pose to be online.
Use parental controls and other advanced technologies and tools to control and keep a tab over your children’s online activity. You can filter out harmful content, monitor the sites your child visits, and find out their online activities.
Discourage your child from posting photographs of self and those of the family members.
Never reveal password or credit card number to anyone.
Do not accept any gifts from unknown sources or invite online acquaintances to your house.

Organizations - Safety

Dealing with Malware

There are some malicious software programs like computer viruses that interfere with your computer operations, record, corrupt or delete important data. Computer viruses can spread from one computer to another and thereby seep through cyber spaces, invading the network of your organization. This can disrupt the work and affect productivity. Computer viruses can be mildly annoying and can sometimes destruct the entire cyber spaces across. With a little care, you can prevent these malicious computer viruses from destructing your network, devices and data.

Here are some tips to help avoid or spreading of computer viruses:

Always use a virus and malware detection system with an updating mechanism that would update all computers in the network automatically as and when there is a new available software update.
Allow automatic updates on your computer Operating System and security applications such as anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewalls.
Isolate an infected computer from the network.
If there is a malicious code that exploits one of more of the network services, block access to that service immediately and seek help to get it fixed.
Always use an Internet firewall.
Do not open an e-mail attachment from unknown sources.
Avoid opening an e-mail attachment even from people you know unless you are sure of what the attachment is. The sender might unintentionally be introducing a virus through the attachment.
Update your network servers that host public services, such as HTTP, FTP and Email services updated.
You must set your email servers to block or remove email with attachment used to spread virus. Usually, viruses are spread through attachments of files with extensions such as .VBS, .BAT, .PIF, .SCR, .EXE.

Safety tips

Monitoring Tools

1. Affordable Intelligent Home WiFi Management – Highly Recommended (By End Now Foundation) to be impletmented at homes having Pre Teens and Teens.

2. Internet – Install Monitoring & Filtering Programs

3. WiredSafety runs several large events a year with up to 1000 attendees, often including teens, preteens and kids.

4. Are you curious to find out how much you use your cell phone compared to other people? AntiSocial is designed to not only help you understand what ‘normal usage’ looks like, but to give you the tools to manage, block and control your cell phone usage so that you can unplug, minimize distractions and focus on the things that matter.

5. Teenangels are a group of thirteen to eighteen-year-old volunteers that have been specially trained in all aspects of online safety, privacy and security.

6. Spector Soft develops intelligent, powerful solutions that provide companies with visibility into, and understanding of, the human behaviors and activities occurring within their network, making them more secure and productive.

7. This software offers many tools to monitor internet and computer use in your home. It logs and sends reports and alerts directly to your email.

8. Net Nanny is a brand of content-control software marketed primarily towards parents as a way to control a child’s computer activity.

9. Record and track day-to-day activities with the easy-to-use Activity Log.

0. ReThink provides an important opportunity for adolescents to change their minds and not post hurtful messages online.

11. Software that allows you to monitor EVERYTHING users do on your computer – in total stealth.

Reach us at: support@endnowfoundation.org