Safety Online - a discussion for Safer Internet Day!
Heyy!
Welcome Everyone!
Misty Here!
Today is Safer Internet Day.
I have held two, really informative and interesting discussions, one for teens and one for adults, and the information was so fantastic I wanted to share it with you here, so that those of you who couldn't attend could still learn more about being safer online the same as we have.
So the first icebreaker question was
"How long have you had a mobile phone and when did you get your first mobile phone?"
Answers were very interesting with some of us having had mobile phones that were as big as a brick! over 25 years ago!
Next we discussed what being 'online' meant and when might we be 'offline'?
Here we had some very interesting answers, and we learnt that even when we don't answer our texts or messages and are actually signed out, our technological instruments, smart phones, routers, modems, smart tvs etc, might actually still be online!
We found out about ‘Parental Controls and who uses them?
- Parental controls are available on almost all devices, modems, phones, tvs computers, tablets; they can be used to block websites, or to limit the amount of time online or the channels that can be seen on a tv! They are designed to make the internet a safer place, so please investigate using them if you havent already.
We also found out that some businesses and universities and schools didn't allow wifi and some blocked certain sites on the internet.
Then we asked who uses social media and who posts on their social media sites and page about their holidays, telling everyone when they will be away, and where they are going etc?
This led to a lot of us talking about what is a real 'friend' and who we should make sure that any information is only shared with real people that are real friends and that we should be very careful about posting information.
Why is it important that we dont share any personally identifying information on 7Cups?
This led to a lot of great answers! People may mis-use the information and contact us. They may not be who they say they are. They may sell our contact information to others. When we are anonymous we are far safer.
Did you know that ‘password ‘ is the most common password! How might we make a safer password? We also discussed if longer is stronger!
There were some really interesting thoughts on this from using a latin swear word to using lots of numbers! Using Capital letters and a mix of numbers 12345 and ?! $%& @Power has already written a great thread on passwords Here How strong s your password.
Security Questions - many sites use security questions to reset passwords, how can we make them safer and hard to guess?
Instead of using the correct answer to create a security question give the wrong information so that makes it harder to guess and steal. For instance if the question is What is your mothers maiden name instead of answering correctly use something else like your favourite colour.
Here are some links to great resources . .
@Tazzie @Power @Heather225
Listening .... One Step At A Time
Thank you so much for sharing these, and for hosting discussions for this very important day!
